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Mount Everts
Truman Everts Lost for 37 Days in Yellowstone
Mountain
in
Yellowstone NP
,
Rocky Mountains
near
Mammoth
,
WY
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Truman C. Everts, a member of the 1870 Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition, was lost south of
Yellowstone Lake
when he failed to tie up his horse and it ran off with all his possessions. Everts wandered alone and survived by eating thistle roots, minnows, and birds. Even though Jack Baronett and George Pritchett finally found Everts west of
Crescent Hill
in northern Yellowstone, Washburn mistakenly named the mountain plateau between Mammoth and Rescue Creek as the rescue site. (Chittenden 297-98; Doane 37; Whittlesey 177-78)
Lost
On the first day of his absence he had left his horse standing unfastened, with all his arms and equipments strapped upon his saddle; the animal became frightened, ran away into the woods, and he was left without even a pocket-knife as a means of defense. Being very near-sighted, and totally unused to traveling in a wild country without guides, he became completely bewildered. He wandered down to the Snake RiverLake, where he remained twelve days, sleeping near the hot springs to keep from freezing at night, and climbing to the summits each day in the endeavor to trace out his proper course. Here he subsisted upon thistle-roots [Evert’s thistle or Cirsium foliosum] boiled in the springs, and was kept up a tree the greater part of one night by a California lion. After gathering and cooking a supply of thistle-roots he managed to strike the southwest point of the lake, and followed around the north side to the Yellowstone, finally reaching our camp opposite the Grand Canon. He was twelve days out before he thought to kindle a fire by using the lenses of his field-glass, but after- ward carried a burning brand with him in all his wanderings. Herds of game passed by him during the night, on many occasions when he was on the verge of starvation. In addition to a tolerable supply of thistle-roots, he had nothing for over thirty days but a handful of min- nows and a couple of snow-birds. Twice he went five days without food, and three days without water, in that country which is a net-work of streams and springs. He was found on the verge of the great plateau, above the mouth of Gardiner’s River [Doane is mistaken, the rescue site was “The Cut” near Crescent Hill]. A heavy snow-storm had ex-tinguished his fire; his supply of thistle-roots was exhausted; he was partially deranged, and perishing with cold. A large lion was killed near him, on the trail, which he said had followed him at a short dis-tance for several days previously. It was a miraculous escape, consider-ing the utter helplessness of the man, lost in a forest wilderness, and with the storms of winter at hand.
— Doane page 37
Evert’s Thistle
pictured below:
Elk Thistle
Cirsium foliosum (species)
Naming Mount Everts
Chittenden rightfully captured the Washburn folly of misnaming the once called “Great Plateau” to “Mount Everts”, while expedition member Cornelius Hedges’ had earlier named Mount Everts to a high peak south of Yellowstone Lake. Then Captain Barlow in 1871 unwarily renamed Hedge’s Mount Evert to today’s
Mount Sheridan
(Chittenden 297-99; Whittlesey 177-78):
On the thirty-seventh day of his wanderings (September 9th to October 16th), he was discovered by Jack Baronett and George A. Pritchett, near the great [Bannock] trail on a high mountain a few miles west of Yancey’s [Hole at “The Cut”]. Baronett threw up a mound of stones to mark the spot. He carried Everts in his arms the rest of that day, and passed the night on a small tributary of Black-tail Deer Creek. The next day he was taken on a saddle to near the mouth of the Gardiner [River].
— Chittenden
The commemoration of this adventure in the naming of Mt. Everts was an awkward mischance. The mountain which should bear the name is Mt. Sheridan. It was named for Everts by the Washburn Party the night before he was lost, in recognition of his having been the first white man (except Mr. Hedges, who was with him) known to have visited its summit. In the writings of the Washburn Party after their return, it is so used; one very interesting article, by Mr. Hedges, with this name as a title, being published in the Helena Herald before it was known that Mr. Everts had been found. But the name, Mt. Everts, was finally given to the broad plateau between the Gardiner and the Yellowstone, a feature which is not a mountain at all, and which is ten miles from where Everts was found. The actual locality of the finding was erroneously supposed to be near “Rescue Creek.”
