DEATH GULCH. A NATURAL BEAR-TRAP. 475 



DEATH GULCH, A NATURAL BEAR-TRAP. 



By T. A. JAGGAR, Jr., Ph. D. 



CASES of asphyxiation by gas have been very frequently reported 

 of late years, and we commonly associate with such reports the 

 idea of a second-rate hotel and an unsophisticated countryman who 

 blows out the gas. Such incidents we connect with the superciviliza- 

 tion of the nineteenth century, but it is none the less true that Na- 

 ture furnishes similar accidents, and that in regions far remote from 

 the haunts of men. In the heart of the Rocky Mountains of Wyo- 

 ming, unknown to either the tourist or the trapper, there is a natural 

 hostelry for the wild inhabitants of the forest, where, with food, 

 drink, and shelter all in sight, the poor creatures are tempted one 

 after another into a bath of invisible poisonous vapor, where they 

 sink down to add their bones to the fossil records of an interminable 

 list of similar tragedies, dating back to a period long preceding the 

 records of human history. 



It was the writer's privilege, as a member of the expedition of 

 the United States Geological Survey of the Yellowstone Park, under 

 the direction of Mr. Arnold Hague, to visit and for the first time 

 to photograph this remarkable locality. A similar visit was last 

 made by members of the survey in the summer of 1888, and an 

 account of the discovery of Death Gulch was published in Science 

 (February 15, 1889) under the title A Deadly Gas Spring in the 

 Yellowstone Park, by Mr. Walter Harvey Weed. The following 

 extracts from Mr. Weed's paper indicate concisely the general char- 

 acter of the gulch, and the description of the death-trap as it then 

 appeared offers interesting material for comparison with its condition 

 as observed in the summer of 1897. 



Death Gulch is a small and gloomy ravine in the northeast corner 

 of the Yellowstone National Park. " In this region the lavas which 

 fill the ancient basin of the park rest upon the flanks of mountains 

 formed of fragmentary volcanic ejecta, . . . while the hydrothermal 

 forces of the central portion of the park show but feeble mani- 

 festations of their energy in the almost extinct hot-spring areas 

 of Soda Butte, Lamar River, Cache Creek, and Miller Creek." 

 Although hot water no longer flows from these vents, " gaseous 

 emanations are now given off in considerable volume." On Cache 

 Creek, about two miles above its confluence with Lamar River, are 

 deposits of altered and crystalline travertine, with pools in the creek 

 violently effervescing locally. This is due to the copious emission of 

 gas. Above these deposits " the creek cuts into a bank of sulphur 

 and gravel cemented by this material, and a few yards beyond is the 



