A new generation in Yellowstone, western history gets a new home, revisiting Mount St. Helens - Yellowstone National Park; Denver, Colorado; Washington state - includes related articles

Sunset, June, 1995 by Kurt Repanshek, Sally Stich, Nora Burba Trulsson, Bonnie Henderson, Genevieve Rowles, Collen Foye Bollen, Jim McCausland

Seven years after the Yellowstone burn, immense swaths of charred trees are reminders of the swirling firestorms that swept through the park. Yet while time slowly topples and decays these teetering totems to the uncommonly hot, dry, and fiery summer of 1988, they in turn are giving life to new forests and meadows.

When you walk on the Children's Fire Trail, a meandering 3/4-mile-long boardwalk on Yellowstone's northern frontier, the renewal is easy to see. Nurtured by the ash-enriched soil, aspen saplings and small lodgepole pines are slowly but steadily replacing the mature stands of lodgepole pine consumed by the flames. Surrounding meadows are dappled with bright blue splashes of lupine and flax, contrasting with purplish pink fireweed. Woodpeckers feast on the insect-riddled remains of the older stands, while mountain bluebirds dart among the wildflowers.

The trail is a testament to the concern the nation's school-children had for Yellowstone in 1988. After the fires, many of them wanted to send pinecones to help reseed the park. They didn't know that in national parks, nature-inflicted damage must heal itself. Park officials, not wanting to disappoint the children, decided to build the boardwalk trail and to encourage students to help raise money for the project. Various corporations contributed supplementary funds.

Signs along the boardwalk explain the various forces of nature and challenge children to be more observant of the world around them. "Over thousands of years, lodgepole pine trees have adapted to fire," reads one. "Some of the [pine] cones are tightly sealed with resin. Only intense heat will release the seeds of a new forest."

Fire, another sign points out, is not unusual in Yellowstone. "Lightning has been starting fires for thousands of years, yet forests have not vanished."

After reading this primer on nature, examine the recovering forest. See how new growth overruns charred tree trunks. Run your hands over a boulder literally baked by a wall of flames from the Wolf Lake fire. Sit on one of the trail's benches and test your senses. Close your eyes and listen to chirping songbirds, catch the rustle of scurrying ground squirrels and the flutter of aspen leaves. Breathe in the pungent aroma of sage-brush and the rich fragrance of pine. Understand that when fires race across meadows and through forests, the flames don't signal an end but simply represent nature's continuous cycle of death and regeneration.

From Mammoth Hot Springs, you can reach the Children's Fire Trail by heading east about 6 miles on the road to Tower Junction. Look for the trail on the left side of the road. For more information, call the park at (307) 344-7381. - Kurt Repanshek

DENVER

Western history gets rooms with a view

The story goes that when Willa Cather researched Death Comes for the Archbishop at the Denver Public Library, she found the experience disappointing because Western history was inconveniently scattered throughout the building.

Were she writing today, she'd find that not only is the DPL's Western History and Genealogy Department the country's premier collection of Western Americana, but it's now housed in a multi-million-dollar library designed by Michael Graves, adjacent to the old building in downtown Denver.

The department attracts both scholars and amateur historians, offering rare manuscripts and maps, stagecoach memorabilia, rare books, a trove of old photographs, and newspaper clippings on almost any Western topic.

Visitors enter through the department's new art gallery, where they're greeted by a 6- by 12-foot Albert Bierstadt oil of Estes Park painted in 1877. Also included in the collection is a Remington bought for $18 in 1934 by the city librarian.

From this gallery, visitors can move to the genealogy area with its 2-story reading room and a panorama of Denver's skyline, or the Western history area with its 2 1/2-story rotunda. In the center of this dramatic room is an unlabeled barnwood structure by Graves that resembles an oil derrick, surrounded by "spokes" of curly maple bookshelves filled with Americana.

To the west of the rotunda are computers where visitors can call up photos. By late summer, 35,000 of the library's almost 500,000 photos will be viewable at the push of a button.

Though Willa Cather may have been disappointed with the library, such was not the case recently when a novelist, who was setting his book in Denver in the 1950s, approached a research librarian. He wanted his protagonist to take his wife out for an anniversary dinner at one of the Mile-High City's nicer restaurants. The librarian got out the extensive collection of menus, and soon the celebrating couple was dining at one of Denver's finest - though now extinct - eateries.

The Western History and Genealogy Department is open during library hours, from 10 to 9 Mondays through Wednesdays, 10 to 5:30 Thursdays through Saturdays, and 1 to 5 Sundays. The library is at 13th Avenue and Broadway. For information, call (303) 640-6291. - Sally Stich