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Washburn-Langford-Doane September 16, 1870 Campsite

Hot Spring Camp

Historic Campsite on Washburn-Langford-Doane Route in Yellowstone NP, Rocky Mountains near Grant Village, WY

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Washburn-Langford-Doane September 17, 1870 Campsite

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

Fearful of being stranded in a Yellowstone cloaked in winter white, the expedition proceeded to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, where they prepared to leave the Yellowstone Lake area and their lost expedition member Truman Everts.

The shore line is bordered by a levee of obsidian, lava pebbles, and calcareous fragments, cutting off and inclosing ponds of water behind it, from which the surplus waters flow out through crevices in the dike. These ponds are the accumulated waters of thousands of springs breaking from the ground all along the line of the beach. The lake bottom is everywhere free from caverns, and gradually sloping to deep water. The ruins of old spring craters appear at intervals along the shore. In the afternoon the snow had diminished to a general depth of 6 inches, and exposed locations were bare. We spent the evening in collecting specimens from the different springs and laying in a supply of fish for future use.

— Doane p. 27

Further Research and Reading

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.

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

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.