In the three decades since Moran had first visited Yellowstone, Congress had expanded the initial legislation setting aside additional "parks" including Yosemite in 1890. Inextricably linked through his paintings to numerous landscapes that eventually became national parks, Moran would one day be known as the "father" of the national park system. Yellowstone had become a tourist mecca. The railroads, stage lines, and hotels that transported and served increasing numbers of tourists were thriving. Congressional action may have curtailed commercial excess within the park, but outside the entry gates commercial enterprise was faring very well. Moran created and marketed images that were born as much of the imagination as of experience. A master at mixing fact and fiction, Moran used the technique to great advantage, producing some of the most remarkable American landscapes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.