The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and DescriptiveChittenden, Hiram Martin
History
The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive
Chittenden, Hiram Martin
Yellowstone National Park
"To the eastward Soda Butte Valley penetrates the heart of the rugged
Sierra, whose high peaks rise in castellated forms. The visitor,
disappointed perhaps in the mountain scenery of the Park, after
traveling the usual route over the dusty roads of the Park plateau,
will here find mountain views that are sure to fulfill his
expectations, while the neighborhood is not lacking in curiosities
that in another land would attract visitors from far and wide."[BT]
[BT] Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone. See Appendix E.
_Cooke City_ is a small mining camp just outside the north-east corner
of the Park in the midst of the Clark's Fork mining district. It is of
interest in this connection only on account of its notorious hostility
to the Yellowstone National Park.
_Death Gulch_, reputed to exist in the valley of Cache Creek, is like
Bridger's Glass Mountain, mostly a product of the imagination. It
seems that some animals were once poisoned there, and that later,
certain explorers, finding them, attributed their death to an escape
of carbonic acid gas from the earth. The name has found its way into
maps and reports of highest authority, but the object itself has no
existence.
The _Hoodoo Region_ is near the head of Miller Creek just outside the
original reservation, although within the Forest Reserve addition.
This mysterious region furnishes probably the most striking example in
existence of the effects of erosion and wind action upon masses of
moderately soft rock. The region was discovered by miners in 1870, but
was first explored and reported upon by Colonel Norris in 1880, who
thus describes it:[BU]
"Nearly every form, animate or inanimate, real or chimerical, ever
actually seen or conjured by the imagination, may here be observed.
Language does not suffice to properly describe these peculiar
formations; sketches may probably do something, and photographs more,
to convey a conception of their remarkable character, but actual
observation is absolutely necessary to adequately impress the mind
with the wild, unearthly appearance of these eroded Hoodoos of the
Goblin Land. These monuments are from fifty to two or three hundred
feet in height, with narrow, tortuous passages between them, which
sometimes are tunnels through permanent snow or ice fields, where the
big-horn sheep hide in safety; while the ceaseless but ever changing
moans of the wild winds seem to chant fitting requiems to these
gnome-like monuments of the legendary Indian gods."
[BU] Page 8, Annual Report, Superintendent of the Park, for the year
1880.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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