Bill Sniffin may have logged more miles over on Wyoming highways than anyone else over the past 54 years, and he’s been everywhere around the Cowboy State at one time or another.
There’s one road trip the former longtime newspaper publisher and current Cowboy State Daily columnist hasn’t missed in all those 54 years — the 493-mile round-trip to his favorite place in Wyoming — Yellowstone National Park. He hasn’t missed going there annually since he arrived in Wyoming.
His first trip was in October 1970 and he just returned from his most recent.
There’s a reason Yellowstone was America’s first national park and draws millions of visitors a year. It’s what keeps Sniffin going back.
“I just fell in love with the place. A friend had taken me to Yellowstone to show me and it blew me away,” he said. “I decided from then on that it was my favorite place and so I always try to make at least one trip a year.”
Those decades scouting around and flying above the 3,471 miles and 2.2 million square acres of the park, and driving its 466 miles of roads, carry a lot of memories for the former Wyoming Travel Commission member and park advocate. He recalls the 1988 fires and believes he is one of few still around who attended a special Yellowstone centennial celebration in 1972.
That first trip in 1970, his friend and guide was excited to take Sniffin to the park to feed the bears.
“Believe it or not, for about 30 years they just dumped the garbage out and the bears fed there,” Sniffin said. “You could feed them a sandwich or feed them a treat and that was probably the number one tourist attraction in Yellowstone.
“We went up there and they had just shut down all those garbage things and a big sign said, ‘You’ll be fined if you are feeding the bears.’ (His friend) was very upset. I always tell people that I am so old that I remember when they fed the bears by hand in Yellowstone.”
Sniffin said he definitely agrees with the change.
During his observations over the years, he has gone from seeing black bears and no grizzlies to a park where grizzlies now dominate. He has explored nearly every aspect of the park and still marvels at what’s there, from Old Faithful to Yellowstone Canyon, Yellowstone Lake, Grand Prismatic Spring, Norris Geyser Basin and “all these fantastic waterfalls and spectacular lakes. It’s just unbelievable.”
A Favorite Spot
His favorite place that he and his family discovered early on is the Lake Yellowstone Hotel and its sunroom for guests on the shore of the 20-mile long and 14-mile wide lake. The hotel is the oldest in the park having opened in 1891.
“You can just sit there and look out on the lake, very comfortable,” he said. “And back in the day they would have a grand piano and someone would be playing it. It was just one of those surreal kind of experiences. Here you were in the middle of this vast wilderness and yet it is incredibly civilized. For some reason that sunroom became a focal point for all our trips.”
Some of the man-made things such as the hotel, the massive Old Faithful Inn with its log structure, and older buildings in Mammoth, where the park has always been headquartered, have their own beauty and draw, Sniffin said.
He has visited the park in all of its seasons. He recalls 50 years ago visiting the park at Labor Day and finding mainly people from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho exploring its beauty.
“We’d all joke that this was our time,” he said. “The park would be virtually empty. But over the years, September has become one of their busiest and most crowded months.”
Sniffin has witnessed the park go from a national destination to an international one hosting more than 4 million visitors a year. And he sees benefits in the way the state has changed the marketing of its treasure to give its communities opportunities to benefit.
Most of the travelers who visit the park arrive by car, so the marketing especially to those coming from the Midwest and East has allowed towns such as Torrington, Lusk, Lander, Dubois, Buffalo, Sheridan and Casper to benefit, Sniffin said. It has helped boost tourism to second-place status as a state economic engine.
Sniffin also believes the popularity of the destination has priced many middle-class families out of the opportunities to stay at hotels and lodges inside its boundaries.
“To actually stay at the park can be $300 to $400 a night,” he said. “It’s pricing out the middle class, but yet the rooms are completely full.”
Bill Sniffin has made Yellowstone National Park a destination for the past 54 consecutive years. He still has a park adventure on his bucket list. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin) 
Tour buses line up at Yellowstone National Park. During one of his 54 years visiting the park, Bill Sniffin led a tour for an Israeli delegation. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin) 
Yellowstone National Park remains an active volcano with geothermal pools. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin) 
Bill Sniffin has experienced Yellowstone in winter and summer. He was caught in a snowstorm during an assignment in 2022 and has also snowmobiled through it. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin) 
The wildlife at Yellowstone National Park are a magnet for tourists. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin) 
One the items Bill Sniffin accomplished on his bucket list was standing on the roof of the Old Faithful Inn. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin) 
Part of the allure of Yellowstone National Park for Bill Sniffin are the old “beautiful” buildings that make up its lodges and headquarters. (Courtesy Bill Sniffin)
Favorite Seasons
Sniffin’s favorite times to visit the park are in the spring and fall. He has also snowmobiled through the park in the winter and still wonders why that activity is so regulated. During the winter, the park transforms itself and becomes a “magical place,” he said.
