William Wallace Wylie (1848-1930) came to Bozeman, Montana, from Iowa in 1878 as the principal of the city schools. In 1881, he became the principal of the Bozeman Academy. Several years later he was Montana Superintendent of Schools. He made his first trip to Yellowstone National Park in 1880, and in 1881, he started a lecture tour on the park using H.B. Calfee's stereopticon views. In 1882, he published a guidebook to the park, "Yellowstone national park; or, The great American wonderland : a complete description of all the wonders of the park [sic]". As he continued to visit the Park and took teachers on educational tours, he used tent camps to house them. He was granted permission to establish fixed camps in the Park for tourist groups in 1893. This developed into the Wylie Way Stations, which he operated until he sold the business in 1905. W. W. Wylie wrote this autobiography in 1926 to document his 25 years of experiences in Yellowstone National Park.
The collection consists of a typescript of the 1926 autobiography of W. W. Wylie that describes the origin and development of the permanent tent camps in Yellowstone National Park known as Wylie Way Stations. Starting with his introduction to the Park, he documents how his first visits and lecture tours developed into a tour company. Details include discussions of the first lecture tour, development of the permanent camps, early problems related to the camp business, difficluties with Park officials, legal issues, and the sale of the business. Also included are anecdotes about the people, places, natural phenomena, and animal behaviors Wylie observed.
Ancillary materials include photocopied obituaries of brother John McCartney Wylie (1857-1937) and nephew Paul R. Wylie (1899-1987); photocopies of the ruling in a 1920 lawsuit between W. W. Wylie and the Wylie Permanent Camping Co.; and a photograph of Minnie, Charles and Lora Richter, circa 1895 (Minnie Richter became John M. Wylie's wife).
This collection is open for research.
William Wallace Wylie's autobiography was donated to the Montana State University Library in 1966 by nephew Paul R. Wylie, for production of a grammatically edited transcription. Paul Wylie received the manuscript from W. W. Wylie's granddaughter Mary Lou Wardle of Los Angeles with the proviso that after transcription the original would join the W. W. Wylie collection in the museum collection at Yellowstone National Park (now the Yellowstone National Park Heritage and Research Center). Several ancillary items donated by Paul R. Wylie are included in the collection. The 1987 obituary seems to have been added to the collection later, but this is not documented.
This collection was processed 2009 May 26