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Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 14-15, 1869 Campsite

Historic Campsite on Bannock Trail, Folsom-Cook-Peterson Route in Yellowstone NP, Rocky Mountains near Buffalo Ford, WY

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Montana gold miners David E. Folsom, Charles W. Cook, and William Peterson departed the Montana mines in 1869 and headed into the Yellowstone area prospecting for gold. Their privately financed expedition was unsuccessful in finding gold, but Folsom’s and Cook’s stories and published accounts further stirred the imagination of an American Wonderland. The “approximated” expedition route and historic campsites, combined with selected portions of their journals, provide a story map before Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872.

Early morning September 14th, the 3 mounted gold miners spotted a Native American “driving a band of twenty or twenty-five head of horses”. To avoid trouble, they altered their “course slightly”, yet soon met two friendly Shoshone Indians and quickly learned about “thirty lodges of Sheepeaters [Shoshones] eight days ahead”. Wary not to get into trouble, the men continued their journey alone leaving the band of the Shoshones behind. Their route paralleling the south rim of Black Canyon of the Yellowstone became increasing rugged, so they ascended onto Blacktail Deer Plateau eventually discovering a well traveled trail they followed to their campsite somewhere along the left bank of the Yellowstone River probably between the Lamar River confluence and the Tower Falls area.

An arbitrary campsite is placed near the Tower Creek confluence were the Bannock Trail fords the Yellowstone River. The miners explored the area an additional day, September 15th before fording the Yellowstone and ascending the Lamar River. During that extra day Folsom enjoyed fishing, and they all gazed at rock formations like The Needle and others in the Devil’s Den; layers of hexagonal basalt; the Overhanging Cliff viewpoint, the geothermal Calcite Spring and Nymph Spring and of course Tower Falls (Haines 1996, 96-97; Manuscript 13-14; NPS “Tower … Bannock Trail”).

Folsom described The Needle as:

A short distance above us, rising from the bed of the river, stood a monument or pyramid of conglomerate, circular in form, which we estimated to be 40 feet in diameter at the base and 300 feet high, diminishing in size in a true taper to its top, which was not more than 3 feet across. It was so slender that it looked as if one man could topple it over. How it was formed I leave others to conjecture. (Haines 1974)

— Folsom

Folsom noted observing the basalt layers from Overhanging Cliff as:

We picked our way to a timbered point about midway of the canyon, and found ourselves upon the verge of an overhanging cliff at least 700 feet in height. The opposite bluff was about on a level with the place where we were standing; and it maintained this height for a mile up the river, but gradually sloped away toward the foot of the canyon. The upper half presented an unbroken face, with here and there a reentering angle, but everywhere maintained its perpendicularity; the lower half was composed of the debris that had fallen from the wall. But the most singular feature was the formation of the perpendicular wall. At the top there was a stratum of basalt from 30 to 40 feet thick standing in hexagonal columns; beneath that a bed of conglomerate 80 feet thick, composed of washed gravel and bowlders; then another stratum of columnar basalt of about half the thickness of the first; and lastly what appeared to be a bed of coarse sandstone. (Haines 1974)

— Folsom

Sources

Cook, C. W. “The Valley of the Upper Yellowstone.” Western Monthly, July 1870. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yell/cramton/appd.htm.

Folsom, D.E., and N.P. Langford. The Folsom-Cook Exploration of the Upper Yellowstone in the Year 1869. St. Paul: H.L. Collins Company, Printers, 1894. https://books.google.com/books?id=t65LAQAAIAAJ.

Folsom, David E., and Charles W. Cook. “The Valley of the Upper Yellowstone.” Typewritten version of the original manuscript draft, ca 1904. Montana State University Library - Collection 2570 - David E. Folsom Papers, 1869-1904. https://www.lib.montana.edu/digital/objects/coll2570/2570-B01-F03.pdf

Haines, Aubrey L. “Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment,” 1974. http://npshistory.com/handbooks/historical/yell/haines/index.htm.

Haines, Aubrey L. The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park. Revised. Vol. 1. Boulder CO: Yellowstone Association for Natural Science, History & Education, 1996.

NPS. “Tower – Roosevelt and the Northeast-Glimpse the Bannock Trail.” Yellowstone National Park, May 25, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/towerrplan.htm.

Further Research and Reading

Cook, C.W., D.E. Folsom, W. Peterson, and A.L. Haines. The Valley of the Upper Yellowstone: An Exploration of the Headwaters of the Yellowstone River in the Year 1869, as Recorded by Charles W. Cook, David E. Folsom, and William Peterson. American Exploration and Travel Series. University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.

Calcite Springs

Basalt

Two basalt lava stratums, each comprised of dark hexagonal columns.

Taxonomy

Classified As

Historic Campsite