Livingston Montana History

Buffalo Bill 's Wild West Show: Try-Out Hopefuls at Cinnabar, Montana 1887
The History of Park County
Hunter Hot Springs Mystery Photo
Historic Livingston Walking Tour Map (.pdf)

Buffalo Bill 's Wild West Show:
Try-Out Hopefuls at Cinnabar, Montana 1887

Excerpts from the book "Imprints on Pioneer Trails"
by Ida McPherren, Hugo Hoppe's great niece.

        Sherman Canfield was born on a ranch in Nebraska, near what is now West Point in 1865, was a frequent visitor to Cinnabar. His father, George Canfield and his mother (nee: Rhodes) were pioneers of Nebraska, and it was while operating a small boarding house close to the stockyards in Omaha that George Canfield met Buffalo Bill.
        When Buffalo Bill formed the Wild West Show in 1887 and took it to England, he took George Canfield's son, Sherman, with him as his private secretary. Sherman followed the show until 1892 when his father was manager of the newly constructed Sheridan Inn, and Sherman quit the show to assist his father in its management.
        It was while he was with Buffalo Bill that Sherman got to know the crowned heads of Europe by their first names and often entertained them in the royal box at the show.......
        ..........in Cinnabar, Sherman telephoned to Cooke City, Gardiner, Horr, Aldridge, Red Lodge, and sent a cowboy riding to outfits to give notice that there would be a tryout for riders for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show the coming Sunday.
        The next morning, I came home and that night every man in Cinnabar and the cowboys, who had arrived for the tryouts, got gloriously, hilariously, drunk.............
        That night Cinnabar celebrated in a mild form of the previous night’s carousal but the lights were out and everyone between suggans before midnight for the next day was the day of the tryouts for the coveted position of rider in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
        The bucking contest was held on the arena in front of Cinnabar’s grandstand at noon as the last stage had rolled Parkward. A few tourists laid over for the show and were part of a crowd of approximately five hundred spectators who witnessed what was one of the greatest exhibitions of bronco busting I have ever witnessed through all the years that followed. Sherman was the sole judge.
        It was a clean exhibition of horses that had never been ridden trying to get the objectionable weight on their backs off and the weight sticking. Along in mid-afternoon a funny incident occurred. A young man, about twenty-three years of age, came riding up the road leading a wild horse. The man was wearing cowboy boots and spurs, but no chaps, sombrero or the customary vest. He asked to ride in the tryouts.
        Stares, sneers and sniggers were openly directed in his direction but Sherman said to let him ride. A cowboy held the wild horse while the stranger uncinched his flimsy old saddle; transferred it to the bronc and climbed aboard.
        With that the fun was on. With his head to the ground and back arched like an angry cat's the wild cayuse bucked and pitched sunfished; jumped straight up and came down a twisting and then shook himself in an effort to get rid of the man on his back........
          Unable to unseat his rider, the horse broke into a run down the road........... Sherman stood waving his hat and cheering one of the finest rides he had ever seen.
        The cowboy who had practiced every spare moment for a year for the event but who did not have enough money to purchase a cowboy outfit got the job............

Park County, so named due to its proximity to Yellowstone National Park, was created by the territorial legislature February 23, 1887.

Prior to the coming of the white man the only residents were Crow Indians who roamed the entire Yellowstone River basin. The first white people to enter the local area were the famous Lewis and Clark along with their party including Sacajawea. Jim Bridger (the famous scout and mountain man) wintered with the Crow Indians near Emigrant in 1844-45.

In the three decades after Lewis and Clark, this area as well as much of the mountain west was actively trapped by hundreds of men, primarily for beaver. In the decades starting 1840 and 1850, the trapping activity largely ceased because of lack of beaver demand due to the changed styles and the country being trapped out.

Gold was discovered in Emigrant Gulch in 1863. By the fall of 1864, several hundred men were working claims there. When winter came, 75 log huts were built at the mouth of the gulch and the town named Yellowstone City.

In 1864, John Bozeman opened up the new road bearing his name to shorten, by several hundred miles, the route between Fort Laramie and the gold localities of Western Montana. The road passed through the Livingston area and then out over Bozeman Pass.

In the mid-1860s, there was much travel going east. The almost complete lack of roads in the territory led to the use of the rivers, including the Yellowstone, as routes. The Livingston area was an embarkation point for hundreds of people prepared to risk the hazards of the river and Indians in mackinaws (these were flat boats 30-50 feet long and 4-5 feet high at the sides, some with crude cabins on them).

