Professor Randall Wilson. (Photo by Lori Stevens)
By Nathaniel Swindell, Staff Writer
Environmental studies professor Randall Wilson recently won the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize for his book “A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World’s First National Park.” The book focuses on the history of Yellowstone National Park, as well as the cultural impact it has had since it was initially established in 1872. The book was praised for its biographical approach to the history of the park, highlighting the figures who contributed to it as well as how it connects to America’s national parks today.
The Barbara and David Zalaznick Award is given out to a nonfiction book about American history that is notable for its academic appeal and literary style.
“I felt very humbled by [winning the award].” said Wilson. “The past recipients of this award are folks that I look up to. They’re major figures in the field of history, especially American history, and also biography. It’s just a wonderful thing, wonderful news to receive. I’m just deeply honored by that.”
The cover of Wilson’s book, “A Place Called Yellowstone.”
The book was created from his first publication, “America’s Public Lands: From Yellowstone to Smokey Bear and Beyond,” where it evolved from a wide array of national parks to Yellowstone in particular. Wilson was inspired to do so after researching his first book, where he discovered just how prevalent Yellowstone was in the history of America’s national parks system.
“This project on Yellowstone, in particular, really grew out of a book that I did about ten years ago that was all about the public lands system,” said Wilson. “So it wasn’t just national parks, it was national forests, wildlife refuges, the bureau of land management, the whole thing. And so in the process of writing that book I kept running into Yellowstone, basically at every turn. So if you’re trying to understand where national forests came from, it takes you back to Yellowstone.”
One of Wilson’s major ideas when creating the book was the idea of “place” and the cultural and historical importance of such a location for others like it, which for him was Yellowstone. Hence, the title of his book.
“I’m trained in part as a geographer. My Ph.D. is in geography, one of the concepts that’s central to that is the idea of place,” said Wilson. “So, sense of place, place of identity, how does place matter in American society, or any society? It dawned on me that Yellowstone is a special place in American society, in U.S. history. And it’s analogous to say the National Mall. So the National Mall is a place that’s a touchstone, it’s a place we gather to discuss and motivate all the major social and political issues of the day we have done throughout U.S. history. And it seemed to me that perhaps Yellowstone played a similar role with regards to the environment.”
During the writing of “A Place Called Yellowstone,” Wilson took a narrative approach to the history, examining key people involved with the history of Yellowstone and focusing on their stories throughout the past few centuries.
“So the Yellowstone one, there’s a narrative approach, so there’s a narrative history,” said Wilson. “It’s impossible to have a single person. So a lot of histories that are biographies, you can follow the person’s arc of their life story from beginning to end. Since the focus here was on the park and U.S. history, at least since 1872, that’s at least 150 years. Of course the way I wrote it, it’s much more than that. So you can’t focus on one person, but what you can do is use individuals for the focal point of the story. There’s the narrative of their experience in Yellowstone as the entry point, and then you can follow their story and with luck, and this is what I tried to do, is find where their story overlaps with the next character that came along.”
Wilson described “America’s Public Lands,” in comparison to his newest book, as more of an academic textbook, but pointed out that both works are meant to be formal and educational.
“So [both books] are used as and treated as textbooks. I use them in classes, and they’re used in everything such as law schools. I’ve had students in my environmental policies class go into law school, and they’re like, ‘Hey, we’re using your book again,’” said Wilson. “It’s in political science departments that have an environmental policy, it’s [used in] in environmental studies like we are and it’s used in history courses as well.”
Wilson also took a moment to elaborate on Yellowstone’s past before becoming a national park, namely the parts that many people would rather not talk about. The treatment of indigenous people is among topics that he does not want people to forget. He expressed that we should remember that Yellowstone, for all its beauty, still has a dark part of its past that shouldn’t be forgotten.
“Some of the important lessons from Yellowstone are that not all of it is celebratory history,” said Wilson. “Some of the things that happened there are negative or perhaps things that we needed to address and still have to address, right? So, that’s a big part of the story, too. It’s not just the sunny side of the street and everything’s ‘yay!’ One of the first indigenous dispossessions from public lands happened up there. The idea that indigenous people shouldn’t be here because they’re gonna somehow be problematic when visitors come to the park — that started in the 1870s, and then again in the 1880s, [the government] made efforts to remove people that had been living there for thousands of years.”
Wilson wanted readers to take away an environmental message from his book, giving readers the opportunity to reflect on various environmental issues throughout the national park’s history.
“I think Yellowstone offers an entry point for folks to learn about the evolution of environmental protection in the U.S. in a way that’s user-friendly, so to speak,” said Wilson. “The stories are so amazing, the things that happen there. So it can take something that might otherwise be considered maybe more dry. Why are we managing the environment this way? Why are we valuing nature this way, instead of that way? Well, a lot of that can be explained by just looking at the stories and the things that happened in Yellowstone, and then decisions that were made there that had this rippling effect out across the country. So, I’m hoping they can just incite further interest in environmental issues and environmental concerns.”
This article originally appeared on pages 8 and 9 of the No. 6 April 2025 edition of The Gettysburgian magazine
