Dunraven Pass

Dunraven Pass
Dunraven Pass, circa 1918
Elevation	8,859 ft (2,700 m)[1]
Traversed by	Grand Loop Road
Location	Yellowstone National Park, Park County, Wyoming, United States
Range	Washburn Range
Coordinates	44°47′12″N 110°27′09″W / 44.78667°N 110.45250°WCoordinates: 44°47′12″N 110°27′09″W / 44.78667°N 110.45250°W  NAVD 88[1]

Dunraven Pass (el. 8,859 feet (2,700 m)) is a mountain pass on the Grand Loop Road between Tower and Canyon in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

History

In 1874, just two years after the park's creation, the Earl of Dunraven, a titled Irish Peer made a visit to Yellowstone in conjunction with a hunting expedition to the Northern Rockies. He was so impressed with the park, that he devoted well over 150 pages to Yellowstone in his The Great Divide, published in London by Chatto & Windus in 1876. The Great Divide was one of the earliest works to praise and publicize the park.

In 1878 during a U.S. Geological Survey of the park, Henry Gannett, a geographer working with the survey, named a peak just two miles southwest of Mount Washburn in the honor of the Earl of Dunraven and the service his book had done for the park. In 1879, Philetus Norris, the park superintendent gave the pass on the Grand Loop Road between Tower and Canyon the name Dunraven because of its proximity to Dunraven Peak.^[2]

Notes

1. "15 MDC". NGS data sheet. U.S. National Geodetic Survey.
2. Haines, Aubrey L. (1996). Yellowstone Place Names-Mirrors of History. Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. pp. 104–106. ISBN 0-87081-382-X.