David E. Folsom

David E. Folsom

David E. Folsom (born May 1839 in Epping , New Hampshire , † May 18, 1918 in California ) was an American explorer and influential Montana politician .

Childhood and youth

Born in the state of New Hampshire, visited Folsom an academy of Quakers in Vassalboro ( Maine ). He also liked to hunt in the woods. Soon he was a sure shot. After graduating from Quaker Academy , he trained as a civil engineer at the Moses Brown Quaker School in Providence ( Rhode Island ). During this time, his health deteriorated and he traveled west for recreation.

Life in the west

In 1862, Folsom was on his way to the Idaho gold mines when he heard that a group was being formed at Fort Abercrombie to map out a northern route to the mines. Folsom applied and got a job as a driver for the wagon train that set off with a military escort that summer. Folsom offered to hunt for the 130 participants and provide them with meat. In the Rocky Mountains they heard that the mines were now exhausted. The enterprise was thus useless and was canceled. Most of the men, including Folsom, moved to Bannack . Folsom spent the following winter there. He then traveled to Virginia City . There he came across the bandit George Ives . Ives tried to involve him in an unfair fight, Folsom knocked him down with a pool ball. Friends of Folsom quickly smuggled him out of town before Ives could take revenge.

Folsom took a job on a ranch near Willow Creek , Madison County, Montana, before settling on nearby land. The first ranchers in Montana had to fight grizzly bears again and again . After four years, Folsom gave up his ranch in exasperation. He then worked as an inspector. In the meantime, his former college friend Charley Cook had also settled in the west. Together they worked in the winter of 1868/69 for the Boulder Ditch Company , a company that supplied hydraulic mines with water. This activity brought them to the Yellowstone area, along with a third colleague, William Peterson . All three signed up for an expedition to what is now Yellowstone National Park . After the initiator of the expedition, Governor Thomas Francis Meagher , died unexpectedly and the US Army did not want to assign an escort force, the three decided to go through the expedition alone. It became known as the Folsom Expedition and was the first planned expedition to what is now the park area.

After the expedition, Folsom worked in the office of the Inspector General of the Montana Territory in Helena . There he exchanged views with Inspector General Henry Dana Washburn about his experiences in the Yellowstone area. He was so impressed by what he heard that he put together a second expedition for the following year, the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition . Folsom worked as a land surveyor until 1875.

He then returned east to New Hampshire and stayed there until his marriage to Lucy Jones in 1880. The couple traveled to Montana and built a large sheep ranch on the Smith River , near Cook's estate. Folsom held a prominent position in Montana's public life. Between 1885 and 1890 he served as treasurer of Meagher County . He was elected as a Republican to the state Senate . In 1900 he ran for governor of Montana, but failed because of the Democrat Joseph Toole . He died in California in 1918.

literature

• Aubrey L. Haines: The Yellowstone Story. A History of our First National Park , Volume Two, University Press of Colorado, Niwot, 1996, ISBN 0-87081-391-9