Dunraven Pass (el. ) is a

mountain pass A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since mountain ranges can present formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both Human migration, human and animal migration t ...

on the Grand Loop Road between Tower and Canyon in

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States located in the northwest corner of Wyoming, with small portions extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U ...

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

History

In 1874, just two years after the park's creation, The 4th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl, an

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...

peer, made a visit to Yellowstone in conjunction with a hunting expedition to the Northern Rockies. Lord Dunraven 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 The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March ...

of the park,

Henry Gannett Henry Gannett (August 24, 1846 – November 5, 1914) was an American geographer who is described as the "father of mapmaking in America."Evans, Richard Tranter; Frye, Helen M. (2009).History of the Topographic Branch (Division) (PDF). ''U.S. Geo ...

, 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.

Notes

Mountain passes of Wyoming Landforms of Park County, Wyoming Landforms of Yellowstone National Park Transportation in Park County, Wyoming {{Wyoming-geo-stub