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Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 23, 1869 Campsite

Historic Campsite in Yellowstone NP, Rocky Mountains near Lake Village, WY

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Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 26-28, 1869 Campsite

Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 21-22, 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.

Eager to explore more of Yellowstone up river from the falls, the men “broke camp at seven o-clock”. Riding up the right bank of the Yellowstone River they soon entered what is now called Hayden Valley, with Folsom describing the valley as having: “gently rolling hills and wide shallow water courses”. Describing the Yellowstone River he wrote: “… flowing with a gentle current along the foot of low hills, or meandering in graceful curves through grassy meadows”. Cook who was Captain of the 3 man expedition, shot two geese far across the river on a sandbar. After riding “six miles” the men forded the river near Crater Hills and Sulphur Mountain to visit geothermal areas. Camping in the area they explored the Crater Hills and Mud Volcano Thermal Areas (Cook 1870; Manuscript, 23-24; Haines 1996, 98).

They described the Mud Volcano area as:

Some 12 miles from the falls we came to a collection of hot springs that deserve more than a passing notice. These, like the most we saw, were situated upon a hillside; and as we approached them we could see the steam rising in puffs at regular intervals of 15 or 20 seconds, accompanied by dull explosions, which could be heard half a mile away, sounding like the discharge of a blast underground. These explosions came from a large cave that ran back under the hill, from which mud had been discharged in such quantities as to form a heavy embankment 20 feet higher than the floor of the cave, which prevented the mud from flowing off; but the escaping steam had kept a hole some 20 feet in diameter open up through the mud in front of the entrance to the cave. The cave seemed nearly filled with mud and the steam rushed out with such volume and force as to lift the whole mass up against the roof and dash it out into the open space in front; and then, as the cloud of steam lifted, we could see the mud settling back in turbid waves into the cavern again. Three hundred yards from the mud cave was another that discharged pure water; the entrance to it was in the form of a perfect arch, 7 feet in height and 5 feet in width. A short distance below these caves were several large sulphur springs, the most remarkable of which was a shallow pool, 75 feet in diameter, in which clear water on one side and yellow mud on the other were gently boiling without mingling (Cook 1870).

— Cook

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.

Mud volcano, Yellowstone National Park, reached by the Northern Pacific Railway via Gardiner Gateway. Yellowstone National Park, ca. 1912. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/90715863/.

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.

Mud Volcano

Northern Pacific Railway 1912 photograph below.

Mud Volcano as it appears today (2023) and with National Park Service informational sign describing the “volcano” that Cook, Folsom, and Peterson saw in 1869.