“The Gothic-style chapel (1913), the last component of the army post erected at Fort Yellowstone, is a one-story building with a steeply pitched front gable roof clad with gray slate shingles and with a stone cross at the gable apex. The building is located at the extreme southern end of the Fort Yellowstone complex. The rectangular building has walls of roughly coursed native sandstone with a buttressed front wall and a series of stone buttresses on the long side walls. The more rustic stone work stands in contrast to the more finished masonry of the earlier buildings of the post. The building's front gable (southwest) has a small pointed arch window with tooled stone surround and diamond-pattern window. There is a central projecting gable roofed stone vestibule with pointed arch entrance and double hinged wood doors fronted by concrete steps with metal railings. Narrow triple windows with shared stone lintels are located between buttresses on the long sides of the building. The windows have wood casings and diamond-pattern leaded glass. There are narrow three-light horizontal basement windows on the side walls and segmental arched windows on the rear wall. There is an intersecting projecting gable with a narrow vertical window on the gable face, a large window with tooled stone surround on the west, and a louvered bell tower on the east.
The chapel vestibule has exposed stone walls and a pointed arch entrance with double paneled doors opening into a wide "auditorium" that leads to the sanctuary. The auditorium has plastered walls and wood wainscot, a wood floor, and a wide central aisle flanked by oak pews. Exposed truss arched wood trusses and brackets surmount the auditorium. The slightly elevated sanctuary has oak choir benches along the side walls, a central lectern, and a wood balustrade with pointed arch cutouts enclosing the area of the decoratively paneled altar. Unusual lighting elements consist of bare light globes in porcelain sockets mounted on the sanctuary side of the trussed arches. In 1939, New Yorker Miss Jessie Van Brunt fabricated and donated two stained glass windows for the chapel's vestibule. On the south is an oval window featuring the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. On the north is an oval window featuring Old Faithful. Above and below the ovals are rondels, each with quatrefoil windows depicting animals, birds, and flowers of the park. The frame bell tower was erected on the east of the building in 1928.”
Above description comes from the Historic District Registration Form on the NPS website: (
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Fort Yellowstone was included in the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District which was placed on the National Register on March 20, 2002. On July 31, 2003, the Fort Yellowstone Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the special status of a National Historic Landmark. National Historic Landmarks are nationally significant historic places designated by the Secretary of the Interior because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. The Fort Yellowstone Historic District includes over 40 contributing structures.
All of the red-roofed, many-chimneyed buildings in the Mammoth area are part of historic Fort Yellowstone. Beginning in 1886, after 14 years of poor civilian management of the park, the Cavalry was called upon to manage the park's resources and visitors. Because the Cavalry only expected to be here a short while, they built a temporary post near the base of the Terraces called Camp Sheridan. After five cold, harsh winters, they realized that their stay in the park was going to be longer than expected, so they built Fort Yellowstone, a permanent post.
In 1891, the first building to be constructed was the guard house because it directly coincided with the Cavalry's mission--protection and management. There were three stages of construction at Fort Yellowstone. The first set of clapboard buildings were built in 1891, the second set in 1897 as the Fort expanded to a two-troop fort, and, finally, the stone buildings were built in 1909 making the fort's capacity 400 men or four troops. By 1916, the National Park Service was established, and the Cavalry gave control of Yellowstone back to the civilians. After a short time away, the Cavalry returned in 1917 and finished their duty completely in 1918. Since that time, historic Fort Yellowstone has been Yellowstone's headquarters.