Lee Whittlesey

Author Lee Whittlesey lays out an account of all the known fatalities that have occurred in (or, sometimes, just outside of) Yellowstone National Park, from the mid-1800s up to the present. Included are deaths caused by wildlife, falls, boiling hot springs, drowning, falling rocks, lightning, murder, suicide, and a variety of other causes. (The only thing he leaves out are car and snowmobile accidents, which are numerous and about which there usually isn't very much to say.)

By the time I got show more to the end, the relentless list of deaths was beginning to be a little bit much, an odd and slightly disturbing combination of the tedious and the morbid. But overall, I found the book bizarrely compelling. Some of the events chronicled here are little more than brief listings of what happened when to whom, but many of them are stories that are strange, gruesome, heartbreaking, or all three at once. And they're conveyed with a real sense of humanity; no matter what may have caused their deaths, Whittlesey never loses sight of the fact that these were all real people with real loved ones.

And the point of it all isn't simply to appeal to readers' morbid curiosity. Whittlesey believes these are important pieces of Park history, and they are certainly interesting from that perspective. But, more than that, in the course of relating these events he touches on a lot of important issues involving the extent to which national parks have legal responsibilities to keep visitors safe, what park visitors need to do to protect themselves, the sometimes confused and naive ways in which people relate to the wilderness and its dangers, and the indisputable fact that no wild place can ever be completely safe and no safe place can ever be truly wild.

Having read through this whole thing, I now have a heartfelt plea to make to anyone visiting Yellowstone, or any other national park or wilderness area: for the love of sanity, pay attention to the rules and recommendations. They honestly do exist for good reasons, and they do apply to you. Yes, you. Yes, even the one about keeping your dog on a leash. Especially the one about keeping your dog on a leash. (There is one awful, awful story in here that starts with a loose dog, which I will never be able to get out of my head.) And if you don't care enough about your own safety, at least spare a thought for the poor park rangers, because having to retrieve some poor idiot's mangled, gory corpse from a grizzly bear can surely ruin their entire day. show less

Another subtitle could be "Just How Stupid Can People Actually Be!"

I purchased and read this while in Yellowstone, primarily because as I walked along the trails of hot boiling water and mud pools that registered 200-400 degrees, I was struck by both the beauty and the extreme danger.

For example, the day I visited the awe-inspiring area called West Thumb, I sadly, horrifically saw the small body of a baby elk submerged in the hot thermal pool while the mother elk waited a few feet away for show more her dead baby, I then witnessed parents, in the same area, who after seeing this tragic site, blithely pay little attention as their small children either ran along the walkways or actually stood on thinly crusted earth near the hydrothermic pools.

Despite large warning signs regarding the need to keep a safe distance from wild life, I repeatedly saw people snapping shots of buffalo and elk while standing six-seven feet away.

The author clearly shows that Yellowstone is NOT Disneyworld. It is indeed breathtakingly beautiful and excessively potentially dangerous.

While the title and subject matter sound macabre, I believe it is a must for anyone traveling to Yellowstone. show less

Death in Yellowstone is both fascinating and relentlessly cautionary. I've never been to the park but thanks to a healthy dose of shock and awe from Mr. Whittlesey I now know to always hike in groups, carry bear spray (I didn't even realize this was a thing), read and obey every frickin' sign, and never ever climb over a retaining wall. Ever. And a host of other warnings.

After hearing only a handful of ill-fated stories, I couldn't imagine it's simply a lack common sense that puts so many at show more risk. It's more like people believing themselves to be exceptions to the rule. Such is human nature, unfortunately. This book is on its 2nd edition and I doubt it will be the last.

To my delight, despite the macabre subject matter, a number of Yellowstone incidents date back to the time of the park's founding in the late 19th century even though many of the records are vague and possibly inaccurate. This is a glimpse back to a young America. You get a sense of Yellowstone's early history through these accounts and their telling would be at home in any number of history books.

I recommend Death in Yellowstone whether you enjoy the great outdoors, are an avid reader of history or are simply morbidly curious. I also think other parks, both large and small, would benefit from publishing their own versions as kind of a public service to help remind us all why we keep wilderness preserves wild. show less

For those with a streak of ghoulish glee and lovers of catastrophe literature, this is a catalog of the myriad ways people have met their end in the wonderful, but deadly, Yellowstone National Park. I say catalog because the repetition of people doing the same stupid things over and over again can be a bit tiresome, (do they never learn?) so it's best digested in small bites, sort of like some of the bears and their human meals. The list of ways to die in Yellowstone is pretty lengthy: show more falling, drowning, boiling, mauling, murder, suicide and general foolishness. Similar to Over the Edge, the litany of how people have died in the Grand Canyon, this does have a certain morbid appeal. That gravity thing can be killer. Please don't feed the bears. show less