The infeasibility of moving 43 million cubic yards of collapsed mountain in quest of this gruesome total was almost immediately apparent.
Aerial photos taken that next morning showed that the slide hadn’t covered the improved portion of Rock Creek Campground—the section with five formally-laid-out campsites, each with parking spot, fireplace, picnic tables, etc. But this didn’t help much toward an estimate of the total buried, because of the informal fashion in which both trailer and tent campers would set up for the night anywhere they could find a level spot.
Water from normal flow of the Madison beginning to flood the canyon, and Rock Creek Campground, which was located under the water at the right. Note the streaks showing the flow patterns of the slide.(Montana Highway Commission)
Fred Brauer of the Forest Service Fire Control Division in Region 1, HQ in Missoula spent quite a bit of time talking to survivors and others who might help to establish a probable total.
Rev. Ost, who’d been camped in Rock Creek Campground, said that he had counted 21 trailers between the mouth of the Madison Canyon and the spot he camped. The undertaker in Ennis, Charles Raper, put his estimate at 100 to 160.
Brauer found that Marshal George Hibert of the town of Ennis had been on a fishing trip in the vicinity of the slide area on Monday, August 17, and for some inexplicable reason decided to cut the trip short, leaving the area at 9:30 o’clock that night, about two hours before the quake. He guessed, from his observations, that there could be 100 people under the slide.
Guy Hanson, a West Yellowstone 5th and 6th grade school teacher who was working that summer as a Fire Prevention Guard for the Forest Service, had periodically checked the Madison Valley campgrounds. In one survey, shortly before the quake, he’d found five tents, eight trailers, and 42 people in the Rock Creek Campground. In the adjacent, unimproved area, he’d counted another 25 people. At noon the Monday of the quake, he’d helped police the improved area and found six trailers parked there at midday. He didn’t check the unimproved area.
From his familiarity with the campground, Hanson felt that 40 campers were probably trapped under the slide. Brauer chilled as Hanson told him that the occupancy could be higher if there were groups, such as Boy Scouts, camped there. He described how often he’d found scout encampments at Rock Creek, and how one scoutmaster had told him that this was a favorite camping objective for many Utah scout troops.
While Brauer was trying for an answer as to how many, others were working on the question of just who was buried under the slide. Mrs. T. Mark Stowe of Sandy, Utah, was considered a probable from the first. Her husband was washed out from under the lower end of the slide, and it was logical to deduce that she’d been caught under the rock mass.