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Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 21-22, 1869 Campsite

Historic Campsite on Folsom-Cook-Peterson Route in Yellowstone NP, Rocky Mountains near Canyon Village, WY

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Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 23, 1869 Campsite

Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 20, 1869 Campsite

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.

After easily riding “18 miles” over country not littered with down timber or thick underbrush they reached the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River “ two miles below the falls”. They traveled “up the river a half mile above the upper falls and camped” the evening of Sept. 21st where they could find grass for their horses. One the 22nd the three miners spent the entire day exploring the south rim canyon area near the Yellowstone River falls. They were in awe of the surrounding scenery and wrote: “Language is inadequate to convey a just conception of the awful grandeur and sublimity of this masterpiece of nature’s handiwork” (Cook 1870; Manuscript, 23; Haines 1996, 97-98).

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.

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.