M. Mark Miller, Author

Category: yellowstone

  • A Tale: “The Rod Bent Nearly Double,” General W. E. Strong — 1875

    One of the most luxurious early trips to Yellowstone Park was led by President U.S. Grant’s Secretary of War, General William Belknap. In 1875, Belknap was joined by four other Generals including W.E. Strong, who provide an account of the trip.

    The Generals crossed the country in a plush Pullman car smoking cigars, drinking whisky, and telling stories, on the new transcontinental railroad. Then they rode in a special stagecoach that traveled at breakneck speed from Utah to Montana.

    Along the way they were feted with banquets, parties and parades. In Bozeman a Silver Coronet Band greeted them at the edge of town and escorted them through the city to Fort Ellis.

    At Fort Ellis they were provided with an escort of active duty soldiers led by Gustavus Doane, who had commanded the escort of the Washburn Expedition in 1870.

    Each General was assigned an orderly to take care of his every whim: packing his personal belongings, putting up his tent, rolling out his bed roll, digging his latrine, and cleaning any fish he caught. All at army expense, of course. A year later the U.S. Senate impeached General Belknap for taking bribes.

    General Strong eloquently describes the wonders of Yellowstone—falls, hot springs and geysers, and describes the people he met—mountain men, stagecoach drivers, and towns people. Most of all, he revels in telling exciting tales of hunting elk, stampeding buffalo, and catching fish. Here’s his description of fishing.

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    Again I threw my hook in the swift water, and down the stream it went like lightning, tossing about like a feather in the rapid. My reel whirled and spun like a buzz saw, the line went out so fast.

    I never touched the reel to check the running line till seventy-five feet, at least, was in the water. Then I pressed my thumb firmly upon it and drew gently back the rod. At the same instant something struck my hook that nearly carried me off my feet. I had to let go the reel to save the rod.

    I had him securely hooked, but could I land him? That was the question. I gave him twenty-five or thirty feet more line—then checked again and tried to hold him—but it was no use, the rod bent nearly double, and I had to let him run.

    My line was one hundred and fifty feet in length, and I knew when it was all out, if the fish kept in the rapids, I should lose him. No tackle like mine could stand for a moment against the strength of such a fish as I had struck in such swift water.

    I therefore continued to give him the line—but no faster than I was forced to.   No more than twelve or fifteen feet remained on the reel. Fortunately for me, he turned to the left and was carried into an eddy which swept him into more quiet water near the shore.

    Twice in his straight run down the rapid current of the stream he leaped clear from the water. I saw he was immense—something double or triple the size of any trout I had ever caught. The excitement to me was greater than anything I had ever experienced.

    No one but a trout fisherman can understand or appreciate the intense pleasure of a single run. I was crazy to kill and land him, and yet I knew the chances were against it. Again and Again I reeled him within twenty-five or thirty feet of the rock. But he was game to the last, and would dart off with the same strength as when he first struck. I had to let him go.

    Finally, he showed signs of exhaustion. I managed to get him to top the water, and then worked him in close to the sore. Flynn was waiting to take the line and throw him out, as I had no landing net. Flynn did it very well. When the trout was very near the bank and quiet, he lifted him out.

    He was a fine specimen, and would weigh four pounds if he weighed an ounce.   This trout was three times the size I had ever caught. At 4:30 o’clock I stopped fishing having landed thirty-five trout which would have run from two and a half to four pounds in weight—none less than two and one half pounds.

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    — See Paul Schulery’s comments on General Strong’s fishing tackle.

    — For more stories about fishing in Yellowstone Park, click on “fishing” under the “Categories” button on the right.

    — From W.E. Strong, A Trip to the Yellowstone National Park in July, August, and September, 1875.

    — Photo from Paul Schullery, Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

  • A Tale: “Into the Scalding Morass,” Langford — 1870

    After the 1862 gold strike in Bannack, Montana, prospectors scoured every canyon and gully looking for pay dirt. That included the region that would become Yellowstone National Park.

    These men told about the wonders they had seen—mountains of glass, towering waterfalls, and fountains of boiling water, but, at first, people dismissed their reports as tall tales. Soon it became clear that there really were marvelous things in the area, so a group of government officials and businessmen decided to mount an expedition to document them. The result was the famous Washburn Expedition of 1870.

    Of course, documenting the wonders included gathering specimens—task that could be downright dangerous. Here’s a description of just how dangerous it could be, written by one of the expedition’s principle chroniclers, Nathaniel P. Langford.

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    Washburn and I passed over a low divide, which, I think, must be the main range of the Rocky Mountains. Just beyond is another brimstone basin containing forty or fifty boiling sulphur and mud springs. A small creek runs through the basin—and the slopes of the mountains on either side showed unmistakable signs of volcanic action beneath the crust.

