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On Aug. 25, 1870, when the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition camped at the mouth of the Gardner River, finding enough grass for their horses was difficult.

“This was our first poor camping place, grass being very scarce, and the slopes of the range covered entirely with sage brush,” Lt. Gustavus C. Doane wrote in his journal.

He also referred to the Gardiner Basin they had passed through that day as a “desert region, inclosed (sic) by mountains.” The area was an example of similar regions in the West that he had explored with a “want of water, and consequent desolation.” The ride across the basin included passage through a “dead level alkali plain” and a “succession of plateaus, covered slightly with a sterile soil.”

Worked hard

Yellowstone National Park supervisory vegetation specialist Roy Renkin was recently referencing that early description of the area. It’s one of the few accounts of the vegetation in the Gardiner Basin that predates Euro-American settlement of the region.