Yellowstone National Park is reached via the Union Pacific and its connection, the Oregon Short Line, the New and Direct Route, over one stem from Kansas City and Leavenworth, and over another from Council Bluffs and Omaha. By way of the latter you cross the Missouri River over a magnificent steel bridge and traverse the "Lane Cut Off," a splendid illustration of modern railroad construction. If you journey over the stem from Kansas City, your way leads through a succession of thriving cities and towns amid the finest farming region of the West, and through beautiful Denver, through Cheyenne, thence through Wyoming, and a portion of Utah, to Ogden, from which point Salt Lake City, 37 miles distant, is reached. The Cascades of the Firehole River, and Hayden Valley between Yellowstone Lake and the Falls. Leaving the central system of transcontinental lines, access to the Park is had in a night by way of the Oregon Short Line Railroad from Salt Lake City, Ogden, or Pocatello to the station, Yellowstone, Montana, at the western border, nineteen miles from the Fountain Hotel. All along this route are strewn stretches of delightful scenery, and fields of rare fertility; but these things the tourist does not see—he awakens for breakfast at Yellowstone, and an hour thereafter is following the course of the beautiful Madison, well on his way into the Park and to the wonders that there await him. |