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John Colter, Baptiste Ducharme, Daniel T. Potts, Joseph Meek, Johnson Gardner, Osborne Russell, Warren Angus Ferris, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, John C

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John Colter, Baptiste Ducharme, Daniel T. Potts, Joseph Meek, Johnson Gardner, Osborne Russell, Warren Angus Ferris, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, John C Chap t e r On e So me Earl y Vistors to Y e llo w stone Chapter O n e Some early visitors: John Colter, Baptiste Ducharme, Daniel T. Potts, Joseph Meek, Johnson Gardner, Osborne Russell, Warren Angus Ferris, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, John C. Davis. The Folsom- Cook Expedition takes o. The Washburn Expedition follows. Truman Everts is lost. Calfee and Josey look around. This is an account of the Northern Paci c Railroad and its in uence on the early days of Yellowstone National Park. Many names will be familiar: early visitor John CColter, banker Jay Cooke, Northern Paci c one President Frederick Billings, United States ellowst aynes. Y F. Jay H President Chester Alan Arthur, Colonel ellowstone. George Custer, writer Rudyard Kipling, the enter Earl of Dunraven, United States President d of the Grand Canyonearch C of the Y nd Res Postcar eritage a Theodore Roosevelt, writer Mary Roberts al Park H Nation Rinehart. Others will be less known: fur trapper Johnson Gardner, Chief Engineer W. Milnor Roberts, hotel man Rufus Hatch, W. W. Wylie and his tent camps, Joseph Keeney, Park visitors Emma and George Cowan. Yellowstone National Park became important to the Northern Paci c Railroad as a destination for its passengers just as California’s state park at Yosemite was an important destination for the Union Paci c Railroad’s passengers. The Northern Paci c took advantage of the fact that the more af uent American families had changed their habits of vacationing and had begun to spend recreational time together as families. The railroad men could see that hotels in the Park would suit eastern families of some wealth, and dude ranches in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming would attract even more visitors to the Park area. The railroad men put up the money for many of these Park amenities to attract more passengers as they knew that nancier Cornelius Vanderbilt was right when he told the New York Herald “You can’t build a railroad from nowhere to nowhere.” 1 No one knows for certain who was the rst to come up with the notion that a land of geysers, mud pots, boiling springs, 1 New York Herald, September 18, 1873. 1 The N o r the r n P a cic Ra i l r o a d & Y ello w stone Natio n al P a r k men had come through the area for quite some time. Some of those who came back from the wondrous lands were not believed; hence, many of those travelers kept quiet about what they saw to avoid unpleasant remarks about their sanity. Some observers maintained that the land was worthless for agricultural pursuits, too desolate for settlement, too rugged for the mining and the lumber interests, and too dangerous for the wandering tourist. Indeed, the Yellowstone area seemed dangerous for some. Some white men, new to the area, saw Indian hunters as menacing. Shoshone, Flathead, Nez Percé, and other tribal groups traveled through the region on their way to hunt bison; each year, the hunters had to travel farther east to nd game. The Crow visited the area, as did the Siksika and Piegan (Blackfeet) from the north, the Bannock (Shoshone) from the west, and the Tukuarika, also a Shoshone group, who sometimes resided George Catlin traveled west in 1833.Se lf- in the park area and were called derisively portrait, 1824, Thomas Gilcrease Institute of “Sheepeaters.” American History and Art and deep canyons should be reserved as a national park. The Yellowstone area was part of the Louisiana Purchase, acquired from Napoleon in 1803. Members of the Crow tribe called the Yellowstone River the Elk River. Canadian trader David Thompson and early French voyageurs called the river through the area of yellowish rock “Les Roches Jaune.” As early as l833, artist George Catlin, having traveled west the year before on the steamboat Yellowstone, proposed that much of the Rocky Mountain West, including the Yellowstone area, be reserved as parkland. The purchase of land in the middle of New York City in 1856 that Frederick Law Olmsted supervised as Central Park may have helped to change somewhat American perspective on lands set aside for leisure. Bison were common on the western plains until the 1880s. The designation of Yosemite as parkland under California jurisdiction in 1864 made For an area generally regarded as lonely, sense to more and more Americans. desolate, and unwelcoming, a good number Olin D. Wheeler, known earlier for his of adventurers visited the Yellowstone area volumes on Lewis and Clark, writer of