Yellowstone National Park, surveyed in 1878 (Hayden, U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories)
The Hayden Survey’s map of Yellowstone National Park (U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, F. V. Hayden), surveyed in 1878 — primary triangulation by A. D. Wilson, secondary triangulation and topography by Henry Gannett — at two miles to the inch with 100-foot contours, and published with the Survey’s Twelfth Annual Report (1883); this is the topographic edition, without the geology colours. It covers the park and its margins from the Gallatin Range and the Madison plateau to the Absaroka Range: the geyser basins, Yellowstone Lake with its soundings, Shoshone, Lewis and Heart lakes, the Grand Cañon, the roads and trails of 1878, and the “Bannack Trail” — the Bannock and other nations’ route east across the plateau to the buffalo country — crossing the Gallatin Range north of Mount Holmes and running down Indian Creek to the Norris road toward Gardiner’s River.
Source
| Map | Map of Yellowstone National Park |
|---|---|
| Author | F. V. Hayden (A. D. Wilson and Henry Gannett), 1878 |
| Archive | National Archives |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1878 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 3 km (RMS 0.5 km at 77 control points). Placed by hand in a map-queue session and approved by a person. If something sits in the wrong place, members can fix it with Fix placement on the map. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a second-degree polynomial through 77 places — the 42 crossings of the sheet’s engraved 10′ graticule (111° to 110° W, 44°10′ to 45° N), which agree with one another to 0.07 km, and 35 peaks, islands, small lakes and falls matched to their positions today. Most of the map lies within half a kilometre of today’s ground; the survey is furthest out around the Upper Geyser Basin (the falls of the Firehole above it 2 km off), Riddle Lake, the West Thumb (Carrington Island) and the South Arm of Yellowstone Lake (Peale Island), 1.5 to 2 km. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-15 |
| Covers | Wyoming, Montana, Idaho |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (10 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (6000 × 5011; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (21.7 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (2.5 MB)
Project Homeland
This map is open for tracing into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source. Members trace a trail by clicking along it: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-15): First release: placed by hand at 77 places. From the National Archives (Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Central Map File 294; NAID 221149525); added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the National Archives (Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Central Map File 294; NAID 221149525); added for Project Homeland
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: National Archives (CMF 294)
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
Something on this map sits in the wrong place? Members can show where with Fix placement on the map — confirmed fixes are tested against the map’s other control points each night and credited here. For anything else, report a problem.
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