Walter Trumbull's Journal
of the 1870 Washburn Expedition
typed and formatted
by Jim Macdonald
Walter Trumbull was
the son of Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. In 1870, Trumbull
with several others, mainly from the upper echelon of Montana society and
politics, ventured into the region of Yellowstone to see whether the strange
reports of a hellish world painted by those who saw the land before them
were true. Led by Montana Surveyor General Henry Dana Washburn, the
1870 Washburn Expedition did not discover Yellowstone, but it did help
bring it to a spotlight. One and one-half years after this expedition
Congress created the world's first national park. Trumbull's account
of the adventure, one of the lesser known accounts, appeared in The
Overland Monthly in the late spring of 1871. The account is less
matter-of-fact than Doane's
account, and it is less dramatic than Langford's famous tale.
However, it is a beautiful tale, an important historical resource, and
is more reliable than Langford's account. Walter Trumbull's influence
in the Senate helped make Yellowstone a national park, and it is very fascinating
to see the wheels of history in motion.
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