M. Mark Miller, Author

Month: March 2013

  • — Happy Easter —

    glacier lilly YDSF
    Erythronium grandiflorum blooming in Yellowstone National Park.

    Hiram Martin Chittenden arrived at Yellowstone Park in 1891 to take command of the Army Corps of Engineers unit that was in charge of making improvements there. Chittenden left his mark on the park in many ways including the figure-eight pattern of roads called the “Grand Loop,” the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance, and the single arch Chittenden Bridge across the Yellowstone River.

    Chittenden was also a historian whose works include a two-volume history of the American fur trade in the west, a history of steamboats on the Missouri River, and first definitive history and description of Yellowstone Park. Here’s Chittenden’s description of a wild “Easter Lily” that grows in the Park.

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    One of the daintiest of all the flowers, and one somewhat resembling the Columbine in grace of form, is the yellow Adder’s Tongue (Erythronium). This has been called the Dogtooth Violet, surely a gross misnomer. In California it is most appropriately called the Easter Lily, but Easter has long passed before it makes its appearance in the Park. There is no gayer sight than a mass of these yellow lilies, as one comes upon them in the woods under some spreading tree—as “jocund company” as are the daffodils which inspired Wordsworth’s immortal lines.

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    — Text from Hiram Martin Chittenden, Yellowstone Park: Historical and Descriptive, Cincinnati:Stewart & Kidd Company, 1917 (Page 233).

    — Photo from the Yellowstone Digital Slide File

  • Moran’s Legacy 3: The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone — Text by F.V. Hayden

    Thomas_Moran_-_Grand_Canyon_of_the_Yellowstone_-_SmithsonianProbably Thomas Moran’s most famous painting is his 7-by-12-foot depiction of the Yellowstone Canyon and Falls. It hung in the U.S. Capitol for decades and now resides in the Smithsonian. There is an excellent full-size reproduction at the Caynon Visitor Center in Yellowstone Park.

    Moran spent three full days, July 28-30, sketching the canyon and fails while accompanying F.V. Hayden’s expedition to explore and documents the wonders of the upper Yellowstone in 1871. These sketches served as the basis for several full fledged paintings of the canyon and falls over the next few years.

    Moran’s journal entries for his days at the canyon are extremely sparse. His July 30 entry is typical; it said simply: “photographing and sketching around Falls and Canyon.” Fortunately, F.V. Hayden offers more detail. Here’s Hayden’s description of the falls and canyon, and Moran at work there.

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    Standing near the margin of the Lower Falls, and looking down the caynon, which looks like an immense chasm or cleft in the basalt, with its sides 1,200 to 1,500 feet high, and decorated with the most brilliant colors that the human eye ever saw, with the rocks weathered into an almost unlimited variety of forms, with here and there a pine sending its roots into the clefts on the sides as if struggling with a sort of uncertain success to maintain an existence—the whole presents a picture that it would be difficult to surpass in nature.

    Mr. Thomas Moran, a celebrated artist, and noted for his skill as a colorist, exclaimed with a kind of regretful enthusiasm that these beautiful tints were beyond the reach of human art. It is not the depth alone that gives such an impression of grandeur to the mind, but it is also the picturesque forms and coloring. Mr. Moran is now engaged in transferring this remarkable picture to canvas, and by means of a skillful use of colors something like a conception of its beauty may be conveyed.

    After the waters of the Yellowstone roll over the upper descent, they flow with great rapidity over the apparently flat rocky bottom, which spreads out to nearly double its width above the falls, and continues thus until near the Lower Falls, when the channel again contracts, and the waters seem, as it were, to gather themselves into one compact mass and plunge over the descent of 350 feet in detached drops of foam as white as snow; some of the large globules of water shoot down like the contents of an exploded rocket.

    It is a sight far more beautiful, though not so grand or impressive as that of Niagara Falls. A heavy mist always arises from the water at the foot of the falls, so dense that one cannot approach within 200 or 300 feet, and even then the clothes will be drenched in a few moments. Upon the yellow, nearly vertical wall of the west side, the mist mostly falls, and for 300 feet from the bottom the wall is covered with a thick matting of mosses, sedges, grasses, and other vegetation of the most vivid green, which have sent their small roots into the softened rocks, and are nourished by the ever-ascending spray. At the base and quite high up on the sides of the canyon, are great quantities of talus, and through the fragments of rocks and decomposed spring deposits may be seen the horizontal strata of breccia.

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    — F.V. Hayden, Preliminary Report of the United State Geological Survey of Montana. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1872.

    — Coppermine Photo Gallery image.

    — For more on this topic, select “Thomas Moran” under the Categories button to the left.

