Soda Butte (15 miles above Junction Butte) and Soda Butte Cañon, extending from Soda Butte to Cooke City, are worthy of much attention. The cañon in particular is as wonderful a bit of scenery as any mountains afford. It is every-where rugged, majestic and imposing, and there is no point in its twelve miles length that does not present a landscape deserving of the tourist’s careful study. Mr. W. H. Weed, who has done much work in the Park, and particularly in this section, says of this valley:
“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.
Returning to Junction Valley, and following down the Yellowstone, the tourist soon arrives at the Third Cañon (the third above Livingston, the Grand Cañon being fourth), which extends from the eastern limit of Junction Valley to the north boundary of the Park. Located anywhere else, away from the overshadowing splendor of the Grand Cañon, it would become celebrated. Some of the views, particularly from the high ground north of Mt. Everts, overlooking by nearly 2,000 feet the vast chasm through which the turbulent river flows, are among the most impressive in the entire region.