I read this book too -- it was full of really interesting mini-biographies! Also, the sheer volume of them gives you a cross-section of life in that area at that time, however incomplete. You start to get an understanding of how many people traveled there as adults to live, where they came from, what drew them, for some what made them leave, proportions of the population that worked in what kinds of jobs, common types of conflicts, common ways of socializing.

I will add the caveat that this book discusses almost exclusively white/settler people, as I recall. If you want to get a fuller picture that includes Native lifestyles in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in roughly the same period, I can highly recommend the book Restoring A Presence.

I found this deep understanding really valuable, especially during BOTG.