The collection contains administrative records, cooperative agreements, meeting minutes, correspondence, teacher grade books, achievement test reports, student projects and photographs and VHS related to the Yellowstone National Park School District. This collection includes correspondence, agreements, budgets and financial plans, photographs, teacher registers (grade books), enrollment lists, tax audits and insurance agreements, student art and poetry projects and presentations and policies for the Yellowstone School District school board, Mammoth elementary school and Parent Teacher Organization (P.T.O.). Topics include cooperative agreements with Yellowstone National Park and Park County Special Education, school achievement, budget analysis and legislative efforts and student activities.

Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 and the army was present before the 1880s but it was not until 1884 when soldiers with school aged children arrived that the issue of education was raised. The first elementary school classes for park residents were taught by an army private assigned to the duty and when a suitable military employee was unavailable, parents came together to hire a teacher whose salary was paid for by a monthly tuition fee assessed to each family. Classes were held in various rooms in the buildings around Mammoth, most often the army canteen. When a teacher could not be found children were sent outside of the park or did not attend school. In 1921 the first formal school was set up by Director of the National Park Service, Stephen T. Mather and Grace Albright, wife of the park superintendent Horace M. Albright. Their donations as well as contributions from park concessioners and other members of the community helped to operate the school but parents were still relied upon to pay the salary of teachers through tuition which was, on average, $10.00 a month per month rather than per child. Classes continued to be held in various buildings around Mammoth. Although the school curriculum followed Montana?s course of studies the ?school? was located in Wyoming and its unique location inside of the federally created Yellowstone National Park meant that it could not receive funding from either state. In the 1930s and the 1940s legislative efforts were undertaken to establish some sort of funding for the operation of a school and Park officials continually requested assistance through the Bureau of Education in Washington but were unsuccessful. The nearest primary school in Gardiner, Montana was five miles from Mammoth and at that time overcrowded and the town was in desperate need of a high school. Yellowstone employees paid $8.00 per student, each month to send their children to Gardiner and had to find and pay for transportation themselves. The nearest high school was in Livingston, over fifty miles away, requiring families to pay room and board for their children along with tuition. It was less expensive and far more efficient for park residents, if the Park was to operate a grade school in Mammoth and send only high school students outside of the park. After World War II, Montana Congressman Wesley A. D?Ewart introduced the Yellowstone Park School Bill and the bill was signed into law June 7, 1948 as Public Law 604. The law allowed the Secretary of the Interior to provide funds from revenue generated from Yellowstone visitors for the education of the children living within the park. Park residents urged for the building of a school for grades one through seventh and would send students to the newly built Gardiner school for the high school. A school was not built within the park until 1962, after Park superintendent Lon Garrison successfully campaigned for a school to be built in Mammoth as part the ?Mission 66? expansion in the park. The original school at Mammoth had five rooms but was expanded in the following years as needed to create additional classroom and storage space. Building and maintenance of the building continued to be under the supervision of Yellowstone National Park. Each year the NPS Maintenance Division submitted an annual budget request for the school to the superintendent. The school open in 1963 with John Whitman acting as principal from 1963 through his retirement in 2002. The School Board maintained a contract with the Park which allowed them to teach all children within the park including those that lived outside of the Mammoth area. In those situations lesson plans, books and A-V materials were supplied to the parents, allowing them to ?home school? their children. In the spring, parents at outlying locations had the option of transporting their children to school so they could participate at the school. This ?homeschooling? did become an issue with both the board and the Park deciding to discourage applicants with school age children from applying to outlying location positions beginning in the 1980s. Another option for parents stationed at West Yellowstone, North, Northeast, South, and East entrances as well as Tower, Canyon, Lake, Norris, Grant and Old Faithful was to send their children to the nearest school outside of the park with the NPS paying additional funds to those schools for the education of Park children. All students in seventh through twelfth grade were sent outside of the park for education. By 2000 concern over the amount of money spent on running the Mammoth school and the dwindling number of students, as well as the legality of doing so was growing and the school was closed after the 2007-2008 school year. Public Law 604 monies for Mammoth students were transferred to Gardiner school and students are transported to the school for elementary through high school. The Mammoth school building is now used as an event center for the community of Mammoth.