59b" 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM. 1904. 



Horse Plain Creek, and across the main Rocky Mountain divide to the 

 headwaters of Medicine Lodge Creek, into the Snake River basin, 

 to Fort Hall onee more, and thence across the mountains to the head 

 of Bear River and up the river to Evanston, on the Union Pacific 

 Railroad, where the party disbanded. 



As in years previous, Messrs. Cope, Lesquereux, Leidy, Meek. New- 

 berry, and others served as collaborators in their especial fields. The 

 hot springs and geysers were described in considerable detail, and the 

 fact that they were but the feeble manifestations of dying volcanic 

 energy recognized. It was shown that the mountain ranges passed 

 over lie along the borders of synclinal valleys, which were originally 

 the basins of fresh water lakes, and that all the ranges had a general 

 north and south or northwest and southeast trend, and were here and 

 there connected by cross chains; that the three main branches of the 

 Missouri — the Madison, Jefferson, and Gallatin— flowed through val- 

 leys now extending to a width of 3 to 5 miles and now contracting to 



narrow canyons, the expansions of which 

 had all been lake basins within late Tertiary 

 and perhaps early quaternary times. The 

 valleys were regarded as in part due to 

 erosion, but for the most part as syncli- 

 nal folds, the intervening mountain ridges 

 being wedge-like masses of Carboniferous 

 limestones. 



The work done this year by Ha} T den and 

 his party resulted in the setting aside of 

 the Yellowstone region as a national park. 

 In 187:4, with appropriations increased to 

 $75,000, Hayden divided his force into two 

 parties. The first, under his immediate 

 charge, consisting of Adolf Burck, chief 

 topographer; Henry Gannett, astronomer; A. E. Brown, assistant 

 topographer; E. R. Wakefield, meteorologist; A. C. Peale, mineralo- 

 gist; W. H. Holmes, artist, and W. B. Piatt, naturalist. 

 Mo man f a H f872 n '" This division left Fort Ellis, Montana, and explored 

 the headwaters of the Yellowstone, Gallatin, and 

 Madison rivers in much more detail than had been done during the 

 previous year. 



The second or Snake River division, under the directorship of James 

 Stevenson, included Frank H. Bradley, chief geologist; W. R. Taggert, 

 assistant geologist; Gustavus R. Bechler, chief topographer; Adolph 

 Herring and Thomas W. Jaycox, assistant topographers; William 

 Nicholson, meteorologist; John M. Coulter, botanist; Dr. Josiah 

 Curtis, surgeon and naturalist, and William H. Jackson, photographer. 

 This division visited the Snake River or Lewis Fork of the Columbia 

 in Idaho and Wyoming territories, a region up to that time little 



Fig. 99.— Fielding Bradford Meek. 



