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Washburn-Langford-Doane September 10, 1870 Campsite

Flat Mountain Arm Inlet Campsite

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

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Washburn-Langford-Doane September 11-15, 1870 Campsite

Washburn-Langford-Doane September 9, 1870 Campsite

The expedition slogged another brutal 5 miles around Yellowstone Lake and established a camp at the tip of Flat Mountain Arm. Unfortunately, Truman C. Everts, now separated from the party, was neither signaled nor found by the expedition. The best luck of the day was fishing was good.

We broke camp at 10 a. m., taking a westerly course through fallen timber and over steep ridges, striking a long, slender arm of the lake in the afternoon; camped on this inlet – distance, 5 miles. Parties then went back on the trail, and laterally, hunting Mr. Everts. Messrs. Hauser and Langford ascended a high peak near camp and fired the woods, in hope of giving him a point of direction. We also fired signal guns during the night. In the evening large numbers of fish were caught, Private Williamson catching 52 large trout, all that two men could carry, in less than an hour. The night passed away and the missing man did not come. In the early morning we were serenaded by a couple of lions, their melancholy voices echoing through the heavy frost with a peculiar, wild, and mournful sound. We had blazed trees at all our camps throughout the whole trip, leaving on each a record, with date, route, and distances marked on the hewn sections. Here we also hung up in sight a few rations, hoping Mr. Everts might strike our trail and follow after we had gone.

— Doane (1873)

Further Research and Reading

Everts, Truman C. “Thirty-Seven Days of Peril.” Scribner’s Monthly, November 1871. http://archive.org/details/scribnersmonthly31newy.

Scott, K.A. Yellowstone Denied: The Life of Gustavus Cheyney Doane. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.

Sources

Cramton, Louis C. Early History of Yellowstone National Park and Its Relation to National Park Policies. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1932. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yell/cramton/index.htm.

Doane, Gustavus Cheyney. Letter from the Secretary of War, Communicating the Report of Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane upon the so-Called Yellowstone Expedition of 1870. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1873. http://archive.org/details/letterfromsecret1873unit.

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

Hedges, Cornelius. “Journal of Judge Cornelius Hedges.” In Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana, 1904 Edition. Vol. 5. Helena, MT: Independent Publishing Company, 1876. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Contributions_to_the_Historical_Society/yt4UAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1.

Langford, N. P. “The Wonders of the Yellowstone.” Scribner’s Monthly, May 1871. http://archive.org/details/scribnersmonthly02newy.

Langford, N. P. “The Wonders of the Yellowstone.” Scribner’s Monthly, June 1871. http://archive.org/details/scribnersmonthly02newy.

Langford, Nathaniel Pitt. Diary of the Washburn Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers in the Year 1870. St. Paul, Minn., [c1905]. http://archive.org/details/diaryofwashburne00langrich. However, Langford’s “Diary of the Washburn Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers in the Year 1870” or “The Discovery of Yellowstone National Park” material, which was published 35 years after the expedition, and used bearing that in mind.

Trumbull, Walter. “The Washburn Yellowstone Expedition.” The Overland Monthly, 1871. California State Library. http://archive.org/details/overlandmonthly06hart.