Hear it straight from the employees! Below are comments
and memories contributed by some of our staff...past and present.
Debbie; Reservations Department
I came to Yellowstone... as a visitor in the Spring of 1993, to pick up and travel with someone that worked at Snow Lodge. After spending only a couple of days, I felt more at peace than I had in 10 years of living/working in Chicago. I spent the next year planning a sabbatical from work and packing up my car for my "Quest to the West" - a working vacation in Yellowstone! In my first four days as a Room Attendant at Lake Hotel, I was promoted to Inspector and Relief Office Assistant. Boy the opportunities are there!
By August, I had made the decision to "do a winter". You can't imagine the excitement I felt seeing my name on the "Winter List" that was posted on the personnel manager's door. Kind of like running to see what score you got on your college exams!
The key is, I came for a summer and never left. I married a wonderful guy, had a wonderful
child and still have wonderful friends, some that I met that first summer in the Park.
Xanterra gave me the opportunity to build my work around my life. It's amazing to think
that a place and its people can envelope you like a soft, cozy, safe blanket, but that's
what the Yellowstone family has done....I feel warm all over! Sometimes my feet stick out
and get cold, so I just pull them back under the blanket. It would be tough to find a place
and people that can do that anywhere else.
Victoria; Lodging Department
I spent this summer at Yellowstone...as a break from the outside world. I got laid off in the winter and found out about Yellowstone while looking for a job. I thought it would be great to spend the summer outside my field (equipment sales). I was pretty excited when I was hired as an Guest Service Agent at the front desk of Old Faithful Inn. Where else could I get paid for working in an historic landmark in the middle of a National Park?
I got checked in, made it through training with ease and settled in with a roommate from Washington State, where I'd never been. My being from South Carolina gave us alot to compare and alot to learn about each others homes.
I spent the summer in a frenzy of visitors, geysers and traveling inside and outside the park each
weekend. I don't know where the time went, but when it was over and I checked out of my room for the
season, I was sort of sad. It was time to get back to the bill-paying reality of "out there".
Yellowstone will stay in my heart always. Thanks for the chance to get a real reality check!
Jimmy H., Lodging Department, Old Faithful Inn 2004
My family and I came for a visit back in 1969... when Yellowstone bears still walked up to cars and grazed on food dumps located around the park. We were headed home to Cody, WY and driving across Fishing Bridge, when a black bear cub jumped up on the car door to beg for food. When he found I had nothing to give, he bit me right on the arm!
From that day on, I knew I wanted to work in Yellowstone...what a place! I applied to work here
the first summer that I was old enough and it was all I thought it would be! Now, I find myself
working and living in Yellowstone both summer and winter, with people that love everything
Yellowstone offers. I can't imagine spending my time anywhere else.
Jeff; Personnel Department
After I graduated from Kent State... I was offered a job as a salesman for a company in Chicago. I turned the job down, as I wasn't really ready for a "real" job. I began thinking about things that some friends of mine that had worked a season or two in Yellowstone had passed on to me. They related what wonderful things they experienced in their seasons in Yellowstone, and how they couldn't wait to get back to "The Park" for another season. I thought it was so unusual that they were so passionate about the work they did and where they did it that I decided to experience it for myself.
At first, the west was so different than where I came from that it took me about two weeks to
really come to the conclusion that I made the right decision. From then on, I am reminded every
day that it was the best decision I could have made.
Greg, Lodging Department
When I was younger, the thought of one vacation a year was just not enough... and seemed like a life wasted. Working in Yellowstone, I get to experience the crowds of July and feel the perfect solitude of November and everyday is different and amazing. I know that by spending the seasons here, I see more of this great place than most everyone. It makes me feel very lucky.
Bret, Fire Systems
Being a Wrangler at Roosevelt Lodge...was the best way I can think of to spend my college breaks each summer! Every year during finals I had to concentrate on my tests, but my mind was always on the cool, green mountains and the smell of horses in the corral! I couldn't wait to get get there! The total difference between campus and Roosevelt was just what I needed to get me through each year. Oh, sure we spent long days up to our elbows in dust and horses and didn't get much money. But, at the end of the day when we all swapped stories of our guests and our horses, we got paid back in much more than cash. I don't think I've ever worked that hard and had that much fun at the same time. I graduate from college in May. Can I come back for one more year? I miss my horse.
Will, Horse Department, Roosevelt Lodge, 2002-2004
I came to Yellowstone because...it was the only place I had ever wanted to be in my life. I stayed because Yellowstone was as glorious as I had suspected it was. I found a wonderful love and life does not truly exist for me when I am away from Yellowstone.
Debby, Retail Department
My initial goal after graduating from college,was to come out west and work a summer in a National Park and a winter at a downhill ski resort before finding a "real" job. I had job offers for seasonal work in a couple of national parks. I had trouble deciding which offer to accept but then I wound up talking to a group of folks who had worked the previous summer in Yellowstone - it sealed the deal....and twenty years later, I'm still here and this place has become my "real" job.
Why am I still here? It's a combination of place and the people. The place speaks for itself
...I have the BEST backyard imaginable. The people consist of a unique mix of quality folks
who share a common thread that can't be easily explained...they're simply "Yellowstone People".
So the above, and the fact that this sure beats working in a chicken plant, is why I have
never left!
Diane, Campgrounds Department
I came to Yellowstone in 2000 for a "summer break" from the city and from school. At the time, I didn't know what I was going to do next. I had hoped that a summer "away from it all" would help me straighten things out. Well, it did, but in totally unexpected ways. When I came to Yellowstone, for the first time I knew I was finally home. The people I met here are the most real and the most accepting people I have ever met in my life. The opportunities to explore outward, by hiking and observing nature....and inward, by reflection... are innumerable. There really are no words to describe Yellowstone, you just have to experience it for yourself.
Tina, Human Resources Department
My husband and I spent one night at Old Faithful... during a vacation, then drove through Yellowstone the next day. We did everything that first time visitors do...stopped in the middle of the road to watch the wildlife, gazed in awe at the mountains and the water and took a million pictures. The amazing feeling of Yellowstone took us by suprise, and we were really impressed by the way the employees here felt about their way of life in the park.
We left Yellowstone to go home, but never really "shook it off". As soon as we got back to Florida, we decided to leave it all behind and come back for a summer season...five summers ago.
We've both been given the opportunity to do what we love and learn things we would never have learned outside the park. We've learned how to wander backcountry trails safely, how to read the wildlife and the seasons, and some amazing things about geology and the local ecosystem. Mostly, though, we've learned that life isn't all about the stuff you own or how you look. It's really about how you live each day...what connects you to the rest of the world. Or participating in the future just a little, by being one of the people that helps preserve the good stuff for our kids and grandkids to experience.
We have loved every minute of it. It's been a life-changing experience with no regrets
...except that we both wish we'd found out about working in Yellowstone 20 years ago!
Mary, Human Resources Department
The summer I spent in Yellowstone...was the best in my 27 years! I started as a busser in the Lake Hotel dining room and was promoted to server before the end of the summer. The tips were great, but my greatest memories were of all the things we did outside the job. I met, and hung out with, at least a dozen people that year who were so different than me, but loved the same things I do. A lot of them have stayed friends and we still keep in touch.
The cool part of the summer is that nobody cared what their jobs were. We bussed, washed
dishes, made beds, carried luggage and and bartended. Nobody got rich doing it and nobody
cared. We were able to get some cash in our pockets and live the entire summer in the middle
of Yellowstone National Park. On a bad day at work, I sit back and think of Yellowstone...it
still makes me feel good.
Joshua, Food & Beverage Department, Lake Hotel 2002
