A front-page article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported this morning that a group of tourists had been caught on video standing within a few feet of the famous Old Faithful Geyser. Chronicle Staff Writer Daniel Person reported: “The outrageous incident was captured by a webcam that broadcast live footage of Old Faithful and is unlike anything park officials have seen in recent times.”
Explorers Near Old Faithful, August 1871
I was struck by the similarity between the new picture and famed Yellowstone Photographer William Henry Jackson’s 1871 photo of Old Faithful. Jackson’s photo shows members of the government sponsored Hayden Expedition standing closer to the geyser than did the 2011 visitors. Certainly, Jackson’s photo, which is thought to be the first taken of the famous geyser, doesn’t document “outrageous” behavior. It shows that over the last 140 years people have learned how to protect themselves and the wonders of Yellowstone.
My collections of first-person accounts of early travel to Yellowstone Park includes reports of all kinds of things that would be considered outrageous today like gathering mineral specimens by the wagon load, hunting bald eagles for sport, and dumping rubble in Old Faithful just to see what would happen.
We can be glad that such activities are now considered to be outrageous.
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— Color photo, frame capture from NPS live website camera at Old Faithful.
— William Henry Jackson photo, Yellowstone Digital Slide File.
After the Washburn Expedition got home in 1870, the news stimulated enormous excitement in Montana. Bozeman artist and photographer Henry “Bird” Calfee and his friend, Macon Josey, decided to see the wonders.
Henry "Bird" Calfee
Calfee’s account of their trip was found at the Pioneer Museum of Bozeman in a clipping from an unidentified newspaper, which apparently was published about than twenty years after the trip. Calfee said the trip took place in 1871, but that must be in error because he recounts things that didn’t occur until 1872—like an encounter with the notorious Harlow gang of horse thieves.
Calfee was so impressed with the park that he returned often, and eventually started a business selling Yellowstone photographs. Here’s an excerpt from his reminiscence that tells about Josey falling in a geyser, an incident I fictionalized in my middle-grade novel, Macon’s Perfect Shot.
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While out exploring and gathering specimens on a tributary of the Firehole River we scared a dear out of a small bunch of timber. In its frightened condition, it attempted to bound over a large open geyser that was in its line of retreat. Failing to land with its hind feet on the farther edge of the formation, it fell backwards into the boiling caldron. We hastened to its rescue and attempted to raise it out by thrusting a long pole under its belly. The formation gave way with us, my companion going down with it into the horrible seething pool. I narrowly escaped by falling backward into the solid formation.
I assisted my companion it quickly as possible, but in one half minute he was scalded from his waist down. He was so a badly scalded that when I pulled his boots and socks off the flesh rolled off with them. I managed to get him back to camp and put what little remaining flour we had on his raw and bleeding burns.
I began immediately making preparations for an early start the next morning for the settlement on the Madison River below. I expected to reach them in two days, but so slow was our progress that we were scarcely out of sight of the lower geyser basin at the end of that time. I hastily constructed a travois after the Indian style, in which Josey could ride.
I then went up to the old Faithful geyser to whom we had delivered our washing the morning before. I found it all nicely washed and lying on his pearly pavement ready for delivery. Our linen and cotton garments, which had been stiff and black with dirt, lay there as white as the driven snow, and our woolen clothes were as clean as could be. But oh my, imagine them in that mammoth unpatented washing machine boiling for one solid hour and then imagine my one hundred and sixty-five pound carcass inside of a suit of underwear scarcely large enough for a ten-year-old boy. I said to Old Faithful, you are a mighty good laundryman but you will not do up my flannels any more. I went back to camp regretting that we couldn’t stay in this vicinity long enough to patronize him again.
Early next morning I got up and got breakfast, which was not a very laborious job as it consisted of elk, straight. I saddled and packed up got Josey into his travois and started down the river reluctantly leaving behind us the world’s most marvelous wonders, many of which were yet to be won by human eye. I here resolved to return as soon as circumstances would permit.
We were all day getting into the lower geyser basin, all of ten miles. We camped near the Fountain geyser and as we were leaving next morning it began spouting. Josey asked me to lead his horse around where he could have a good view of the eruption that continued at least a half hour. Josey declared he could have lain there all day, suffering as he was, and watch such displays of natural magnificence and grandeur. I doubt whether distress and pain could relieve him of all desire for such displays of natural beauty. We bade goodbye to the fountain, started on our journey.
