YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is throwing it back in time by revealing what used to go on in the basement of what is now the Albright Visitor Center.
In a Facebook post this week, YNP shared photos of rooms where ranger-naturalists would work on projects and research for a number of decades in the early 1900s.
Within the basement rooms, YNP writes there were workstations for making taxidermy and plant pressings, shelves and tables piled high with a book collection and equipment for producing photographic slides for naturalist programs.
“The laboratory is partially equipped for chemical and physical research and experimentation,” an entry of Yellowstone Nature Notes from January to February 1935 shared by YNP reads. “Several types of instruments are available for microscopic work… In the small rooms… are stored museum accessions not on display.”
YNP notes that many of the buildings in Mammoth Hot Springs are over 100 years old, and because of this many have different uses now than when they were originally built.