  • A Tale: Montana Women Held Elective Office Before They Could Vote

    March is Women’s History Month so I decided to post something in observance of that here. Of course, this blog contains dozens of stories by and about women who visited Yellowstone Park long ago, but I wanted to post something visitors hadn’t seen before. Checking my files, I came across my article about Adda Hamilton, who was elected School Superintendent of Gallatin County, Montana, in 1884. I published it in The Pioneer Museum Quarterly in Spring 2007.

    I came across Adda’s story General George W. Wingate’s book about his trip to Yellowstone Park in 1885. Like General Wingate, I was intrigued to find out that women were winning elections in Montana before they could vote, so I researched Adda’s story and submitted it for publication. Here it is.

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    When General George W. Wingate visited Bozeman in 1885, he was amazed that a woman held political office.[1] Wingate was talking about Adda Hamilton who was elected Gallatin County School Superintendent in 1884.

    Wingate said he was glad that she won her election by a large majority. “For this” Wingate said, “she seems to have been greatly indebted to her opponent.” As Wingate told the story:

    “Miss Hamilton’s opponent had occupied the position for which she was a candidate for several years, and was enraged at the thought that a woman should have the audacity to oppose his re-election. In a speech made shortly before the election to a crowded meeting, composed largely of his own adherents, . . . he forgot himself so much as to sneer at Miss Hamilton as a ‘school marm who had come to the territory a few years ago without a dollar in her pocket.’”

    “He was continuing in this strain when an Irishman in the audience stood up and interrupted him with a stentorian shout — ‘Boys lets give three cheers for Miss Hamilton;’ whereupon every man in the audience stood up in his place, waved his hat and cheered for Miss Hamilton at the top of his lungs.”

    Most likely the man who abused Miss Hamilton was the Republican William Wallace Wylie. In 1878, Wylie was recruited to be Bozeman’s first superintendent of schools, a position he held for three years. Then he was principal of the Bozeman Academy for four years. After he lost his election to Miss Hamilton, he was named Superintendent of Schools for Montana Territory.

    Wylie was described in Progressive Men of Montana as “being inflexibly opposed to the liquor traffic and standing true to his convictions in 1888 transferred his allegiance to the Prohibition Party.” He was also an elder in the Presbyterian Church. Wylie was an author and lecturer about Yellowstone National Park and founded a large company that provide guided carriage tours and lodging in permanent tent camps.[2]

    When Adda Hamilton announced that she was running for school superintendent as an independent, The Bozeman Avant Courier described her as “a young lady of pleasant address, excellent educational attainments and experience as a teacher and is doubtless qualified for the position to which she aspires.”[3]

    The Avant Courier said her name had been submitted for nomination at the Democratic Party Convention, which chose another candidate. “Some persons may question the propriety or wisdom of her present course in running as an independent,” the article continued, “but this is a matter that must be left to the young lady’s own judgment, and she doubtless is actuated by the best of reasons and or purest motives.” In Miss Hamilton’s formal announcement, she said she decided to seek office “at the earnest solicitation of many citizens.”

    Hamilton wasn’t the only woman to run in Montana in 1884. The Avant Courier republished an article from the Dillon Tribune that reported “The girl candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction in many of the counties of Montana are going to win.”[4]

    In Meagher County, the article said, “two girls are pitted against each other, and the fight for the position is quite lively. Miss Darcy is the candidate for the unwashed Democrats and Miss Nichols musters with the Republican boys.” Miss Clark of Lewis and Clark County was described as “a talented young woman” and “an accomplished politician. The Tribune expected Miss Clark to win.

    The Tribune said that as an independent, Miss Hamilton “enters the field against the odds of regular party nominees.” Describing her as a candidate “with sand,” the paper added, “Hamilton should be elected.” Among her virtues, the paper said, “she says she isn’t afraid of road agents,” which “would afford the pleasure to hop around from one county school house to another. The men of Gallatin Country would be confounded mean if they don’t run Hamilton in.”

    On Election Day, Miss Hamilton won the election with 1485 men’s votes. The Republican candidate got 1051 and the Democrat, 487.[5] That, as General Wingate said, “shows what comes of abusing a woman in Montana.” Montana didn’t grant the vote to women for another twenty-five years.

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    —   This article first appeared in The Pioneer Museum Quarterly, Summer 2007, page 4.

    —   To find stories about women’s adventures in Yellowstone Park, click on “Women’s Stories” under the “Categories” button to the left.

    Footnotes

    1. George W. Wingate, Through Yellowstone Park on Horseback, Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho Press, 1999.
    2. Progressive Men of the State of Montana. A.W. Bowen, Chicago, 1901.
    3. Avant Courier, Bozeman, MT., October 9 1884.
    4. Avant Courier, Bozeman, MT., October 30, 1884.
    5. Avant Courier, Bozeman, MT., December 6, 1884.