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Folsom-Cook-Peterson Sept 29, 1869 Campsite

Historic Campsite in Yellowstone NP, Rocky Mountains near Grant Village, 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.

Haines a former park historian at Yellowstone National Park, concluded the men rode west from Yellowstone Lake and somewhere along the northern edge of Shoshone Lake they ascended what is now called DeLacey Creek. Headed home to Montana via the Madison River, they would eventually cross the the Continental Divide and descend White Creek to Lower Geyser Basin arriving on the evening of October 1, 1869 (Cook 1870; Haines 1996, 99).

A speculative September 29th campsite is placed at the mouth of DeLacey Creek at Shoshone Lake representing their trek towards the Continental Divide. Cook later described Shoshone Lake as:

September 29 we took up our march for home [from Yellowstone Lake’s West Thumb area]. Our plan was to cross the range in a northwesterly direction, find the Madison River, and follow it down to civilization. Twelve miles brought us to a small triangular-shaped [Shoshone] lake about 8 miles long, deeply set among the hills (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.

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.