I began this site in late May of 1997 on Geocities as Jim Macdonald's Yellowstone Home Page (a subsection of "Jim Macdonald's Philosophy Home Page.").  It began as a joke after I discovered the address of my best friend, Matt Klempner's page.  Soon after, the page took serious proportions, and I began working in ernest on an outline for the site, which still resembles the current format.  The page had an ugly background of a bleak Lower Falls and a font that was unreadable on some browsers.  However, the History of Yellowstone Place Names and a section of Congressional Acts Pertaining to Yellowstone was complete.  Also, I compiled links to many outside pictures.  After several months, Yellowstone Net noticed the site and offered to host it.

On Yellowstone Net, the page gained exposure.  I made a slight name change dropping the word "Home" from the title, and I developed the site significantly.  There is more to this story (the ugly politics of the net), but this is not a particularly useful place to go into that.  I was on Yellowstone Net's site for only a few months.  In that time, my then-fiancée (then wife, now ex-wife) Loree and I had the opportunity to meet Clint Wilkes, one of the owners of Yellowstone Net, when he was giving a talk in Seattle (where we then resided).  By March of 1998, a few months before our marriage, The Yellowstoning Experience was born.

Loree and I envisioned a new site, which we hoped to launch into a business venture the following autumn.  The concept of "yellowstoning" was born, and I moved the page to its own domain at yellowstoning.com.  Joining us was my best friend Matt, whose home page had "inspired" me to try my hand at HTML.  We aspired to increase the site's stores of information; however, more importanly, we desired to meet the ambitious concept of "yellowstoning."  "Yellowstoning" was about providing internet expression to a magical, romantic, and undeniably beautiful land whose experiences are both simple and complex.  The following  fall, "The Yellowstoning Experience" hoped to organize formally as a business venture offering travel guides focused on particular aspects of Yellowstone.  For instance, one concept I had was to create a Yellowstone History Travel Guide.  As people drove through the park, the guide would have pointed out various historical points of interest.  Another concept I had involved providing children's activity books and other family products.  We also wanted the site to be uniquely interactive, playing on the verbal sense of the concept of "yellowstoning."  Ultimately, and this was the distant dream of poor, aspiring young people was to create a publishing house where works of literature, religion, and philosophy might find their way on the market.

Yellowstoning.com never got off the ground in the way that was hoped, but it was moderately successful.  The lofty ambitions were never met because the reality of life set in.  For the two years that the site existed, it attracted over 13000 visitors, not too bad considering that we put barely a dime (besides the web hosting costs) into the site.  NASA used an image directed from the page (though, the image was neither on the page nor from the page, ironically enough--but they erroneously gave the site a link nevertheless) in order to demonstrate similarites between the ring nebula and the Grand Prismatic Spring.  The Yellowstoning Experience even won an award from Waypoint Communications as its Site of the Week.  At one point, the site was attracting over 100 people a day and I received email from history professors who had found the History Guide helpful in their research.

So, what happened?  For one thing, I am not a wealthy person.  In fact, I have no way with money at all.  During most of the existence of The Yellowstoning Experience, I was studying for my M.A. in philosophy at the University of Toledo.  It was not easy to study, make a living, contribute to a marriage, and maintain a large site all at the same time, much less move forward with more ambitious projects.  While the notes still exist for a possible History Road Guide (besides my historical background, I took notes of what I saw on every road traveled in the park and have a small warehouse of scientific studies), there simply was no time.  Also, I was not willing to put any money into the site because I had none.  I also could not see myself realistically competing with two much-better financed and locally placed competitors.  And, finally, after awhile, I was burned out on the site.  When my domain expired in Spring 2000, I was finishing a Master's Degree in philosophy and was very busy teaching a course and planning a move to Washington, D.C.  But, already many months before, the site was de facto dead.

