Far off the beaten path in Yellowstone National Park’s Lower Geyser Basin two hours from the nearest road, tenacious visitors can see an important piece of National Park Service history. It’s the oldest building in Yellowstone, and the first ever built by the federal government for public use in a national park.

The irony is that it was never open to the public because it was never finished.

The Queen’s Laundry Bath House never served its intended purpose, but it’s still standing 144 years after its construction started and stalled. It will eventually collapse and deteriorate into nothing, or it could become a permanent fixture on the landscape. Or both.

“Yellowstone is a wilderness, but there's a very strong cultural component to the landscape too,” said author and lifelong Yellowstone

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