The slab of gray, rhyolite lava from which the stone was shaped is soft and easily worked. It would have taken no great amount of labor to have accomplished the job. Perhaps it provided a means of passing time while Colter was blizzard-bound, or merely loafing in camp, taking a well-earned respite from days of arduous travel. Immediately after the stone was given to the National Park Service in 1933 by Mr. Aubrey C. Lyon, who had acquired it from the Beards, a controversy developed as to its authenticity. The carving of stones and tree trunks by early trappers and explorers was a well-established practice; several such evidences of their passing have been found. There have been hoaxes revealed also, and there were those who refused to accept the Colter Stone as valid. The evidence, what little there was to investigate, was carefully analyzed. There was no duplicity remotely connected with the finding of the stone. The Beards had never heard of John Colter. It had rested at a depth of some several inches beneath the earth’s surface. Certainly Colter would not have carved it, then buried it, so the accumulation of soil above the stone must have been the result of some years, and the stone had weathered before burial, it could hardly have weathered after being covered by earth. In the final analysis, it seems most illogical that anyone mischievously inclined would have been sufficiently informed to perpetrate a hoax at such a remote spot. A prankster would have deposited his bogus relic in a place where he could reasonably expect its ready discovery. Else why bother? The stone now reposes in the Fur Trade Museum at Park Headquarters, Grand Teton National Park, as mute evidence that Colter did indeed “pass this way.” Colter’s route, from the discovery of “his” stone, appears to have led northward along the base of the western side of the Teton Range, until he perceived the next comparatively easy route for a return toward the east. Recrossing the Tetons he struck the western shore of Yellowstone Lake, called “Lake Eustis” on William Clark’s “Map of the West,” published in 1814. Tracing the route outlined on this inaccurate map, historical scholars propound that he followed the Yellowstone River to a crossing near Tower Falls, up the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek, and back across the Absaroka Range. By way then of Clark’s Fork and Pryor’s Fork he made his way back to Manuel’s Fort, arriving early in 1808. So ended a most remarkable tour of some 500 miles, most of it made during the winter months. Aside from the rigors of winter climate, foot travel, on snowshoes, must have proved easier, with underbrush buried beneath the snow, than hiking in summer over the same route.