I will be breaking this day into 2 posts as we covered a lot of ground during our all day adventure.

1800s Accounts From Out West
For decades, fur trappers and mountain men told stories of the lands out west. To folks living back east, all of the accounts must have seemed fantastical, yet today we know that some of the accounts were quite accurate (and some embellished works of fiction). How do you go about determining the truth of a story?

Here are some excerpts from people who explored the region now known as Yellowstone. Which do you find realistic? Which do you find fantastical?

“Boiling fountains having different degrees of temperature were very numerous; one or two were so very hot as to boil meat.”—Alexander Ross, 1818

“There is also a number of places where the pure suphor is sent forth in abundance one of our men Visited one of those wilst taking his recreation there at an instan the earth began a tremendious trembling and he with dificulty made his escape when an explosion took place resembling that of thunder.”—Daniel T. Potts, 1827

“The general face of the country was smooth and rolling, being a level plain, dotted with cone-shaped mounds. On the summits of these mounds were small craters from four to eight feet in diameter. Interspersed among these, on the level plain, were larger craters, some of them from four to six miles across. Out of these craters issued blue flames and molten brimstone.”—1868 account by Joseph L. Meek of his time in the region in 1829

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