2022-05-23 | New Roads Magazine
Technology Is Driving Yellowstone
The more (some) things change, the more (other) things stay the same.
In 1872, the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act designated the area as the world’s first national park, primarily to preserve the thousands of geysers, hot springs, and other unique thermal features “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”
The earliest park visitors walked or rode horses, with cars replacing horse-drawn wagons and carriages in 1917. Since then, someone has always had to do the driving — at least until last year, when Yellowstone tested driverless electric shuttles to see how the technology would work in the park. The two eight-passenger shuttles moved people around Canyon Village throughout the summer.
Some passengers surely found it strange to cruise from their campground to the visitor center in a driverless electric shuttle. But it should not have been a surprise to anyone familiar with Yellowstone’s rich history of innovation.
The Details Matter
2022 BOLT EUV
247 MILES
EPA-ESTIMATED RANGE ON A FULL CHARGE†
200
HORSEPOWER
56.9 CU. FT.
MAX CARGO AREA†
Best of all, though, charging the Bolt EUV within the nation’s oldest national park is no problem. That’s because electric vehicle charging stations have been installed in six spots around the park over the past five years by Xanterra, Yellowstone’s primary concessioner, which operates hotels, restaurants, and group tour activities.
“We have been expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure around the park, because the industry is growing at a rapid pace,” says Dylan Hoffman, director of sustainability in Yellowstone for Xanterra.
Hoffman says 2021 brought more EVs to Yellowstone than ever, with visitors taking advantage of free Level 2 chargers in almost all of the park’s developed areas, as well as in nearby Montana communities like West Yellowstone and Gardiner, and in Cody, Wyoming, just outside the east entrance.
While the chargers are a highly visible symbol of new technology in the park, other innovative programs may not be so obvious. Yellowstone plays host to a range of other technological innovations, many driven by outside researchers who collaborate with the National Park Service to study the park’s wildlife and thermal features.
Sometimes, though, something found at the park leads to a scientific discovery for the outside world. At Lower Geyser Basin, a discovery in the 1960s led to a diagnostic test. A unique “extremophile” bacteria found in the boiling waters of Lower Geyser Basin enabled polymerase chain reaction DNA testing — a quick, cheap, and effective way to diagnose certain diseases and genetic changes.
A heat-resistant enzyme in that bacteria, known as Taq polymerase, has been used in DNA sequencing and analysis and even the Human Genome Project. Today, though, it’s mostly used to test patients, surfaces, and objects for infection — most recently to test for COVID, and further proof that Yellowstone remains as relevant today as it was 150 years ago.
And with the right policies and a little luck — along with maybe some new technologies and innovations yet to be discovered — Yellowstone will be just as relevant 150 years from now.
STORY: RUFFIN PREVOST / PHOTOGRAPHER: JOSÉ MANDOJANA