The next day we traveled along at a better speed. That afternoon we passed through the portals of that picturesque valley of the Madison and shook hands with a hardy pioneer, George Lyon, whose latch string hung outside of his dirt covered mansion. As we rode up he stood in his yard with his ax in his had silently gazing, full of wonder and amazement at the appearance of such a looking caravan.
Josey perched on his eminence with his head bundled up for protection from mosquitoes with his legs crossed resembling an Arab more than a geyser crippled shoemaker. And I, with my geyser done up clothes, presented a spectacle, which Lyon had never seen before.
We were welcomed, thrice welcomed, to the hospitalities of our host and we were soon off our horses and at home. About the first thing I did was to introduce Josey to a cake of soap and a trough of water, after which there was little resemblance to the man that started out with me in the spring to explore the wonders of Yellowstone.
Our landlord soon spread out a bountiful supper—the best that a bachelor’s culinary affords. After supper we sat around his open fireplace and narrated for the first time our perilous adventures. He listened attentively to all we said and pronounced us lucky to be alive.
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— Abridged from “Calfee’s Adventures” by Henry “Bird” Calfee. Clipping of unknown origin, Pioneer Museum, 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.
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— You can read Eleanor Corthell’s story of her trip to Yellowstone Park in my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.
Today most Yellowstone tourists believe that nature is fragile. They wouldn’t collect a leaf or pick a flower for fear of causing irreparable damage. But early tourists shattered geological features to gather specimens, slaughtered animals for fun, and experimented with geysers.
Explorers Near Old Faithful, August 1871
They reported these things without the slightest embarrassment.
On a Sunday in the summer of 1877, Frank Carpenter was lolling around Old Faithful with his companions: Dingee, Arnold and Mr. Huston—and Frank’s sisters, Ida and Emma. They soon tired of quietly observing the Sabbath and decided to experiment with Old Faithful. Here’s Frank’s story.
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We conclude that we will do our washing, since such an opportunity for “boiling clothes” will not be presented again soon.
Emma and Ida put their clothes in a pillowcase. Dingee took off his blouse and tied a large stone in it and I finished tying it with my handkerchief. Arnold also removed his jacket—and we repaired to the laundry—Old Faithful.
We hear the preparatory rumbling and the waters rise a few feet above the surface. Mr. Houston now gives the command to throw our garments into the water. The water goes down and remains low so long that we begin to feel uneasy. Dingee begins to lament his loss and to curse the man who “put us up to the job up.”
Mr. Huston remarks that it will be all right, and the next instant, with a rush and a roar she “goes off.” The clothes, mixed in every conceivable shape, shoot up to a distance of a hundred feet and fall with a splash in the basins below.
The water subsides, and we fish out the clothing, which, we find as nice and clean as a Chinaman could wash it with a week’s scrubbing. Dingee rejoices.
Wishing to experiment further, we collect an immense quantity of rubbish and drop it into the crater. We fill it to the top with at least a thousand pounds of stones, trees, and stumps. Now we sit down to await further developments.
At the exact time advertised, sixty-five minutes from the time of the last eruption, the earth begins to tremble. We hear the rush again. “Off she goes,” and away go rocks, trees and rubbish—to a height of seventy-five or eighty feet.
Old Faithful seems to have been angered by the unwarrantable procedure on our parts—or he wishes to show us that our attempts to check his power are futile. And he furnishes entertainment of unusual magnitude and duration.
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— From The Wonders in Geyserland by Frank D. Carpenter.
— Photo byWilliam Henry Jackson 1872. Yellowstone Digital Slide.
Marsha Karle lavished praise on my book minutes before the next eruption of Old Faithful.
Part of the fun of singing books in the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn was meeting other authors. On Saturday morning, my friends artist/illustrator Marsha Karle and her husband, author Paul Schullery, stopped to chat. They were kind enough to hang around the lobby for a few minutes announcing loudly how much they enjoyed Adventures in Yellowstone and saying everyone should read it. I can’t wait to get my hands on their new book, This High Wild Country: A Celebration of Waterton- Glacier International Peace Park. The combination of Marsha’ s watercolors and Paul’s prose has to make for a wonderful book.
Too bad Paul wasn’t around a few minutes later when another author of books on fishing arrived. I’m sure he would have enjoyed meeting Harry Sloan, the author of Virginia Trout Streams: A Guide to Fishing the Blue Ridge Watershed.
