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Bison once roamed across most of North America. The few million bison living east of the Mississippi River were wiped out by 1832 due to hunting and habitat loss, but tens of millions of bison in vast herds still populated the Great Plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. However, beginning around 1870, bison were actively hunted to the brink of extinction. By the end of the 1890s, only a few hundred bison remained, mostly in captive herds. The last wild plains bison herd, numbering about 30 individuals, survived in a remote mountainous region within central Yellowstone National Park.

In 1902, park managers purchased 21 bison from private herds to establish a second population in the northern region of Yellowstone National Park. Both herds were protected from poachers, and by 1931, there were over 1,300 total bison in the park.