As late as 1848, the accomplished Belgian priest, Father DeSmet, placed Colter’s Hell on the Stinking Water on the strength of information obtained from the few trappers who were left in the mountains at that date. The courageous priest, known as “Black Robe” to the Indians, was on his way to visit the Sioux in 1848 when he wrote the following account: “Near the source of the River Puante (Stinking Water, now called Shoshone) which empties into the Big Horn, and the sulphurous waters of which have probably the same medicinal qualities as the celebrated Blue Lick Springs of Kentucky, is a place called Colter’s Hell—from a beaver hunter of that name. This locality is often agitated with subterranean fires. The sulphurous gases which escape in great volumes from the burning soil infect the atmosphere for several miles, and render the earth so barren that even the wild wormwood cannot grow on it. The beaver hunters have assured me that the frequent underground noises and explosions are frightful.”
Washington Irving, in The Rocky Mountains: (1837) says:
The Crow country has other natural curiosities, which are held in superstitious awe by the Indians, and considered great marvels by the trappers. Such is the Burning Mountain, on Powder River, abounding with anthracite coal. Here the earth is hot and cracked; in many places emitting smoke and sulphurous vapors, as if covering concealed fires. A volcanic tract of similar character is found on Stinking River, one of the tributaries of the Big Horn, which takes its unhappy name from the odor derived from sulphurous springs and streams. This last mentioned place was first discovered by Colter, a hunter belonging to Lewis and Clark’s exploring party, who came upon it in the course of his lonely wanderings, and gave such an account of its gloomy terrors, its hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious streams, and the all-pervading “smell of brimstone,” that it received, and has ever since retained among the trappers, the name of “Colter’s Hell!”
Upon reaching the valley of the Wind, it would have been logical for Colter’s route to have been north and west over the Wind River Mountains through Union Pass, the easiest available, at an elevation of 9,210 feet. Here historians have indulged in a long standing, and unresolvable debate, some authorities contending that he would probably have followed up the Little Wind River, crossing the Wind River Mountains further north, at Togwotee Pass. Whichever route he used to the westward—Union Pass and the Gros Ventre River drainage, or Togwotee Pass and Blackrock Creek—either brought him into Jackson Hole.
There can be little doubt that in any event his course was a circuitous one, following the twistings and turnings of many water courses, deviating along Indian trails to the winter encampments of the Crows, attentive to his instructions from Manuel Lisa. Quite probably the friendly Crows aided Colter by directing him to routes of easy passage, perhaps accompanying him over parts of his journey, though history makes no mention of this.
Entering Jackson Hole on its eastern margin, Colter saw before him a scene of unsurpassed grandeur. At this season, which must have been well into December, the floor of the Hole presented a broad expanse of snow-blanketed valley, broken only by the forested buttes, looming black against the glistening white, and the timbered water courses, marked by cottonwood, willow, and spruce. No smoke of Indian village lifted above thickets. The tribesmen had moved to areas of less rigorous climate, east, south, or west, weeks before. The soaring peaks, lifting their gleaming spires across the valley, their canyons deep shadowed in blue gloom, stretched for miles to the north and south. Even his stout heart must have faltered, at least momentarily, at the grim barrier ahead.
Other than the Snake River Canyon, a route which he could hardly have anticipated from any vantage point, he would logically have selected Teton Pass as the most feasible crossing of the Teton Range to the southwest. Here the historians, at least those who accept the theory of a trans-Teton route, are in almost unanimous agreement, although some would have us believe that he made a frontal assault through Cascade Canyon. This hardly seems likely, since Colter, bold as he was, evidenced no characteristics of the foolhardy, and to his eyes the Cascade Canyon route could scarcely have appeared to offer a feasible crossing.
One cannot but puzzle a bit, however, as to his reason for crossing the Range at all. From the broad valley of the Hole the route northward up the Snake River into the Yellowstone was to any eye an easy one. The terrain sloped gently, there were no mountain walls to scale or circle, nothing to indicate any obstacle of consequence. Indeed, many notable historical scholars have opposed the Teton Pass theory, asserting that he did avoid the Tetons by moving northward. He would certainly have fulfilled Lisa’s orders to contact nearby Indian tribes by the time he had reached Jackson Hole.
Accepting the Teton route, as we must in the light of later evidence, we add further stature to Colter’s perseverance and venturesome spirit. He went over the mountains, perhaps because the Indians had described the route and country beyond to him, perhaps because he was seeking the reported “Spanish Settlements” on the headwaters of the Colorado River (Green River), or perhaps for the very simple reason that he wanted to see what was on the other side.
At any rate, the Idaho side of the Range has given us the first really tangible clue as to Colter’s whereabouts while on his winter journey. In 1930, about 4 miles east of the Idaho village of Tetonia, was found the “Colter Stone.”