In 1872, the United States established Yellowstone National Park, reserving a volcanic, forested, and geothermal landscape from ordinary private development. The park helped create a new model of conservation, tourism, and federal land management. It also displaced and restricted Indigenous relationships with the land.

Yellowstone helped make wilderness a formal literary and national category, affecting nature writing and later American ecopoetry. Poets inherited both its wonder and its contradictions: geysers, animals, and forests celebrated as public inspiration, yet separated from Indigenous stewardship.