Truman Everts

Truman Everts

Truman C. Everts (* 1816 in Burlington , Vermont , † February 16, 1901 in Hyattsville , Maryland ) was an American explorer and unlucky fellow who participated in the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition of 1870 through what is now Yellowstone. National parks participated. He became the namesake of Mount Everts .

Life up to the expedition

Truman Everts was one of six sons of a captain on the Great Lakes . He was probably married; but nothing is known about it other than that he had a daughter named Elizabeth ( Bessie ) who looked after his house in Helena . He lived in various locations in the states of Michigan , Kentucky , New York , Montana and finally Maryland.

In the American Civil War Everts served as a medical officer, including at Fredericksburg , where he met Philetus Walter Norris , the later superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

In 1865 US President Abraham Lincoln appointed him tax officer for the new Montana Territory . He lost this political position five years later. Everts was looking for a new challenge and signed up for the Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition.

Yellowstone Expedition

At 54, Everts was the oldest participant in the expedition.

His first mishap happened on the first day. He had helped himself with berries along the way that were not good for him. He fell ill and held up the expedition for two days.

His mishaps during the expedition for which he was best known began on September 9, 1870. Everts strayed too far from his colleagues in strong winds and got lost south of Yellowstone Lake . The next day his horse ran away with all of his belongings, except what he was carrying. Whether the nearsighted Everts also lost his glasses is controversial. In any case, he did not have any provisions with him. In search of the horse he got completely lost. Soon he discovered Heart Lake (Wyoming) , but mistook it for Yellowstone Lake. He believed Mount Sheridan west of Heart Lake to be the northern end of the Two Ocean Plateau . Everts got more and more lost; soon he was exhausted from hunger. After four days without food, he discovered an elk thistle , the root of which he ate. Possibly the only plant the short-sighted Everts could see correctly; after all, she was bigger than many others.

He continued to feed on the thistle, which scarcely saved him from starvation. Once he was able to catch a small bird that he ate raw. In various places he left messages for his colleagues; but they did not find the notes, any more than Everts found the messages from his colleagues. Everts neither saw the squad's signal fire nor heard their rifle salvos.

Everts on the tree, picture in the museum in Mammoth Hot Springs

On September 11th or 12th, a Puma attacked Everts. Everts saved himself in a tree. Presumably on September 12th, he was caught by a snow storm. Completely frozen and soaked to death, he found a hot spring where he warmed himself. In addition, he managed to light a fire with an opera glass. He probably stayed there until September 19, possibly until September 20.

One night later, Everts was sitting by a fire. Puma screams and wolf howls kept him from sleeping for a long time. Gradually sleep overtook him, he fell into the fire and burned his hand.

Another mishap happened to him a few nights later: the wind carried the flames of his campfire to the nearby trees and bushes, causing a forest fire. Everts probably got serious burn injuries.

He bypassed Yellowstone Lake to the west and then followed the Yellowstone River north. After four more days without food, Everts was so exhausted from hunger and cold that he hallucinated. He talked to imaginary people and lost all sense of time. At last he found some minnows in a warm spring near the Lower Falls , which he ate raw in a state of extreme exhaustion; but his stomach could not hold the food.

When he got to Tower Fall , it took him half a day to catch a single locust; in the second half of the day he tried unsuccessfully to catch a trout. Dejected, he decided in the evening to only feed on thistles from now on.

The next morning a snowstorm came and forced Everts to stay by the fire for the next two nights. Fortunately, he found enough thistles in the forest and filled his pockets with them before marching on.

Two or three days before he was rescued, exhausted, he fell into a sage bush climbing a hill and fell asleep immediately. When Everts woke up, he had no idea how long he had slept there; at least he could get up and continue his march. The next evening he wanted to start a fire with his opera glasses, but found that he had lost it. Totally desperate, he wandered about eight kilometers back to the sage bush where he had last slept the whole night. There he actually found the opera glasses again. He turned again and reached his bed in the evening, where he had noticed the lack of the glass. In the meantime it had become very cold and it had started snowing again. Everts had to keep the fire going all night; sleep was out of the question. Despite the storm, he trotted on the next morning. In the evening the sun hardly showed up and his hands were shaking so violently that he could only light a fire with great difficulty.

The next day another storm came up. Everts dragged himself on, but was so exhausted that he soon had to rest again and tried to start a fire. He didn't succeed anymore. He crawled on on all fours.

Meanwhile, Judge Lawrence , a business partner of the expedition member Cornelius Hedges, had issued a reward of 600 dollars for Evert's rescue. It was Jack Baronett who first discovered Everts. On October 16, far away, he saw something dark crawling on all fours. He thought it was a black bear and wanted to shoot right away with an initial impulse, but then decided to get closer first. He soon realized that it couldn't be a bear. When he identified the unknown as human, he addressed the creeping Everts. He was no longer able to answer him. Suddenly Baronett realized who he was looking at and lifted Everts, who was little more than a skeleton, on his shoulders and carried him down to the Gardiner River . There he made a fire and brewed Everts tea. George A. Pritchett , another member of the search party, joined them. Everts was delirious for a long time. Only after several days was he able to take the 30 kilometers to a hut of miners under his feet, accompanied by his two rescuers. The Turkey Pen Hut was located about three kilometers east of the Roosevelt Arch near Gardiner , a little north of today's Yellowstone National Park. Everts stayed there for several days before moving to Helena via Bozeman . Baronett is said to never have received his reward. Lawrence pointed out that Everts was still alive and could pay the reward himself, and Everts claimed that he would have found his way back to civilization without the help of the Baronet.

Everts' march through what is now Yellowstone National Park lasted 37 days, in which he covered around 80 kilometers.

Since then the Elk thistle has also been called Everts thistle . Mount Everts, which is located a little east of Mammoth Hot Springs , but which he had never reached, was also named after him . Mount Everts was not where Everts was saved; because of a misunderstanding, the wrong mountain was named after him. A creek on the east side of Mount Evert is called Rescue Creek .

Life after the expedition

Everts noted his experiences and published them in 1871 under the title Thirty-Seven Days of Peril . Together with his daughter Bessie he later visited the Yellowstone area again.

At the age of 64 or 65, Everts remarried, this time a fourteen-year-old. He moved with her to Toledo , Ohio and later to Washington DC, where he worked as a postal clerk. At almost 75 he had a son (Truman Everts Jr.) and lived for ten years after that. He spent his final years in Hyattsville, Maryland. There he died of pneumonia on February 16, 1901. He was buried in Glenwood Cemetery . Everts' wife died in 1947 and was also buried in Glenwood Cemetery.

literature

• Truman Everts, Lee H. Whittlesey (eds.): Lost in the Yellowstone: Truman Everts's "Thirty-Seven Days of Peril". University of Utah Press, 1995, ISBN 0-87480-481-7 .

Web links

• National Park Service: Mt. Everts (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Truman Everts on findagrave.com