Category: Yellowstone Stories
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A Tale: Gilman Sawtell, Yellowstone’s First Commericial Guide
“Sawtell’s main business was harvesting and selling fish, as many as 40,000 of them a year. He reportedly caught as many as 160 trout an hour, averaging two and a half pounds each, with a hook and line.’
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A Tale: A Lady’s Visit To The Geysers Of The Yellowstone Park — HWS 1880 (Part 1)
“On July 27th we started for Camas on the little narrow gauge railroad, our road lying through the dreariest of all dreary alkali plains. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing to be seen but the burning sand and the sad gray sagebrush.”
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A Tale: First Report of Cooking Live Fish in a Hot Spring — Hedges, 1870.
” I attempted to land my prize beyond the spring, but unfortunately for the fish, he escaped the hook to plunge into this boiling spring.”
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A Tale: The Army Protects Theodore Roosevelt From Snooping Reporter — 1903
“The correspondent reined up his horse in amazement. Who was it calling his name? Had he been followed from Gardiner? If so, why did the voice come from the bushes and evidently some distance from the road?
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An Event: Getting Ready to Launch 2012 at Old Faithful Snow Lodge
Castle Geyser in Winter I spent the day preparing for my presentations on January 1 and 2 at the Old Faithful Inn Snow Lodge. I’ll be at the visitor center gift shop on both days from 7 to 9 p.m. to do readings and sign copies of my book, Adventures in Yellowstone: Early Travelers Tell Their…
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A Scene: The Geysers of Yellowstone — Washburn, 1870
There had been rumors of wonders in the upper Yellowstone for more than 50 years, but the Washburn Expedition of 1870 made it official. The place really did contain towering waterfalls, a huge inland sea and—most stupendous—boilding fountains that threw water hundreds of feet into the air. There were several reasons Washburn and his companions captured…
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A Tale: The Antelope That Got Away — Dunraven, 1874
“The darned thing … came to life, bounded to his feet, sprang into the air, coming down all four feet together, … ‘Shoot, Bottler,’ I cried, ‘shoot. In Heaven’s name, man, can’t you see the buck?'”
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A Tale: Rafting Across the Yellowstone to View the Canyon From Artist Point — Holmes, 1896.
“We are unable to tell what most impresses us: the immensity of the great gulf, the infinite glory of its colored walls, the struggling river far below, the stately army of tall pines massed on the brink ….”
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A Tale: Rolling Boulders Down Gardiner Canyon — Wingate, 1885
“It was wonderful to see a stone the size of a trunk leap into the air in a plunge of 200 or 300 feet, strike the shelf below as if thrown by a catapult, and with such tremendous force as to rebound twenty feet….”
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A Tale: A Dark and Stormy Night in Yellowstone Park — Dunraven, 1874
“Now and then the fire would burn up bright, casting a fitful gleam out into the damp darkness, and lighting up the bare jaws and white skulls of the two elk-heads, which seemed to grin derisively at me out of the gloom.”