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In 1877 Nez Perce Indians refused to go onto a tiny reservation and left their homelands in Idaho and Washington hoping to make a new life in the Montana buffalo country When the Army attacked their sleeping village on Big Hole River, the Nez Perce repulsed their enemies and fled leaving 83 dead.. To avoid white settlements they made their way through the wilderness of Yellowstone Park. The chiefs tried to avoid contact with whites, but hot headed young warriors shot a man in the head, captured two young women and killed a music teacher in a remote cabin. Based on first-person accounts, Encounters in Yellowstone, tells of the Nez Perce’ doomed flight through America’s most beloved national park.
This anthology of first person-accounts by women who toured Yellowstone Park more than a century ago includes tales of high adventure, raucous humor, and glorious sights. Including a wide range of stories by women who visited from all over the world and at all ages, these accounts reveal their wonder at the interior of the park, the weeks they traveled on horseback through the roadless wilderness, and the later luxuries of well-maintained roads, comfortable carriages, and fancy hotels.
Fourteen-year-old Macon Josey must earn enough money so his widowed mother won’t have to give up his baby sister for adoption. Uncle Bird Calfee offers him a job caring for art equipment on a trip to the brand new Yellowstone Park. Macon’s mother fears marauding Indians, boiling geysers and ferocious bears, but Uncle Bird promises her he’ll stay on safe routes, and he’ll teach Macon to shoot his father’s rifle. Macon becomes a sharpshooter while he and Uncle Bird travel seeing hot springs, waterfalls, and canyons. This new skill becomes crucial after Uncle Bird falls into a geyser and Macon has to figure out how to get his scalded friend home. The only way leads straight to a band of murderous horse thieves.
The stories in the book span the period from 1807, when John Colter first discovered the wonders of the Yellowstone plateau to the 1920s when tourists sped between luxury hotels in their automobiles. The earliest stories recount mountain men’s awe at geysers hurling boiling water hundreds of feet into the air and their gun battles with hostile Indians. The latest stories are set in a time when matrons felt comfortable taking children to the park without an adult male accompanying them.
After Yellowstone became a national park in 1872, its growing fame drew visitors willing to brave bears, rough trails, and the unpredictable hazards of geyser country just to see its wonders. Many wrote vivid accounts of what happened to them. Adventures in Yellowstone gathers a dozen full‑fledged stories—longer, more immersive narratives that range from Osborne Russell’s colorful 1840s descriptions of mountain‑man life to Eleanor Corthell’s remarkable 1903 journey, when she took her seven children on a month‑long wagon tour of the park. Each story opens a fresh window onto a long‑overlooked corner of American history and the resilient people who explored it with curiosity and grit.
This narrative history follows the Washburn Expedition of 1870, a group of respected Montana officials and businessmen whose accounts carried far more weight than the earlier “tall tales” of mountain men. Determined to verify the wonders for themselves, they searched for towering waterfalls, deep canyons, a vast high‑country lake, and geysers that hurled boiling water into the air—and were astonished to find it all. Their widely circulated reports helped galvanize public support for protecting the region as a national park. The expedition’s return was slowed by a summer snowstorm and a frantic search for Truman Everts, who survived thirty‑seven days alone in the wilderness.
Diaries kept by the author’s great‑grandmother, Eva, inspired this narrative history of a Montana family struggling to hold on to its ranch during the Great Depression. After she is widowed, Eva moves in with her daughter’s family and discovers a marriage already coming apart. A rancorous divorce leaves the daughter managing the ranch alone, overwhelmed by work and responsibility. She eventually asks her newly married daughter and son‑in‑law to take over, and for a time the entire family lives and works together in harmony. The arrangement collapses when Eva tries to take control of the young couple’s infant son, forcing her daughter to make the painful decision to leave the ranch with her.
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