People often ask me where I find the stories I post on this blog. That’s a good question and I plan to answer it. But I’ve discovered there’s no short simple answer.
I’ve been looking for first-person accounts of early travel to Yellowstone Park for almost a decade and have more than 300 of them in my collection. But I know there are thousands more out there. It’s still a thrill to find a good one.
I compare my efforts to those of nineteenth century prospectors searching for gold. Sometimes they saw huge nuggets lying on the surface, so they could just bend over and pick them up. Sometimes they had to shift through tons of sand and gravel to gather a few ounces of gold dust. And sometimes they had to blast their way through solid rock just to locate a small vein.
It will take several posts to explain that metaphor so for now I’ll list a few of the topics I’m thinking about discussing. I’d like you to tell me which ones you find interesting and what you’d like to know.
It helps to know what you’re looking for: What’s a story?
Sometimes the best stories are the worst history: Differences between journals, articles and reminiscences.
Just pull them off the shelf: There are great stories at your local library.
Let other people do the hard work: Working at special collections, museums and archives
Download it for free: Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and The Making of America Collection.
Looking for pictures to bring a story to life. The Yellowstone Digital Slide File and other repositories of photos and illustrations.
That’s enough to get us started. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
∞§∞
— Image adapted from an F.J. Haynes postcard, Yellowstone Digital Slide File.
Mabel Cross Osmond was just six and half years old when she first went to Yellowstone Park with her parents in 1874. Mabel’s father Captain Robert Cross was a Civil War veteran who came to Montana to be the post trader at Crow Agency, which was then located nine miles east of the present Livingston, Montana.
Mabel wrote her memoir more that fifty years after her trip, but she still had vivid memories of it including such details as the saddle she rode. “The blacksmith,” she said, “taking a man’s saddle, fastened a covered iron rod from the pommel around on the right side to the back. This rod and the seat were well padded with blankets. A covered stirrup, wide enough for my two feet was hung on the left side and across this open side from the pommel to the rod in back was attached a buckled leather strap so that, when mounted, I sat as a child in a high chair.”
Mabel of rode an Indian pony she called “Dolly” that she said saved her life “by instantly stopping when, while descending a steep trail my saddle turned, leaving me hanging head downward, helplessly strapped in until the others could reach me.”
The Crosses had an army escort to see them though Indian country until they reached the Bottler ranch. Mabel recalled the stop clearly.
“We enjoyed one of Grandma Bottler’s good dinners. I remember the cute little roast Pig with an ear of corn in its mouth, and also being awakened during the night by hearing her shrilly shouting — “Fredereek, Fredereek, the skunk is after the chickuns.” Though eighty years old, she kept her ‘store teeth’ put away —‘fearing to wear them out’ — she told us.”
At Mammoth Hot Springs, Mabel’s father made a basket out of her mother’s corset stays and laid it in one of the pools. The running waters encrusted the item with white mineral deposits making a souvenir that Mabel still had when she wrote her memoir.
The Crosses traveled along Indian trails and through timber so thick that it hid the sky and pack mules had difficulty carrying their wide loads between the trees. They camped at the geyser basins for several days, plenty of time to see most of the geysers play.
When the Crosses got the Yellowstone Lake, Mabel took a ride on the boat that Sarah Tracy had named “The Sally” just weeks earlier. Mabel sailed to a small island where she feasted on gooseberries and ripe red raspberries, but she attributed the seasickness she got on the return trip to rough waters. She said her hosts named an Island for her, but it didn’t stick.
∞§∞
— Adapted from Mabel Cross Osmond, Memories of a Trip Through Yellowstone National Park in 1874. Typescript, Pioneer Museum of Bozeman.
There I was in the beautiful lobby of Aspen Pointe, an independent living facility run by Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman. I looked out over a sea of women’s faces — and they were all looking back at me. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Indeed, the audience was filled with “Smart Women.” They cringed when I told them about Emma Cowan’s chilling account of watching an Indian hold a pistol to her husband’s head and pull the trigger. And they laughed when I read Eleanor Corthell’s hilarious story about her husband getting arrested for letting their horse graze too close to Old Faithful and sweet talking his way into a $2 fine.
I knew that Eleanor’s granddaughter, Phoebe Montagne, lives at Aspen Pointe, and I hoped she would be in the audience, but I wasn’t that lucky. After signing copies of my book, I asked to be shown to Phoebe’s room.
