And the sulfurous chemistry of the water and soil around active thermal features would, the investigators were told by the park’s senior geologist, render the blood hound’s work functionally useless within a short radius.
On August 25th, 1974, 11 days after Daniel Voss was last seen alive, Chief Ranger Howard Parish held a meeting with his search coordinators, the Gallatin County team, and two National Park Service law enforcement supervisors from Denver, who had been monitoring the operation.
The meeting lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes. At the conclusion, a memorandum was signed reducing the search to continuous limited mode, a formal NPS classification, meaning that active coordinated operations were suspended, but the case remained open and that rangers conducting routine patrol would continue to keep the search objectives in mind.
The case was classified as a missing person of unknown status. No determination of cause was made.
There was no evidence of an accident. There was no evidence of foul play. There was no evidence at all beyond a single dried apricot on a shelf of riolyte that Daniel Aldrich Voss had ever walked south from Tower Junction on the morning of August 14th, 1974.
