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                             COLTER’S HELL
                                  AND
                             JACKSON’S HOLE


                          By Merrill J. Mattes


                              Published by
               YELLOWSTONE LIBRARY AND MUSEUM ASSOCIATION
                                and the
                GRAND TETON NATURAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION
                          in cooperation with
                         NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

[Illustration: Yellowstone Library and Museum Association; National Park
                                Service]

           © 1962 Yellowstone Library and Museum Association
                              Reprint 1970


The Yellowstone Library and Museum Association and the Grand Teton
Natural History Association are non-profit distributing organizations
whose purpose is the stimulation of interest in the educational and
inspirational aspects of Yellowstone and Grand Teton history and natural
history. The Associations cooperate with and are recognized by the
United States Department of the Interior and its Bureau, the National
Park Service, as essential operating organizations.

As one means of accomplishing their aims the Associations publish
reasonably priced booklets which are available for purchase by mail
throughout the year or at the museum information desks in the parks
during the summer.

Photographs used were provided through the courtesy of the National Park
Service, except where otherwise credited.




                   COLTER’S HELL AND JACKSON’S HOLE:
 The Fur Trappers’ Exploration of the Yellowstone and Grand Teton Park
                                 Region


                                   By
                           Merrill J. Mattes




                           TABLE OF CONTENTS


                                                                     Page
       I. Strange Land of “Volcanoes” and “Shining Mountains”           1
      II. The Mystery of “La Roche Jaune” or Yellow Rock River          9
     III. John Colter, The Phantom Explorer—1807-1808                  13
      IV. “Colter’s Hell”: A Case of Mistaken Identity                 19
       V. “Les Trois Tetons”: The Golden Age of Discovery, 1810-1824   25
      VI. “Jackson’s Hole”: Era of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company,
                               1825-1832                               35
     VII. “The Fire Hole”: Era of the American Fur Company, 1833-1840  53
    VIII. Epilogue: 1841-1870                                          77
          Selected Bibliography                                        86
          Vicinity Map at rear

                      [Illustration: BEAVER TRAP]




         I. Strange Land of “Volcanoes” and “Shining Mountains”


The Yellowstone-Grand Teton region was not officially discovered and its
scenic marvels were not publicly proclaimed until the 1870’s, beginning
with the Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition. For thirty years before,
from 1841 to 1869, this region was a Paradise Lost, rarely visited by
white men. But for thirty years before that, or from 1807 to 1840, this
region had hundreds of appreciative visitors. These were the Rocky
Mountain fur trappers. While searching for the golden-brown fur of the
beaver, destined for the St. Louis market, these adventurers thoroughly
explored this fabulous region. Although news of their discoveries
received scant public notice back in the settlements, or was discounted
as tall tales, to them belongs the honor of being the first actual
explorers of these twin parks.

Neighboring Yellowstone and Grand Teton, established as National Parks
in 1872 and 1929, respectively, are separately managed today as units of
our National Park System. But geographically, now as well as in the
early nineteenth century, they embrace one unique region, characterized
by topographic and geologic features that are the crescendo of a great
scenic symphony. Here, at the heart of the continent, the source of the
three major river systems of the continent—the Columbia, the Colorado,
and the Missouri-Mississippi—may be found the greatest geyser basins,
the largest mountain lake, the most colorful of kaleidoscopic canyons,
one of the richest arrays of wildlife, and one of the most spectacularly
beautiful mountain ranges in the world. The Yellowstone-Grand Teton
region has historical unity, also, particularly during the obscure but
heroic age of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

“Colter’s Hell”—bearing the name of the legendary discoverer, and
conjuring up visions of a primitive “Dante’s Inferno”—is the term which
visitors today associate with the early history of Yellowstone National
Park and its universally famous hydrothermal wonders. Actually, the
wandering, bearded, buck-skinned beaver trappers never referred to the
geyser region of the upper Madison as Colter’s Hell. As we will see, the
real Colter’s Hell in Jim Bridger’s day was another place altogether,
having nothing to do with anything within Yellowstone Park itself. In
trapper times the Yellowstone geyser area had no fixed name but was
variously described by them as a region of “great volcanoes,” “boiling
springs” or “spouting fountains.” On the recently discovered Hood and
Ferris maps (see below) it is labeled “the Burnt Hole” (although this
name seems to have been restricted by Russell and others to the Hebgen
Lake Valley). Captain Bonneville tells us that his men knew of this
region as “the Firehole” and this name, as applied to the river draining
the geyser basins, survives today.

Yellowstone Park, carved out of territorial Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho,
is a rough-edged rectangle of 3,500 square miles that straddles the
twisting course of the Continental Divide. It is a geological circus, a
unique creation of ancient volcanoes and glaciers, flanked on the
southeast and east by the Absaroka Range, on the north by the Snowy
Range, on the northwest by the Gallatin and Madison ranges, on the west
by the Centennial Range, and on the south by the Teton Mountains.

From the Park