After my escort introduced us, I gave Phoebe a copy of my book and showed her the chapter containing Eleanor Corthell’s account of her trip to Yellowstone Park in 1903. While Eleanor’s husband stayed home in Laramie, she took their seven children clear across Wyoming in a horse-drawn wagon to see the wonders of the park. Eleanor told wonderful stories about fording a flooded river, chasing a bear out of camp, and counting heads at a geyser basin to make sure none of her children had fallen in.
When I asked Phoebe what she remembered about her grandmother, her eye twinkled and a smile slid across her face.
“I remember Grandmother surrounded by us grandchildren sitting on the floor,” she said. “She would read us books like David Copperfield.”
I’m sure a smile slid across my face too while I listened to Phoebe reminisce. As much as I enjoyed talking with 75 smart women, that was the highlight of the day.
∞§∞
— You can read Eleanor Corthell’s story of her trip to Yellowstone Park in my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.
Indians stole a band of horses the day before Sarah Tracy left Bozeman for Yellowstone Park in June of 1873. But Mrs. Tracy was used to Indians. When she arrived in Bozeman in 1869 with her new husband, Bozeman Pioneer W.H. Tracy, Indians were encamped on the south side of town. She said, “They would peer in the windows if the doors were locked, or come flocking around the door begging for biscuits, soap, clothes, everything.”
Such encounters left Mrs. Tracy with little fear of Indians, but the commander at Fort Ellis still didn’t want to let her party go to Yellowstone in the midst of “Indian troubles.” Finally, after some haggling, he agreed to provide an armed escort.
“We were soon on our way with twelve mounted soldiers following us,” Mrs. Tracy said in a reminiscence she wrote about the trip. “With their guns and knapsacks on their shoulders, and their belts filled with cartridges, they looked very war like.” The soldiers escorted the stage across Trail Creek Pass to the Yellowstone River and then turned back after seeing no signs of Indians. The party then headed south to the Bottler brothers’ ranch. Diaries of early trips to Yellowstone often mention a stop at Bottlers.
In 1868 Frederick and Phillip Bottler started the first permanent ranch in the Paradise Valley. The Bottlers’ ranch was a one-day ride from Bozeman and located halfway to Mammoth Hot Springs. That made it an ideal stopping point for travelers heading for the park. The Bottlers always made visitors welcome and eventually started a guesthouse.
After a night at Bottlers, the stage headed to Mammoth Hot Springs over a new road through Yankee Jim Canyon. This road was so bad Mrs. Tracy said that it “fairly made one shudder to ride over it in a four-wheeled stage coach.” As the coach approached Mammoth passengers got a marvelous view from the top of a hill, but the descent down the mountain required chaining the stage’s rear wheels. This “rough locking” slowed the stage by making it skid and keeping it from crowding the horses.
“We drove up to the hotel with a grand flourish of the four-horse whip, bringing the landlord and the guests to the door to meet us.” This description conjures pictures of an elegant building, but the “hotel” at Mammoth then was just an 25-by-35 foot log cabin with a sod roof. Crude as it was, the hotel had hot and cold running water; a stream of 40 degrees ran on one side and of 150 degrees on the other.
Mrs. Tracy and her companion, Sarah Graham, waited for their husbands to join them for two days. They enjoyed fishing, climbing the terraces, two baths a day and three hearty meals. When the men arrived they all started on horseback for a tour of the Park.
“We rode side saddles,” Mrs. Tracy said, “and it was quite difficult for an amateur rider to keep seated.” Their train of a saddle horse for each traveler and eight packhorses made an impressive appearance strung out on the trail. Their route frequently crossed the rushing, boulder-strewn Gardiner River, and Sarah said,
I was in great fear of crossing, but as there was no alternative, I had to hold on as best I could. At first, I dismounted to walk over the bad places, but they were so frequent, I concluded to remain in my saddle. One old mountaineer remarked, “Wait until the mountains are so steep you must hold onto the horse’s ears going up, and tail going down.” And we certainly found some mountains where the saddle would slip over the back going up, and nearly over the head coming down. We made only one ride each day, as it was too much work to repack the horses.
At Yellowstone Lake they found the man who had guided Emma Stone’s party, E.S. Topping, and his partner, Frank Williams. The men had recently built a sailboat. They said they would let the first woman to visit name the boat. Since Mrs. Tracy and Mrs. Graham were both named Sarah, they decided to christen the boat “The Sallie.” Mrs. Tracy said after the name was painted on the boat, “We had a fine sail across the lake and our pictures taken on board,”
At their camp, Topping and Williams rewarded the women by letting them make doughnuts fried in bear grease. In her reminiscence, Mrs. Tracy said of her twelve-day trip:
“The balmy breezes and mountain sunshine had done our complexions to a turn. While our clothing was little worse for wear, yet we had seen the Yellowstone National Park in its primitive beauty. And bear’s grease doughnuts had certainly agreed with us.”
