Watching a football
game on television Saturday, Wyoming V. Utah State, as part of the promo they
mentioned Jim Bridger and the fact that he was the first white man to visit the
Great Salt Lake and the first into Yellowstone. Bridger may very well have been
the first non-Indian into the Great Salt Lake Valley, at least I and many other
western historians believe that. But the first into Yellowstone, I don’t think
so.
John Colter,
like Bridger, a Virginian was much more likely to have been the first into
Yellowstone. It is most unlikely the two ever met and very possible that Colter
was in Yellowstone while Bridger was but a toddler with a birth date in 1804.
Bridger
became a legend in the west and Colter seems to have just slipped away into history.
Colter left the west by 1810 and never returned, leaving a legend in the
making, unmade.
Colter never
lived long enough for people to believe any of his tales of Yellowstone. He
died of Jaundice in 1813 leaving behind $124 and change. But then the story of
the almost a legend in the west turns bizarre. He was buried on Tunnel Hill
near present day Dundee Missouri. In 1926 his remains, along with the remains
of five or six others, were dug up during a railroad excavation of the site. All
were dumped somewhere nearby, buried in an unmarked embankment.
Not a very
fitting finish to the first white man in to Yellowstone.
