The Story
Congress appropriated $5,000 in 1896 to establish a fish-culture station at Spearfish; the hatchery was completed in 1899, with superintendent D.C. Booth arriving that year for a 34-year tenure. From 1901 to 1911 it ran an egg-gathering substation inside Yellowstone itself, collecting cutthroat trout eggs from Yellowstone Lake for hatcheries across the West. Federal operations ceased in 1983 and it reopened as a museum in 1989. It's still a working hatchery, releasing 20,000-30,000 rainbow trout a year, and houses the largest collection of fish-culture artifacts in the country.
Surprising Facts
→ It ran an egg-collecting station inside Yellowstone National Park from 1901 to 1911.
→ Its archives hold over 185,000 fish-culture artifacts — the largest such collection in the U.S.
→ The original 1899 building could incubate 2 million trout eggs at once.