∞§∞
— Sarah Tracy’s reminiscence is at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.
I’ve been working on my presentation on Yellowstone history that’s scheduled for Wednesday at 3 p.m. at Aspen Pointe, an independent living facility run by Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman. I’ll be speaking to a group called “Smart Women” so I’ve decided to talk about women’s adventures in the park.
As I plan my presentation, I find I have my usual frustration—deciding what to read to my audience. My collection of first-person accounts of early travel to Yellowstone Park includes dozens of stories about women. Can you help me choose? Take a look around this blog and decide which stories would be most interesting. Then tell me your thoughts by posting them under “Comments” below.
To get you started, here are links to some of my favorites:
Most of the women who visited Yellowstone Park in the 1870s were Montana Pioneers. For them, camping out in the wilderness was no big deal. After all, they had already crossed the plains in a covered wagon, or come up the Missouri River on a crowded steamboat.
Emma Cowan was such a pioneer. She was 10 years old when came to Montana in a covered wagon with her parents during the gold rush of 1864. Shortly after she arrived in Virginia City, Emma began hearing about the wonders of the upper Yellowstone. One day her father brought home a man who told marvelous stories.
Emma said of the stories, “My fairy books could not equal such wonderful tales. Fountains of boiling water, crystal clear, thrown hundreds of feet into the air, only to fall back into pools of their own forming; pools of water in whose limpid depths tints of various rainbows were reflected; mounds and terraces of gaily colored sand.”
Emma and her family thought the stories were just fantasies, but she said, “As I grew older and found truth in the statements, the desire to some day visit this land was ever present.”
Emma’s first trip to Yellowstone Park was a visit to Mammoth Hot Springs in 1873 with her parents. She didn’t say a lot about it, but the normal starting point for such a trip would have been Bozeman, a thriving trade center and agriculture town about 75 miles from the park.
After they left Bozeman, travelers usually would spend their first night at the Bottler brothers’ ranch—a one-day ride from Bozeman. Bottlers’ ranch was located halfway to Mammoth Hot Springs, which made it an ideal stopping point for early travelers heading to the park.
After a night at Bottlers, Emma’s family would have gone to Mammoth Hot Springs over a new road through Yankee Jim Canyon. Emma said this road was scarcely more than a trail, but “by careful driving, unhitching the horses, and drawing the wagon by hand over the most dangerous places, we made it safely.”
The road was so bad, Emma said, that just a few weeks before a man, who was taking his crippled wife to Mammoth to soak in mineral waters that he hoped would cure her, didn’t even try to travel by wagon. Instead, he carried her on an Indian-style travois.
Although the park was only a year old in 1873 when Emma and her family visited there, Mammoth Hot Springs had already become a tourist destination. When her family arrived, Emma said, “We found an acquaintance or two, a number of strangers, a small hotel and a bath house.”
At Mammoth, tourists could hire guides to take them into the roadless wilderness to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Falls, and, most important, the Grand Geysers. Here they could also buy supplies that included such luxuries as canned fruit, baked bread, fresh milk, and butter.
Visitors could either camp nearby, or pay $20 a week to the hotel for room and board. In addition, they could pay five dollars for twice-daily baths in tin tubs that had been coated with a porcelain like finish by the mineral waters. Visitors often made their own souvenirs by leaving items in pools where mineral waters encrusted them.
Emma and her family stayed at Mammoth for two weeks seeing nearby sights, soaking in hot baths, and making souvenirs. But they decided not to visit the geysers. That would have required an arduous seventy-five mile trip on horseback because there were no roads across the park.
Several parties returned from the geysers during Emma’s stay, and their accounts intrigued her. People often told her that words couldn’t convey the wonders they had seen. “You must see them for yourself,” they told her.
Emma’s interest was piqued. When she got home she learned everything she could about the geysers from magazines, newspapers, and friends’ accounts.
In 1877 Emma’s wish to see the geysers came true. But the adventure was even more that she expected when Indians shot her husband and took her captive.
— Coming Soon: “Doughnuts Fried in Bear Grease, Sarah Tracy — 1874”
This morning the National Weather Service issued flash flood watches for several towns in southwest Montana including Twin Bridges, where I went to elementary and high school. Twin Bridges is nestled on the banks of the Beaverhead River, a Blue Ribbon trout stream. Ice jams have caused floods there several times since the Lott brothers founded the town nearly 150 years ago.