    A considerable portion of the slope of the mountain was covered with a hollow incrustation of sulphur, lime, or silica, from which issued in many places hot steam. We found many small craters from six to twelve inches in diameter —  from which issued the sound of the boiling sulphur or mud. In many instances we could see the mud or sulphur water.

    The water was too hot for us to bear the hand more than two or three seconds.  It had overflowed the green spaces between the incrustations, completely saturating the ground. In many places the grass had grown—forming a turf compact and solid enough to bear the weight of a man ordinarily. But when it gave way the underlying deposit was so thin that it afforded no support.

    While crossing one of these green places, my horse broke through—and sank to his body as if in a bed of quicksand.  I was off his back in an instant and succeeded in extricating the struggling animal.  The fore legs of my horse, however, had gone through the turf into the hot, thin mud beneath.

    General Washburn was a few yards behind me on an incrusted mound of lime and sulphur, which bore us in all cases. He had just before called to me to keep off the grassy place.  Now he inquired of me if the deposit beneath the turf was hot. Without making examination I answered that I thought it might be warm.

    Shortly afterwards the turf again gave way—and my horse plunged more violently than before, throwing me over his head. As I fell, my right arm was thrust violently through the treacherous surface into the scalding morass. It was with difficulty that I rescued my poor horse—and I found it necessary to instantly remove my glove to avoid blistering my hand.

    The frenzied floundering of my horse had in the first instance suggested to General Washburn the idea that the under stratum was hot enough to scald him. General Washburn was right in his conjecture. It is a fortunate circumstance that I today rode my light-weight pack horse. If I had ridden my heavy saddle horse, I think that the additional weight of his body would have broken the turf—and that he would have disappeared in the hot boiling mud—taking me with him.

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    — Text and ilustration from Langford’s book, The Discovery of Yellowstone Park, 1870.

    — You can read a condensed version of Langford’s The Discovery of Yellowstone Park in my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.

    — To see more stories by this author, click on “Langford” under the “Categories” button to the left.

    — For more stories about the Washburn Expedition, click on “Washburn” under the “Categories” button to the left.

  • First Women: Mary Wylie Crosses Yellowstone Park in a Covered Wagon — 1880

    In 1880, Mary Wylie crossed Yellowstone Park as a member of the first tourist party to use a wheeled conveyance for this trip. She went from Mammoth Hot Springs to the Lower Geyser Basin in a covered wagon.

    Mary came to Montana from Iowa in 1879 with her children. Her husband, William Wallace Wylie, had arrived in Montana the year before to become Bozeman’s first school superintendent.

    Mr. Wylie came west in 1878 on the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad to Corinne, Utah, and then took a stagecoach 400 miles north. When Mary and the children took the same trip a year later, they came north on the Utah and Northern Railroad to the Montana border and traveled about 200 miles by stage from there to Bozeman.

    Mr. Wylie left his mark on Yellowstone Park history as a lecturer, interpreter, and inventor of “permanent camps.” After he did a lecture tour across the nation, school teachers began asking him to guide them into the park. He said this “accidentally” launched him into the tourist business.

    In 1893, he founded the Wylie Permanent Camping Company, which specialized in tours of the park where guests stayed in tents left up for a full season. His moderately priced tours provided competition to the more expensive hotel tours and opened the park to middle class tourists.

    Wylie first visited the park in the spring of 1880. When he learned that Park Superintendent P. W. Norris was building the first road across the park and was going to have it finished by August, Wylie resolved to show his wife the wonders of Yellowstone Park.

    He returned to Bozeman, bought a lumber wagon and rigged it with an emigrant cover. He then assembled a nine-person party that included Mary and two of their children, a woman friend of Mary’s, and three men.

    The party met a couple with a spring wagon at Mammoth who went with them on their tour. This proved to be a good arrangement because the travelers often had to hitch both of their teams to a single wagon to get up steep hills and through rough country.

    Superintendent Norris’s new road was extremely rough. Sometimes tree stumps were too tall to let the wagons pass. When the wagons got stuck, the party had to hitch a team to the back of the wagon and pull it back so they could cut the stump lower. This made travel extremely slow. It took more than a week to travel from Mammoth to the Lower Geyser Basin.

    It was the first time tourists made the trip in wheeled conveyances. Wylie said this fact helped him get licenses to set up his tourists business in the park.

    A few weeks after Mary Wylie crossed the park beginning at Mammoth Hot Springs, Carrie Strahorn and her husband traversed Norris’s new road starting at the other end.  But after starting from the Lower Geyser Basin in a wagon, the Strahorns decided the road was too rough, and continued on horseback.

    Mary’s trip by covered wagon must have been quite an adventure. It’s too bad she didn’t leave a written account of it.

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    — Photo from Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

    — You also might enjoy Carrie Strahorn’s story about traveling Norris’s new road in 1880 and encountering a winter storm.

    — For related stories, look at “First Women in Yellowstone” under the Categories button to the upper left of this page.