— Chittenden
In 1871, Captain Barlow ascended the mountain which should have borne the name of Everts, and called it Mt. Sheridan, in ignorance of its former christening.
— Chittenden
Today’s Mount Everts previously named the Great Plateau:
Geology of Mount Everts
Atop Mount Everts young rocks sit on top of much older stone, with about 60 million years of geologic history missing between the two. The volcanic Huckleberry Ridge Tuff about 2.1 million years old, lies directly on top of a layer of 60-65 million years old Cretaceous marine sandstone deposited by an ancient shallow sea. When viewed up close, right at the unconformity layer where rock history is missing, are conspicuous orange, white, and black colored layers of rock (USGS websites; Willsey 2022, video).
The bottom orange layer of rock is the oxidized sedimentary marine sandstone rock, which was buried quickly in volcanic hot ash.
Above the orange color, is the thin white layer of volcanic ash “tufa or tuff”, that quickly heat blanketed the sandstone. This cooled, fine grained, white ash is so soft it will crumble in your hand.
Above the white ash layer, is a black colored volcanic “pyroclastic flow” layer that contained a high-density mix of hot lava pieces, pumice, ash, and volcanic gas. The black layer is a chilled margin zone of this pyroclastic flow, which cooled quickly after deposit.
Geology of the unconformity on Mount Everts is shown below. The sketch at the top was made by geologist William Henry Holmes in 1878 and correctly identifies Cretaceous sediments overlain by much younger rhyolite rocks, including fine ash deposits (“tufa”). The photo at the bottom shows the same outcrop as viewed from Mammoth Hot Springs (USGS Poland)
Shown in the labeled photograph below, an unconformity at the top of Mount Everts is located where the younger Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, lies directly on top of the much older Cretaceous marine sediments. About 60 million years of geologic history is missing between the two formations. Canary Spring, part of the Mammoth Hot Springs terraces, lies in the foreground. (USGS Poland)
Historical Photographs
South slopes of Mount Everts. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. ca. 1890. Joseph Paxson Iddings (USGS) photograph above.
On the Web
On Wikipedia
Mount Everts el. 7,846 feet (2,391 m) is a prominent mountain peak in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming near Mammoth Hot Springs. The peak was named for Truman C. Everts, a member of the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition of 1870. Mount Everts is located immediately due south of Gardiner, Montana and due east of Mammoth Hot Springs.
Read More on Wikipedia
Sources
Chittenden, Hiram Martin.
Yellowstone National Park
. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company, 1895.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42112/42112-h/42112-h.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
.
USGS. “Pyroclastic Flows Move Fast and Destroy Everything in Their Path.” Accessed November 20, 2023.
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/pyroclastic-flows-move-fast-and-destroy-everything-their-path
.
USGS, and Dan Dzurisin. “What’s in a Name? The Misadventures of Truman Everts.” Accessed November 17, 2023.
https://www.usgs.gov/news/whats-a-name-misadventures-truman-everts
.
USGS, William Henry Holmes, and Michael Poland.
Geology of the Unconformity on Mount Everts in Yellowstone National Park
. January 2023. Sketch and Image.
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/geology-unconformity-mount-everts-yellowstone-national-park
.
USGS, and Michael Poland.
Angular Unconformity atop Mount Everts, Yellowstone National Park
. October 12, 2020. Image.
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/angular-unconformity-atop-mount-everts-yellowstone-national-park
.
USGS, and Michael Poland. “Yellowstone’s Unconformity – over 60 Million Years of Missing Geologic History!,” June 13, 2021.
https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/yellowstones-unconformity-over-60-million-years-missing-geologic-history
.
Whittlesey, L.H.
Yellowstone Place Names
. Second. Wonderland Publishing Company, 2006.
Yellowstone’s Largest Eruption Bakes Rock below, Leaves Two Ash Layers, and Creates an Unconformity
. Video. Willsey, Shawn, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLc2an8C2Ws
.
Taxonomy
Classified As
Mountain
Geologic Formations
Everts Formation, Eagle Sandstone, and Telegraph Creek Formation (WYKet;0)
Geologic Formation
Everts Formation
Geologic Formation
Eagle Sandstone
Geologic Formation
Telegraph Creek Formation
Geologic Formation
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