By Camille Thomas, Director of Marketing
In the fall of 1870, Truman Everts, a 54-year-old former assessor for the Montana Territory, seized the opportunity of a lifetime: an expedition into the uncharted wilderness of what is now Yellowstone National Park. Joining the Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition, Everts, along with 19 men and 40 horses, set out to chronicle the wonders of this untamed land.
Everts's adventure took a dramatic turn in early September, when he became separated from his party near the south end of Yellowstone Lake. Despite spending the night alone in a dense lodgepole pine forest, Everts remained calm, convinced he would reunite with his comrades by breakfast the next day. However, the following morning, his situation worsened. After dismounting to scout a route, Everts's horse bolted, carrying away his supplies, blankets, guns—everything. Left with only his clothes, a couple of knives, and a small opera glass, Everts embarked on a grueling odyssey marked by calamity and survival.
Autumn in Yellowstone can be both beautiful and brutal. Battling snow, wind, and rain, Everts initially headed south, reaching Heart Lake where he kept warm by thermal springs. His diet consisted of whatever he could find, including a small bird and the root of a thistle, now known as Evert’s thistle.
Despite his lack of wilderness skills, Everts showed ingenuity, starting fires with his opera glass and fashioning tools from a buckle and pin. Ironically, he lost these tools in a forest fire he accidentally set, scorching his hair in the process.
Meanwhile, his party searched tirelessly. At one point, they came close to finding him but turned back just short of Heart Lake. For 37 days, Everts struggled through the wilderness, sustained by thistle roots and sheer willpower. For a time, Everts even considered following the Snake River "a distance of one hundred miles or more to Eagle Rock bridge" (present day Idaho Falls). Finally, in mid-October, two men mistook him for a wounded bear near Crescent Hill but soon realized they had found the lost explorer, barely clinging to life at a mere fifty pounds.
Everts' harrowing tale gained widespread publicity, and he was offered the position of the first superintendent of the newly established Yellowstone National Park in 1872. He declined, citing the lack of a salary. Everts lived on, eventually fathering a child in his mid-seventies and passing away in Maryland in 1901 at the age of 85.