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Item Yellowstone National Park & the winter use debate: community resilience and tourism impacts in the gateway community of West Yellowstone, MT(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Hamming, Carl Alan; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Julia Hobson Haggerty; Julia H. Haggerty, Ray Rasker and William Wyckoff were co-authors of the article, 'Community resilience in a tourist town' submitted to the journal 'Annals of Tourism Research' which is contained within this thesis.This study explores the socioeconomic impacts of the National Park Service's winter use management of Yellowstone National Park on the gateway community of West Yellowstone, Montana. As a highly specialized, tourism-dependent gateway community, the National Park Service's management decisions that affect park visitation also impact the economic viability of West Yellowstone. Previously, scholars have documented the challenges presented by tourism economies and 'resortification' in small communities, the process of a small town being converted into a resort destination with numerous vacation properties, increasing absentee business ownership, a highly seasonal economy and escalating real estate prices. Less is known about how the challenges of resortification and industrial tourism interact with the dimensions of community resilience within a gateway community. Community resilience exists as a mechanism for rural and remote communities to identify vulnerabilities, buffer change, develop resources and promote local progress during periods of uncertainty and stress. This paper explores how the snowmobiling restrictions and winter use management of Yellowstone National Park impacted the community resilience of the tourism-dependent gateway community of West Yellowstone. The debate over winter use management and snowmobiling restrictions in Yellowstone National Park drained the community resources of West Yellowstone and negatively impacted the economic viability of local wintertime businesses. Consequently, challenges of resortification intensified and diminished several dimensions of West Yellowstone's community resilience. The mixed methods approach provides insight to how West Yellowstone's social and economic well-being have been affected since the snowmobiling restrictions were implemented and how the tourism landscape of the entire Yellowstone region has changed. The case study of West Yellowstone contributes knowledge of the economics of gateway communities, the implications of federal land management decisions, and the community resilience of tourism-dependent, gateway towns.Item The evolution of the cultural landscape in Yellowstone National Park's Upper Geyser Basin and the changing visitor experience, 1872-1990(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1995) Byrand, Karl JohnItem Pleasure ground for the future : the evolving cultural landscape of Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park 1870-1966(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2004) Youngs, Yolonda Lucille; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: William WyckoffYellowstone Lake is located in the protected federal lands of Yellowstone National Park. This park is situated in the Rocky Mountains and its boundaries reach into the tri-state areas of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. While many researchers have investigated the history and geography of Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Lake has been largely ignored as a topic of research. In order to reconstruct the evolution of Yellowstone Lake as a cultural landscape, this study focuses on Yellowstone Lake temporally and spatially as an important and central area of Yellowstone National Park. This study suggests that Yellowstone Lake's large and diverse physical geography produces diverse natural environments, cultural landscapes, and national park experiences. The results of this study show that through a combination of concessionaire investment, government management, and visitor demand, the cultural landscape of Yellowstone Lake has changed dramatically over time. This change is depicted through a verbal and cartographic description of Yellowstone Lake's cultural landscape evolution from 1870 to 1966. The verbal description is accompanied by a series of maps reflecting significant changes in the lake's cultural landscape.