BRETT FRENCH The Billings Gazette | Posted: Thursday, December 25, 2008 12:00 am
With erupting geysers, bubbling mud pots and scorched landscape, it's no wonder that early 19th-century writings about Yellowstone National Park were filled with hellish metaphors.
Yellowstone is, after all, "the place where Hell bubbled up," according to mountain man Jim Bridger, one of the first Euro-Americans to explore the region.
"By and large the literary references are far more replete with references to hell," said Lee Whittlesey, park historian. "That's an overwhelming preference that you see among so many travelers."
Michael Barton, a graduate student at Montana State University, catalogued some of those religious references in research he conducted as an intern at the park's Heritage and Research Center in Gardiner, Mont., in 2007. Barton boiled down his 45-page paper for an article published in the October edition of the magazine Yellowstone Science.
Barton found that use of religious language in descriptions of the park was common during the Romantic movement, a reaction to the 18th century's Enlightenment that stressed science and objectivity. Romanticism was about emotions and imagination. It was a period that produced such American literary giants as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe. But it also carried over to the writings of travelers to Yellowstone and is found in newspaper accounts, journal entries and letters sent to family and friends. Barton catalogued the references in more than 50 documents - everything from short journal reminiscences to published books and U.S. Geological Survey writings.
There's no mistaking the references, especially when they were highlighted. Following an 1871 trip to Yellowstone Lake, journalist Calvin Clawson wrote: "We could not help feeling that we were lifted up BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, for while the seething, sulphurous lakes were on each side and far beneath us, the placid sky hung in grandest beauty above us."
Devil dominates
In Yellowstone, there were at one time at least 60 place names that included the word "devil," four with "hell," two with Satan and none that refer to heaven, according to Whittlesey, who wrote a book on the park's more than 4,000 place names.
Some park officials didn't like all of the "hell" and "devil" references and were in a position to make sure they were removed.
Of the 66 original underworld place names, only about 12 are still in use, including Hellroaring Creek, which drains into the Yellowstone River from the Absaroka Range, and the Devil's Stairway, a route from the Lower Geyser Basin to Mary's Lake.
"There was a concerted effort in the 19th century to get rid of anything that had to do with hell or Satan," Whittlesey said. "The main spirit behind all of it was Arnold Hague. He wanted all of the devil names gone, and he was in a position to get rid of them."
Hague, the son of a Baptist minister, was appointed geologist in charge of the survey of Yellowstone National Park in 1883. It took him seven years with the aid of two assistants to complete the work.
Whittlesey said a few others rallied to the defense of hellish names, including a 1901 Brooklyn, N.Y., newspaper article that said any man who attempted to pull down such a profane sign should be shot, while referring to such a puritan as a "tenderfoot" and "sissy nave."
The rich emotive and expressive language used in the Romantic period tends to disappear from the park's archives around the 1930s, Whittlesey said.
"I guess the trip became more mundane," he said.
And there came the Great Depression, followed by World War II, and travelers began visiting the park using automobiles, so the trip became less interactive with other travelers.
"You do still hear such references today," Whittlesey said, based on walking tours he has conducted. "But the written evidence is not good. We haven't found more recent accounts."
Barton said he saw scientists in the 1870s steer away from Romanticism and be more descriptive about what they saw, rather than describing sites in emotional terms.
"They started to write more about the height of a geyser, the times of eruptions rather than the raw emotional scenes," he said.
Perhaps the best part of the research, Barton said, was having access to the park's extensive archive collection in its newly built facility, to view the original watercolors of artist Thomas Moran stored there and to travel to some of the places he'd read about.
"It was nice to be immersed in the place where you're studying the history," he said. "Overall, it was a pretty neat experience."