One of the most venerable old axioms of fur trade history is that of
Colter’s Hell, which may be formulated thus: “After John Colter
discovered what is now Yellowstone National Park, he told others of the
scenic wonders there. No one believed him, and his listeners derisively
dubbed the imaginary place Colter’s Hell.” No item of Yellowstone
history is more widely believed, more universally beloved, and more
transparently incorrect.
There was a Colter’s Hell in the fur trappers lexicon, which referred
specifically to an ancient thermal area bordering the Shoshone River
just west of present Cody, Wyoming. The term was never applied
historically to the thermal zone within Yellowstone Park itself. It was
Hiram M. Chittenden, the esteemed engineer and historian who first
suggested this usage in 1895 with the original edition of his book,
Yellowstone National Park.
The earliest published reference to “Colter’s Hell” is in Washington
Irving’s version of Capt. Benjamin L. E. Bonneville’s journal narrating
events from 1832 to 1835. However, note here that this “volcanic tract”
with its “gloomy terrors, its hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious
streams and the all-pervading ‘smell of brimstone’” was located,
according to Irving, not on the headwaters of the Yellowstone but on the
Shoshone or “the Stinking River” or “the Stinkingwater,” originally
named on the Clark Map. It was Chittenden in 1895 and not Irving in 1837
who started the legend by asserting vaguely that “the region of ...
[Colter’s] adventures was long derisively known as ‘Colter’s Hell,’”
implying that by “region” he meant Yellowstone Park, the subject of his
book. He does not accuse Bonneville or Irving of error, perforce
conceding that “this name early came to be restricted to the locality
where Colter discovered the tar spring on the Stinkingwater,” but he
hopefully guesses that “Colter’s description, so well summed up by
Irving ... undoubtedly referred in large part to what he saw in the
Yellowstone and Snake River Valleys.” This is where the misconception
got started.
It is significant that no historian prior to Chittenden entertained this
misconception. For example, in 1890 Hubert H. Bancroft wrote: “Far east
of ... [the volcanic basins on the Upper Madison], on the Stinkingwater
Fork ... is Colter’s Hell, where similar phenomenon is exhibited on a
lesser scale.” It is further significant that in his monumental American
Fur Trade of the Far West, the first edition of which appeared in 1902,
seven years after the first edition of Yellowstone, Chittenden wrote
that Colter was “the first to pass through the singular region which has
since become known throughout the world as the Yellowstone Wonderland.
He also saw the immense tar spring at the forks of Stinkingwater River,
a spot which came to bear the name of Colter’s Hell.” This is his only
reference here to the term, which is a clear if tacit admission that he
was in error in the first instance to create the impression that it ever
applied contemporaneously to Yellowstone Park. But the impression once
created would not down. Like Aladdin’s wonderful lamp, the jinni was out
of the bottle, and the poetic version of “Colter’s Hell” has become a
stock item in Western literature.
Defenders of the Colter’s Hell mythology are eager to challenge
Washington Irving as an authority. True, Irving’s Captain Bonneville by
his own admission never personally saw the Yellowstone Park area. Also,
it is true that geysers are not to be seen today along the Shoshone
River. Hence it might be reasoned that the only noteworthy thermal
activity in 1807 was likewise confined to the Yellowstone (more
particularly, to the upper Madison), and that Bonneville was merely
reporting a twisted rumor. But a cold examination of the facts shows
that Irving and Bonneville were correct.
[Illustration: Colter Monument.
Photo by Author]
First, there is no good reason to question Bonneville’s geographical
knowledge. While he never saw it himself, Bonneville had quite a crew
circulating through the future park as early as 1833 and, in fact, there
is reason to believe that the great geyser basin of Firehole River,
climaxed by Old Faithful, was discovered that year by one of his own
lieutenants (see Chapter VII).
Secondly, although there are no phenomena readily apparent to passing
motorists at the bona fide and unmarked Colter’s Hell site just west of
Cody, the evidence of thermal activity, not entirely extinct now, is
abundantly evident to anyone who cares to pause enroute to or from
Yellowstone’s East Gate. On the Canyon rim downstream from the rocky
defile enclosing the Buffalo Bill Dam, there are extinct geyser cones up
to thirty feet in height and an extensive crust of fragile sinter. In
the canyon floor itself there are bubbling fountains in the river bed,
and the same pervasive smell of rotten eggs, (or more scientifically,
sulphur dioxide) which assails one’s nostrils on the Upper Firehole.
(Other related hot springs once existed at the forks of the Shoshone,
now drowned beneath the reservoir).
[Illustration: Colter Stone Find Site (Wyoming).
Photo by Author]
How very strange that this spot, quite evidently the “Boiling Spring” of
Colter’s famous route on the William Clark Map of 1810, has been largely
ignored since 1895. Campfire writers and lecturers have been so
enchanted by the Yellowstone “Wonderland,” they never gave thought to
this historical-geological feature 50 miles outside of the Park
boundary.
Thirdly, Bonneville wasn’t the only one who knew about the phenomena on
the Stinkingwater. The true identity of Colter’s Hell was well
understood by other mountain men. In 1829 Joe Meek knew all about steam
vents “on the Yellowstone Plains,” but he also was familiar with a
volcanic tract on “Stinking Fork,” previously “seen by one of Lewis and
Clarke’s men, named Colter, while on a solitary hunt, and by him also
denominated ‘hell.’” In 1852 the famed missionary-explorer, Father De
Smet, cited “Captain Bridger” as the source of his information that,
“Near the source of the River Puante, which empties into the Big Horn
... is a place called Colter’s Hell—from a beaver-hunter of that name.
This locality is often agitated with subterranean fires....”
Stallo Vinton, early Colter biographer and editor of the 1935 edition of
Chittenden’s American Fur Trade, paid no attention to Chittenden’s
footnoted correction of 1902. Rather, he did more than anyone, perhaps,
to exterminate the true Colter’s Hell and pin the name on the National
Park. He accuses Irving of a substantial error in locating “Hell” on the
Stinking River. Similarly, he ignores Joe Meek’s careful distinction
between the Yellowstone and Shoshone volcanic tracts.
In 1863 Walter Washington DeLacy accompanied a party of Montana
gold-seekers through the Yellowstone Park area. Although his companions
were too absorbed in the search for the precious metal to pay any
attention to the scenic wonders, DeLacy, a surveyor by trade, did pay
attention and subsequently published a crude but illuminating map of the
Park region. Here the principal geyser basin on Firehole River is called
“Hot Springs Valley.” And far to the east, near the forks of the
Shoshone is a “Hot Spring, Colter’s Hill.” [sic] In 1867 the official
map of the Interior Department, by Keeler, apparently reproducing
DeLacy’s data, also indicates a “Hot Spring, Coulter’s Hill.” [sic] So
the Federal Government, at this early date, gave this official
recognition to the clear distinction between the two thermal areas.
Vinton refers to the DeLacy and Keeler maps but he dismisses this
further evidence as a mistake. Perhaps his stubborn version of Colter’s
Hell would have collapsed if he had seen the recently discovered
Bridger-De Smet Map of 1851, in the Office of Indian Affairs. Here
Bridger also clearly distinguishes between “Sulphur Spring or Colter’s
Hell Volcano” on Stinking Fork and an entirely different “Great Volcanic
Region in state of eruption” drained by Firehole River. (See Chapter
VIII.) Can we invoke any higher authority than Jim Bridger?
[Illustration: Jim Bridger.]
[Illustration: GREEN RIVER KNIFE]