John and Mortimer Lott came west during the gold rush era of the 1860s and were prominent figures in the Vigilantes. In 1865, they built bridges across the Big Hole and Beaverhead above the point where those rivers converge to form the Jefferson. The town of Twin Bridges sprung up there.
In 1955, when I was in grade school, an ice jam threatened Twin Bridges. High dikes line the riverbanks near the school so there wasn’t much danger there, but other parts of the town were flooded.
One day, our teachers cancelled afternoon recess and warned all us school kids to stay inside. The town fathers were going to dynamite the ice jam.
At the appointed hour, teachers checked their class roles and made sure every student was accounted for. We sat with our hands folded on our desks, waited and watched the clock on wall.
The second hand swept up to 2 o’clock—and nothing happened. We shuffled and shifted in our seats and looked to the teacher.
“Just wait,” she admonished.
Seconds seemed to drag by.
Then we heard it—a muffled boom followed by smaller secondary explosions. Then a rumbling sound—blocks of ice grinding their way down the clogged river, I suppose.
You can see photographs of several Twin Bridges floods at the Thomas Brook Photographs Collection at Montana State University. When you get to the web site, just type “flood” in the search box. You’ll find photos of the Twin Bridges floods of 1896, 1898, 1927 and 1955.
I remember Tom Brook as an old man who ran an electrical repair shop in Twin Bridges. My father said Mr. Brook could “fix anything that ran on juice” — industrial fuses boxes, electric motors, television sets, etc.
He was also a remarkable photographer and collector of historic photographs. The hundreds of photos in the Brook collection contain a lot more than pictures of floods. It provides a remarkable record of a great little Montana town. I hope you’ll explore it.
— Photo of the 1927 Twin Bridges flood from the Brook Collection.
The StatsMonkeys at WordPress.Com said this about my blogging in 2010:
“We think you did great! A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.”
When they put it that way, it sounds impressive, but in a world where some bloggers count their hits in thousands or even millions, I wonder. I’d sure like to do better. Anybody got any suggestions? The best advice I’ve had so far: Post good content and be patient. I’m sure that’s good advice, but I’d welcome other ideas.
I launched this blog in the middle of July. By January 31, I had posted 56 items. That’s about two per week. Is that a good rate? Would you like more? Should I slow down and use my time for other things?
I’ve usually been able to find an image to accompany each post. But often, the photos available to illustrate events that happened more than a hundred years ago are of poor quality. Does that bother you? Would it be better just to leave poor pictures out?
My busiest day of the year was November 16th with 50 views when I posted News and Views: Off to Helena for “Great Conversations” That one—and a follow up—told about my participation in a fundraiser for the Helena Education Foundation. Also popular was my description of my book signing at the Manhattan Christmas Stroll, News: Holiday Spirit Lives in Small Town America. Apparently, these things got a boost because sponsoring organizations used them for promotion. Can you think of other ways to get a boost?
The most popular story about early travel to Yellowstone Park was A Tale: An October Snow Storm at Yellowstone Canyon—1880. Why did that one get the largest audience? What makes for a good story? Do you have any favorites? If so, tell me about them, and why you liked them.
The story that drew the most comments was A Tale: Maud Gets Her Revenge. No questions about that one. I laugh myself every time I think about Maud’s antics.
So, use the comment button below to send me your suggestions for ways to make this blog better. I’d really appreciate that.
While doing research for my post last week, “An October Snow Storm at Yellowstone Canyon,” I noticed that Carrie Strahorn claimed, “I was the first woman who made a complete detour of the park.” I knew that Carrie was wrong about that, but the statement wasn’t in the excerpt I used so I ignored it.
Then I started thinking about the first women to visit Yellowstone Park. I checked my files and concluded that I had enough information to provide several posts on the topic. Here’s “First Women Yellowstone, Part 1: Emma Stone Tours Yellowstone — 1872.”
∞§∞
Doubtless, the first women in what is now Yellowstone Park were Indians who had lived there for centuries before Euro-Americans explored it. As for white women, there are no official records of their early park visits. Fortunately, Yellowstone travelers have always thought their adventures were worth saving and sharing so they left a rich record of journals, diaries, reminiscences, and articles in newspapers and magazines. Examination of these documents reveals that white women penetrated the edges of the park by the early 1870s.
