Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1920-09-03

one knows it. The story of John Golfer and col
ters Hell" properly begins away back In loO5'
when Thomas Jefferson, our third president,
bought the Louisiana territory from Napoleon
BOnaparte
The western boundary of the United States
was then the Mississippi fixed by the treaty
with Great Britain after the Revolution. Jeffer-
son sent James Monroe to France to cooperate
with Minister Robert r. Livingston in the pur-
J chase of the Mississppi's mouth for 100000.
Napoleon laughed at them. He had just made
Spain cede him the Louisiana Territory, intend
ing to establish there an empire to replace that
lost to the British in Canada. Then Napoleon saw
ne must fight the British He could not fight and
coonize too. So, to spite the British, he told the
two Americans they could have all the country
between the Mississippi and the Rockies (Texas
not ineIuded) for $15,000000. And he made Mon
and Livingston agree. Jefferson was scared
stiff at the act of his agents. There was nation
wide rumpus over the purchase, but congress rati-
fed it and the people finally approved it
Jefferson had not the slightest idea what the
United States had bought and In the spring Of 1904
he started the Lewis aud Clark expedition from St
Louis to find out. This famous expedition went to
the mouth of the Columbia river and returned to
ST. Louis in 1906, after having been given up for
lost 1t passed a few miles to the north Of the
Yellowstone, without even suspectng it's existence.
! John Golfer was of the private soldiers of
the expedition Before it reached st. Louis he got
the headwaters of the Missouri for beaver. In the
spring of 1907 at the mouth of the Platte he met
Manuel Lisa and again turned back. Lisa built
Fort Lisa at the confluence of the Yellowstone ana
the Big Horn. Golfer, going alone to summon the
Crows to the fort for trade passed to the south OF
the Yellowstone through Jackson's Hole to Pierres
Hole at the west of the Yellowstone. Returning
thence to Fort Lisa, he passed diagonally through
the Yellowstone the first white man to see it's Won
ders
Golfer, after adventures and travels that give
him a front rank among explorers of the west, re-
turned to st. Louis in 1910. He recounted his adj
ventures and he told of the marvels of the Yellow
stone. st. Louis believed some Of his tales of adj
venture but would have none of the geysers boil
ing springs and paint-pots of the Yellowstone
They deSisvely dubbed 1t Golfers He'll" laughed
over it for time and then forgot it. Gen. Will
liam Clark, his commander was the only one to
believe him. On the official map of the Lewis and
Clark expedition is a dotted line from Fort Lisa
to the Yellowstone and return, with the legend,
"Coter's route in 1907"
The Yellowstone was discovered the second
time about 1827-ths time by Jim Bridger one of
Gen. William HI. Ashley's lieutenants in the Rocky
Mountain Fur company. Bridger was the discov-
erer of Great Salt Lake. a map-maker without an
equal, mountaneer, painsman and guide with
no superior But he had hobby-big yarns. 1t
is he who made up those classic "whoppers" of
the west-the obsidian cliff boiling spring, echo
and alum creek stories. So, when he told about
the wonders of the Yellowstone, scofing frontier
said with laughter: "Oh, just another Of Jim
Bridgers yarns"
Warren Angus Ferris described the Upper Gey-
ger basin of the Yellowstone in 1842-and was not
believed. Prospectors in the Montana gold excite
ment of 1852 again described the Yellowstone; they
were set down liars. Newspapers and maya
zines would not publish the stories; lecturers were
stoned. In 1859 the semi-ofical Montana Wash
burn Langford expedition did succeed in getting
hearing In 1870 the federal government sent an
official expedition which officially put the Yellow
stone on the map.
Cornelius Hedges September IS, 1870, by a
campfire in the Yellowstone proposed that the
wonderland be made a national park-a play