In the afternoon, I got to meet Ralph Himmelsbach, author of Norjak, The Investigation of D.B. Cooper. Ralph was the lead FBI investigator in the case, one of the most fascinating unsolved crimes of the last century. In case you don’t remember, a man calling himself Dan Cooper highjacked a passenger plane, ransomed it for $200,000, and parachuted away.
I’ll post more later on the thrill of hearing people say “I loved your book,” and the fun of convincing others that they’d enjoy it.
On Saturday, I’m going to the Page-Redfield family reunion in Twin Bridges. I was invited to the event by—let’s see—my second cousin once removed. Something like that; I never did get the hang of calculating kinship. I don’t expect to see any relatives much closer than a third cousin. Sometime a couple of generations back branches of the family drifted apart and I’m pretty sure my brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc, won’t be there. But, there could be dozens of shirttail relatives. My family has had nearly a hundred and fifty years of being fruitful and multiplying in Montana.
The first of my relatives to arrive in Montana Territory was an 11-year-old girl named Mary Christianson. In her application for membership in the Montana Historical Society, Mary said she arrived in Montana in 1864 by the Bridger Cutoff. I imagine Mary walking beside a covered wagon in a train led by the famous mountain man Jim Bridger. Bridger’s wagon train emerged from the canyon that bears his name early in July 1864. From the mouth of the canyon, Mary could have looked past the point where three rivers run together to form the Missouri to the Tobacco Root Mountains 70 miles to the west. Mary’s odyssey from her birthplace in Germany, across the Atlantic and then across America was almost over. Mary would spend the rest of her life west of the Tobacco Roots.
While Mary contemplated her new life in gold-rush Montana, her future husband, James Madison Page, languished in the notorious Civil War prison at Andersonville where union soldiers died by the thousands of starvation and disease. (Andersonville Prison has been burned into the American consciousness as a symbol of inhumanity, but Page said he never saw any intentional cruelty there. In fact, in 1908 Page published a book that said the charges against Major Henry Wirtz, who was hanged for murders he allegedly committed at Andersonville, were trumped up.)
Jim Page was released from Andersonville in a prisoner exchange and returned home to Michigan. After recovering from his ordeal and attending business college, Jim decided to move to Montana in 1866. Family lore says he wanted to rejoin the army so he could fight under his hero, General George Armstrong Custer, but his mother talked him out of it.
Jim got a job as a teamster on one of the wagon trains hauling supplies to the gold fields. When he arrived in Montana, he tried his hand at prospecting, but, like many gold rushers, he soon turned to other ventures. He established his Excelsior Ranch near Twin Bridges and began enticing his siblings to join him. His brother, Robert Wallace Page, came to Montana with his family by steamboat up the Missouri in 1879. Low water stopped the boat at Cow Island, but the family had planned to come overland the remaining distance anyway. A sister, Elmira Utley, came with her family a year later on an “immigrant train” operated by the Utah and Northern Railroad. The track ended at Lima, Montana, then, so the Utleys had to continue by horse and wagon from there to Twin Bridges.
My Great Great Grandfather Rodney Page and his widowed sister, Elvira Stephens, were the last to arrive, coming in 1882. By then the track reached as far as Dillon. Actually, Grandpa Rodney went ahead leaving his wife and sister to manage the move while he rushed ahead to join his brother, Jim, on a surveying expedition to Yellowstone Park. That was the beginning of the Page brothers land survey company, which operated for nearly 40 years. Jim Page said the company surveyed in every county in Montana (probably meaning the original territorial counties).
Descendants of the Pages still tell stories about the 1882 Yellowstone trip. Rodney hired two young assistants named Fred Mercer and Harry Redfield. Mercer and Redfield become close friends and loved playing practical jokes on each other. They used to steal each other’s red flannel underwear and toss it into Old Faithful tinting the next eruption pink—so the story goes. With nearly 4,000 gallons in the typical eruption of Old Faithful, it’s doubtful that one pair of flannels would dye it, but perhaps the prank involved a smaller geyser.
Rodney must have liked Mercer and Redfield well enough. When the survey was done, they followed him home and married his daughters. Harry Redfield married Elvira Page and they had eleven children, so their descendants doubtless will dominate the family reunion. Fred Mercer married Eva Page and they had four children. I descend from the Mercer line.
M. Mark Miller, Author 