For the circumstance of naming Mt. Langford, see “Mt. Doane.”
Mary Mountain (8,500)—J: 7—Probably so named by tourists from Mary Lake, which rests on the summit.
Moran, Mt. (12,800)—W: 5—1872—U. S. G. S.—For the artist, Thomas Moran, who produced the picture of the Grand Cañon now in the Capitol at Washington.
Needles, The (9,600)—E: 14—1885—U. S. G. S.—Characteristic.
PHILETUS W. NORRIS.
Norris, Mt. (9,900)—E: 13—1878—U. S. G. S.—For Philetus W. Norris, second Superintendent of the Park, and the most conspicuous figure in its history.
He was born at Palmyra, New York, August 17, 1821. At the age of eight, he was tourist guide at Portage Falls on the Genesee River, New York, and at seventeen he was in Manitoba in the service of British fur traders. In 1842, he settled in Williams County, Ohio, where he founded the village of Pioneer. Between 1850 and 1860 he visited the Far West. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he entered the army and served a short time as spy and captain of scouts. He was then placed in charge of Rebel prisoners on Johnson’s Island. He next entered politics as member of the Ohio House of Representatives, but being later defeated for the State Senate, he joined the United States Sanitary Commission and went again to the front. He soon returned and became trustee of certain landed property near the City of Detroit belonging to officers and soldiers of both armies. These lands he reclaimed at great expense from their original swampy condition, and built thereon the village of Norris, now part of Detroit. In 1770, he went west again and undertook to enter the Park region in June of that year, but permitted the swollen condition of the streams to defeat his project. He thus missed the honor which a few months later fell to the Washburn Party—a misfortune which he never ceased to deplore. In 1875, he again visited the Park, and in 1877, became its second Superintendent. In 1882, he returned to Detroit, after which he was employed by the government to explore old Indian mounds, forts, villages, and tombs, and to collect relics for the National Museum. He died at Rocky Hill, Kentucky, January 14, 1885. He is author of the following works: Five Annual Reports as Superintendent of the Park; “The Calumet of the Coteau,” a volume of verse, with much additional matter relating to the Park; and a long series of articles on “The Great West,” published in the Norris Suburban in 1876-8.
The above sketch sufficiently discloses the salient characteristic of Norris' career. His life was that of the pioneer, and was spent in dealing first blows in the subjugation of a primeval wilderness. He was “blazing trails,” literally and figuratively, all his days, leaving to others the building of the finished highway. It is therefore not surprising that his work lacks the element of completeness, which comes only from patient attention to details. Nowhere is this defect more apparent than in his writings. A distinct literary talent, and something of the poet’s inspiration, were, to use his own words, “well nigh strangled” by the “stern realities of border life.” His prose abounds in aggregations of more than one hundred words between periods, so ill arranged and barbarously punctuated as utterly to bewilder the reader. His verse—we have searched in vain for a single quatrain that would justify reproduction. Nevertheless, his writings, like his works, were always to some good purpose. They contained much useful information, and, being widely read throughout the West, had a large and beneficial influence.
Perhaps no better or more generous estimate of his character can be found than in the following words of Mr. Langford who knew him well: “He was a good man, a true man, faithful to his friends, of very kind heart, grateful for kindnesses, of more than ordinary personal courage, rather vain of his poetical genius, and fond of perpetuating his name in prominent features of scenery.”