in the 1800s. Some trappers could neither many early tracts for the Northern Paci c, read nor write, nor did they want others wondered why it took so long for the region to know their source of beaver pelts. They to be “discovered.” He did not realize that came and went in silence. Others, however, 2 Chap t e r O n e Some Earl y Vi s t o r s t o Y e llo wston e Another visitor to a hot pool in the Yellowstone arBea.ern al Alexander photo. Gallatin Historical Society either told or wrote of their experiences, unwisely described his observations laughed although they risked derisive laughter and and called the mud pots in jest “Colter’s ridicule when they did. Hell.” After John Colter left the Lewis and Clark French-Canadian Baptiste Ducharme Expedition that was making its way back to came west with the Ashley Expedition in the States, he moved out on his own and 1819. Later, as an independent trapper, came upon a series of boiling mud pots in Ducharme traveled about the area in 1824 1807-1808, probably located on the eastern and 1828, describing with some accuracy a portion of the Yellowstone area. Colter number of falls and geysers. was a shy, quiet, reserved man who told In 1827, Daniel T. Potts, a trapper others what he had seen. Those to whom he from Pennsylvania, visited the region and published a letter entitled “In the West,” in the Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser on September 27, 1827, outlining his unpleasant encounters with Blackfeet warriors. But he saw beauty as well: On the south border of this lake are a number of hot and boiling springs, some of water and others of the most beautiful ne clay, resembling a mush pot, and throwing particles to the immense height of from 20 to 30 feet. The clay is of a white, and of a pink color...2 Potts signed his name at the edge of a hot spring basin north of West Thumb; shortly thereafter, he gave up trapping beaver, and returned to Pennsylvania. 2 Cramton, Louis C., Early History of Yellowstone National Fur trappers tell stories around the camp re. American West, volume 8, number 6 Park and its Relation to National Park Policies, Washington: (November-December 1976): 42 Government Printing Of ce, 1932: 5-6 3 The N o r the r n P a cic Ra i l r o a d & Y ello w stone Natio n al P a r k Nineteen-year-old trapper Joseph Meek was in the Yellowstone area in 1829 and in later years. For a time he was separated from his group and climbed a low mountain; at the top he could see miles and miles of volcanic activity, and marveled at its beauty. “...behold! the whole country beyond was smoking with vapor from boiling springs, and burning with gasses issuing from small craters, each of which was emitting a sharp, whistling sound.” 3 A fur trapper named Johnson Gardner spent time in the area in 1831-2 at the head of a valley that came to be called Gardner’s Hole, one of the earliest place names in the Park region. The Gardner River is also named for the trapper as well as the town of Gardiner, north of Mammoth Hot Springs. 4 Gardner could not read or write and signed with his “X” when he sold his furs to the American Fur Company. The trapper was regarded as an argumentative scoundrel, tough and dissolute. Originally from Virginia, Jim Bridger had Twenty-year-old trapper Osborne Russell, described the geysers but no one believed him. a farm boy from Maine, came through the area with friends a number of times between Montana Picture Gallery, Stevensville, MT: 1986 1834 and 1843 and wrote in his most came close to one of the smelly pools and readable account, “ventured near enough to put my hand in the water of its basin, but withdrew it I almost wished I could spend the instantly, for the heat of the water in this remainder of my days in a place like immense cauldron was altogether too this where happiness and contentment great for comfort.”7 Ferris, a clerk with the seemed to reign in wild romantic splendor American Fur Company, also published surrounded by majestic battlements which articles on the area in the Western Literary seemed to support the heavens and shut 5 Messenger, Bualo, New York, from July 13, out all intruders.” 1842 to May 18, 1844, and may have been Russell remembered that many elk were the rst observer to call them “geysers.” in the vicinity of Yellowstone Lake. Father Pierre-Jean De Smet walked Jim Bridger, a delightful windbag to some, through the park area in 1851, on his way to was in the area at the same time and most St. Mary’s Mission in the Bitterroot Valley. regarded his descriptions of geysers as more He seldom talked about what he observed ne tall tales for which he was notable .6 -- he had seen gold deposits at Alder Gulch but didn’t mention them to anyone -- except When Warren Angus Ferris came through to say that Jim Bridger did not exaggerate the region in 1834, he was rst assailed by his descriptions of the park region.
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