“We kept the Yellowstone to our left, and finding the canyon impassable, passed over several high spurs coming down from the mountains, over which the way was much obstructed by fallen timber, and reached, at an elevation of 7,331 feet, an immense rolling plateau extending as far as the eye could reach. This elevated slope of country is about 30 miles in extent, with a general declivity to the northward. Its surface is an undulated prairie dotted with groves of pine and aspen. Numerous lakes are scattered throughout its whole extent, and great numbers of springs, which flow down the slopes and are lost in the volume of the Yellowstone. The river breaks through this plateau in a winding and impassable canyon and trachyte lava over 2,000 feet in depth; the middle canyon of the Yellowstone, rolling over volcanic boulders in some places, and in others forming still pools of seemingly fathomless depth. At one point it dashes here and there, lashed to a white foam, upon its rocky bed; at another it subsides into a crystal mirror wherever a deep basin occurs in the channel. Numerous small cascades are seen tumbling from the lofty summits a mere ribbon of foam in the immeasurable distance below. This huge abyss, through walls of flinty lava, has not been worn away by the waters, for no trace of fluvial agency is left upon the rocks; it is cleft in the strata brought about by volcanic action plainly shown by that irregular structure which gives such a ragged appearance to all such igneous formations. Standing on the brink of the chasm the heavy roaring of the imprisoned river comes to the ear in a sort of hollow, hungry growl, scarcely audible from the depths, and strongly suggestive of demons in torment below. Lofty pines on the bank of the stream ‘dwindle to shrubs in dizziness of distance.’ Everything beneath has a weird and deceptive appearance. The water does not look like water, but like oil. Numerous fishhawks are seen busily plying their vocation, sailing high above the waters, and yet a thousand feet below the spectator. In the clefts of the rocks, hundreds of feet down, bald eagles have their eyries, from which we can see them swooping still further into the depths to rob the ospreys of their hard-earned trout. It is grand, gloomy, and terrible; a solitude peopled with fantastic ideas; and empire of shadows and of turmoil.”
The artist Thomas Moran as he appeared on the 1871 Expedition. W. H. Jackson took this photo as evidence that his seemingly frail friend was actually a durable outdoorsmen.
Spurred on by these reports, Hayden organized his expedition with the support of a $40,000 appropriation from Congress. On June 1, 1871, a team of 34 men and seven wagons, set out from Ogden, Utah. Among the group were geologist and managing director James Stevenson, mineralogist A. C. Peale, topographer Antoine Schoenborn, artists Henry W. Elliott and Thomas Moran, and photographer William H. Jackson. The latter two proved to be invaluable members of the expedition for their work served as dramatic and effective publicity in favor of establishing the park. Moran’s famous landscapes were afterwards hung in the halls of Congress and Jackson’s equally famous photographs portraying the primeval grandeur of the Yellowstone were widely distributed.
William Henry Jackson, self-portrait. Jackson made this exposure while exploring the Tetons in 1872.
The Hayden Survey, led by Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane, about to enter the Yellowstone area. The two-wheeled vehicle, in the center foreground, is an odometer, a horse-drawn device used to measure distances travelled in the wilds.
After several weeks travel, the Hayden expedition reached Boetler’s Ranch in the Yellowstone River Valley. There they were joined by the Barlow-Heap military party of engineer-explorers who also planned a reconnaissance of the Upper Yellowstone. This latter group intermittently explored with the Hayden expedition during the next several weeks. The results of the Barlow-Heap explorations were published as a modest Senate Document which proved to be of material help in establishing the Yellowstone National Park.
The joint Hayden/Barlow-Heap expeditions departed from Boetler’s on July 20, 1871. The journey through the wilderness was by no means an easy one. The wagons had to be abandoned and the gear packed on mules. Progress was slow, and the difficulty of moving through the dense forest was compounded by the great number of trees felled by fires that periodically swept the region.