One of the earliest recorded “sightings” of women in Yellowstone Park was by Sidford Hamp, a young Englishman whose rich uncle, Lord Blackmore, got him a job as a surveyor’s assistant on the second Hayden Expedition. Here’s what Hamp said about his arrival at Mammoth Hot Springs on August 27, 1872.
“When we got about two miles from there we saw a haystack. You can’t imagine what a curiosity it was. We went on and saw a mule tied to a bush, and soon after that, came two men, more curiosities. Then we came upon a man holding in his arms the greatest curiosity of all, a baby! We went on a bit farther and saw a woman! And a house! which almost knocked us down with curiosity.”
One of the women who visited Mammoth in 1872 was Emma Stone of Bozeman, Montana. She is credited with being the first woman to take a complete tour of the park.
In 1872, Hiram and Emma Stone and their two sons were visiting Mammoth Hot Springs when two specimen collectors, Dwight Woodruff and E.S. Topping, returned from exploring the park and announced that they had discovered a new geyser basin (now called Norris Geyser Basin.) Such men often hung around the hotel at Mammoth looking for people to guide and the Stones hired them.
Because there were no roads, people had to travel on horseback along Indian trails and through timber so tall, they could barely see the sky. Horses had to jump fallen logs that covered the ground. Sometimes trees were so close together that pack mules had to get on their knees to squeeze their wide loads under the lower branches.
Travelers camped at major sights for days or even weeks. This not only provided an opportunity for such things as seeing many geysers play, but also gave spent horses time to graze and regain strength. Often the animals wandered off and many diaries record accounts of searching for them.
The Stones visited all the geyser basins, Yellowstone Lake and Falls. Topping, in his 1888 book Chronicles of the Yellowstone, said, “It was a hard trip for the lady of the party, Mrs. Stone, but she now has the satisfaction of remembering that to her belongs the honor of being the first white woman to see the beauties of the National Park.”
∞§∞
— Photo adapted from Carrie Adell Strahorn, Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage, 1911.
After gold was discovered near Bannack, Montana, in 1862, prospectors scoured every gully and creek searching for the next bonanza. In 1863, Walter Washington DeLacy led a 40-man expedition that explored the Snake River to its source. The party didn’t find enough “color” for a paying proposition, but they did bring back a wealth of information about the Yellowstone Plateau. DeLacy included that information in his famous 1865 map of the Montana territory. DeLacy was a civil engineer and his account of the Snake River expedition is one of few prospector accounts by an educated man. At time when a man could make a fortune from a few gold pans of dirt, prospectors were ever hopeful of striking it rich. In the virtually lawless territories prospecting parties made their own rules to assure that everybody has a fair chance. Here’s DeLacy’s description of an effort to draft some “miner’s laws.”
∞§∞
I halted the men at the creek as they came up, and when all had arrived I suggested to them that we should go on to the next water, pick out a good camp, and remain some days and prospect the different streams, which were in sight. This was agreed to, and we went forward about three miles to the next creek, near the outlet of Lake Jackson and established ourselves where wood, water, and grass were abundant.
After unpacking and staking the animals out, another meeting was called in order to decide upon our future action. It was decided to build a “corral,” to put the horses in at night that should be left in camp, and that four parties should be formed: one to remain in camp as a guard, and three others to prospect the streams in sight.
The men were then detailed for the different expeditions, and it was suggested, that as there was a strong probability of finding good “diggings,” we should adopt some mining laws for them.
We therefore organized ourselves into a “miners’ meeting,” and, after appointing a chairman, etc., one of the members moved, and another seconded the motion, that the following regulations should be adopted:
1. That every person present should be regarded as a discovered in each and every gulch found by any party or member of a party.
2. That each member, as discoverer, should be entitled to five claims of two hundred feet each along the gulch, viz., a discovery claim, and a pre-emption claim in the main gulch, a bar claim, a hill claim, and a patch claim. (I never knew exactly what a patch claim was, but I think that it meant all that you could grab, after you got the other four claims.)
These liberal and disinterested regulations were voted in the affirmative with gratifying unanimity, and the chairman was just about to put the question to the meeting whether there was any more business before it, when a big, burly Scotchman named Brown, who had apparently been turning the subject over in his mind, jumped up, and inquired with great earnestness, “But, Mr. Chairman, what shall we do with the rest of it.”
∞§∞
— Adapted from “A Trip up the South Snake River in 1863.” Walter W. DeLacy, Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, Vol. 2, 1896.
— Photo, Yellowstone Digital Slide File
— For more funny stories click on “Humor” under the “Categories” button on the left side of this page.
M. Mark Miller, Author 