One particular memory that stands out in all of Sniffin’s visits, is his flyover of the park in 1988 when fires ravaged its beauty and nature from June through October. As publisher and owner of the Lander newspaper, he covered the story and at one point took two photographers in his airplane with him to illustrate the devastation.
“I flew over the park when it was all on fire and outside of occasional flares, it was nothing but smoke. I couldn’t imagine looking down and seeing a fire of that magnitude,” he said. “When I was driving through there Wednesday there are still vast swaths that are still barren. It was a huge event in the history of the park.”
While he has witnessed all kinds of wildlife in the park, he has not had any close encounters with grizzly bears or had any good opportunities to photograph one. Sniffin does have a special story to share about a granddaughter from Dallas, Texas, who was visiting and told him she wanted to see a wolf. Wolves were reintroduced to the park in 1996.
Sniffin said he and family members were staying at an RV park in Jackson Hole, and he told her that to see a wolf they would have to get up at 4 a.m. in the morning. She and several others agreed. They drove to the Hayden Valley in the park, an open grassland and magnet for many species who are predators and prey in Yellowstone’s environment.
“We drove up in the dark and it was unbelievable the amount of wildlife that we saw at that hour of the day, it was really stunning. We got there as the sun was coming up and we had binoculars and sure enough there were wolves over there harassing elk calves,” he said. “We got to see a spectacular show of wolves that hour of the day.”
‘6-to-9 Rule’
The visit also helped reinforce the credibility of his “Bill Sniffin six-to-nine rule” for those who want to see wildlife in the park. Over the years he has advised many people to visit the park from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. or 6 p.m to 9 p.m. if their goal is to see the variety of wild things that make the park their home.
Sniffin said the tourists typically don’t go out before 9 a.m. and return to their lodgings typically by 6 p.m. giving wildlife peace for their morning and evening meals.
“I can’t tell you how many people have told me that really does work,” he said.
In addition to being an advocate for the park over the years as both a journalist, publisher, and member of the state travel commission, he also has served as a diplomat for it. He remembers being asked to host an Israeli delegation and give them a tour in the early 1990s.
He took them to Yellowstone Canyon first to see “one of the most spectacular places on the planet” and then to Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest geothermal area on Earth, with its volcanic and geyser activity. One “excitable” member of the delegation grabbed Sniffin by the collar.
“Bill, first you take us to heaven and now you take us to hell,” Sniffin quoted his visitor. “We thought we were living in the land of the Bible.”
As an active volcano, Yellowstone can have 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes a year. Sniffin said in all of his visits, he has never seen it shake.
The only thing left on Sniffin’s Yellowstone bucket list is a drive to an obscure park entrance on a dirt road in the southwest corner of the park. He also thinks an extended stay of a week or more would be a great thing to do. Of things accomplished, he ticks off the facts that he has been on top of Old Faithful Inn, stood on natural bridge in the park that few know about, and boated all over Yellowstone Lake.
Sniffin does have one more story to tell. As a representative from Cowboy State Daily in 2022, he and reporter Wendy Corr were assigned to cover the 150th anniversary of the park. It was in May.
Secret Combination
He said as he was driving to the park, he heard from Corr that the East Entrance gates were locked, and when he pulled up to the South Entrance, those were locked as well.
It would be impossible to drive to the north and make their way in.
Corr contacted park officials who agreed to give them the secret combination to open the gates, Sniffin said.
As he drove to the event, he was the only one on the road. And retracing his route, he again was alone on the desolate park roads when a snowstorm hit. He was thankful to be in an all-wheel-drive vehicle.
Sniffin emphasizes the park is a “true international treasure” and said the state is blessed to “call it our own.”
In his figuring, the 96% of park in Wyoming far exceeds any claim to it by the 3% in Montana’s boundary or Idaho’s 1%.
“It is tremendously aggravating when you see Montana promotes Yellowstone as theirs and Idaho promotes Yellowstone as theirs,” he said. “It’s Wyoming’s and they can get their paws off our park.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