But, now it is back.  I have no illusions of grandeur.  I never really did before.  I simply wanted to make a thousand dollars a year or so to supplement my income.  I have been told that at least one of the other major Yellowstone sites is a million dollar a year business.  All I figured was that my knowledge of the park was good enough to help us put a few more crumbs on our table.  And, I even had one business opportunity with the site, but I never followed through.  So, now, my attitude is: If someone wants it, they can have it.  And, if I work on this part time, this site is still a darn good site with a lot to offer that you cannot find elsewhere on the net.  But, Yellowstone is a siren that always calls me back, and I provided a service to many people who got news, knowledge, awareness, a few pretty pictures, rekindled memories.  Consequently, I think it is my duty in some way to keep that going.  I am asking for help, however.  This is too ambitious for one person (especially, considering I also have a huge philosophy web site that features what I think is the largest and most coherent library of links to online etexts on the internet).  I'll accept any volunteer help I can get, any creative contribution large or small (laugh, any contribution large or small creative or otherwise!) Ha...

As it stands, I am studying for my Ph.D. at Catholic University of America, and this is my site.  This is not a business venture.  It no longer aspires to be one.  But, it is still and has always been a love, a desire to inform, a desire to share, a desire to see the moonlight again and again and again and again over that precious lake, a fountain of so many memories.  This may now be completely a hobby I do at my whim, but it is here for you to see.  I hope you find it useful.

Jim Macdonald 11/2000 edited 1/31/2002 and 2/4/2002

The history continues! Throughout 2002, I mostly concerned myself with keeping up to date with Yellowstone news, updating the Yellowstone Newspaper daily. It was undoubtedly the best cumulative source for Yellowstone news on the net. At the time, I worked grudgingly for a rightwing thinktank in Washington, DC. One benefit of such work is that you don't particularly care how you spend your time on the job, and so I would take about 45 minutes of each day at work to update the newspaper. Yet, life didn't afford many other luxuries. In the Fall of 2003, my world came crashing down with personal news that would rock my marriage. One outlet I had for those problems was getting involved with anti-war activism, which was very easy to do in DC. That quickly became the consuming force in my life. The marriage meandered and then faltered altogether, and in March 2003, the war in Iraq started. Just days before the war began, I published my last newspaper. In truth, I had already started to lapse since I had joined the DC Anti-War Network in late January of 2003. These events also took me away from my Ph.D. work in philosophy, where I found and still find myself with everything done but my dissertation. By 2004, I was out of a job, I was out of a marriage, and yet I found that I had more direction than at any time in life. I hooked up with Genevieve whom I've now been with since the end of 2003, and life began stabilizing. For most of 2004, I didn't have steady work, but at least I had a steady relationship as I worked through bankruptcy and divorce. I also kept and keep close contact for a true catalyst of a lot of my personal growth, a friend named Julie. I had a new community of friends, a new world of activism, and a growing sense of confidence. I became not only someone who protests, but someone who organizes. And, in organizing, I found a calling, though that organizing is completely volunteer. I began to better appreciate the connections between the plight of Yellowstone and the wars and economic injustice around the globe. I embraced my radicalism. To this day, I organize against the war, and it's only a rare day like today that I find myself with any time to work on a website like this. The neglect of the website got so bad that I briefly lost the domain name for yellowstonemagic.com , though I won it back in an auction. Even when I took a very long and fulfilling vacation to Yellowstone in May 2005 with Genevieve, my first trip back since my honeymoon in 1998, I did not write about it and was not even able to finish scanning the 500 photos that I took. Yet, today, for some reason, here I am working on things, wondering what's next. One day, when I move back to Yellowstone in the not so distant future (I hope...I don't dare predict these things anymore, but the plan is 2 - 3 years), this website will again be a huge part of my life. Right now, I feel that maintaining the files, fixing links (especially to the jobs and history parts of the website), and keeping an eye on it will help a great deal. As I turn back toward Yellowstone, I will do so through the eyes of someone looking to make connections. When I move back out there, I will be organizing. This site has had a left-leaning slant, though has been open to the news and propaganda of the right. And, it will always remain that way, and yet, one cannot truly ever remain neutral, and a future site will have a significant arm of it aimed at organizing, at bringing out connections. As I convince friends that what happened to Yellowstone buffalo is an anti-war issue, I will be convincing you all that war is a Yellowstone issue. This holism will be part of the site, even as we embrace the most widely diverging nonsense from the snowmobile lobby and others who have no interest in protecting the integrity of Yellowstone.

This site will live on, but it can never be the same, just as I can never be the same. - Jim Macdonald, January 29, 2006.