Much of the lumber came fro the first saw mill in the area on Mill Creek. In 1865 one fleet of 42 mackinaws left the boat yard on September 27. A year later a fleet of 16 mackinaws left the Livingston area with 250 miners carrying $500,000 in gold. They made the 2700 mile trip to St. Joseph in 28 days.

In 1864 Hunter’s Hot Springs was discovered by Dr. Hunter and his party, passing through. Dr. Hunter returned six years later, built a house and took residence, in spite of Indian dangers. Later, the area was famous as a resort for many years.

In 1866, 600 Longhorn cattle that had made the “long drive” from Texas were trailed into the Shields Valley by Nelson Story for eventual sale to the miners further west. Before this could be accomplished, over half of the cattle were lost to marauding Sioux.

In April 1867, John Bozeman was killed by Blackfoot Indians near Mission Creek. This incident, added to others, caused the then territorial governor to organize a militia to punish the Indians and protect the settlers. Six hundred men encamped at Fort Howie at the mouth of the Shields River.

In 1868, in accordance with the Crow Treaty of that year, an Indian agency was established on the Crow reservation on Mission Creek. It was considered the finest fort in the territory, fully stockaded, blockhouses on the corners, etc. The requirements of the Fort for supplies caused a ferry to be set up across the Yellowstone River four miles east of the present site of Livingston. A small settlement, known as Benson’s landing, grew up here. For many years, it was the focal point of the area with some log houses, a hotel, several saloons, etc. It served as a stage stop, trading post and post office.

For a very long time, the area of Yellowstone Park was almost completely unknown. The stories told over the years by Jim Bridger, traders and the Indians were received incredulously. The place was known as “Colter’s Hell” from Colter’s stories of his winter there in 1807-1808. In 1869, the first real exploring party entered the Park area, followed by the Washburn party of 1870 and Hayden party of 1871. This lead to the creation by Congress of the country’s first national park in 1872.

By 1880, the population for the county was only about 200. In 1881, the Northern Pacific Railroad, building a line westward, entered the state of Montana. Livingston was reached November 22, 1882 where a settlement of 500 people had sprung up, awaiting the railroad. In 1883, the National Park branch of the NP Railroad was completed and the east west sections of the railroad joined together near Garrison, this opened up the entire country.

Following these events, the local area had a period of rapid growth. By 1890, the county had a population of 6,900. Steady growth since then has brought the county to where it is today.

The story of a vintage photograph and the man who became obsessed with unraveling its secrets

By Jerry Brekke
Montana Best Times, February 2003 issue

Two-and-a-half years ago a co-worker handed Jason Leaf a photograph. It was a copy of a 19th century photo of a group of 15 men posing on the front porch of a hotel. What made the the print remarkable was a list of names identifying the men.
Wyatt Earp, Teddy Roosevelt, Doc Holiday, Morgan Earp and Montana mountain man "Liver Eating" Johnston were listed, along with Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Bat Masterson, Harry Britton, Judge Roy Bean, and Ben Greenough. Noted, too, is a place and date: Hunter's Hot Springs, Montana - 1883.
If the names are to be believed, the image is the largest assemblage of Old West celebrities ever pictured in one group.
Leaf, a 44-year-old Vancouver, British Columbia resident, was skeptical. But a story in a local newspaper began to change his mind.
"Within hours of receiving a copy of the Hunter's Hot Springs photo in May of 2000, I viewed a copy of the famous 'Fort Worth Five' 1900 photograph in my local paper, which had just come into the news because the original had sold for $80,000 at auction," said Leaf recently.
The "Fort Worth Five" photograph is an image of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid posing with other outlaw members of the Wild Bunch in a Fort Worth, Texas studio.
"Comparing the real Butch and Sundance from the Fort Worth Five image to Man 7 and Man 8 in the Hunter's Hot Spring's photo, compounded with finding out from the historical record that both Butch and Sundance were in southeast Montana in 1886, led me to lend credence to the whole list of names," said Leaf.

The investigation begins
Leaf contacted Daniel Buck, a Washington, D.C.-based historian and noted authority on the lives of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Buck and his wife, Anne Meadows, have written numerous articles and published two books about the outlaws, including Meadows' book, "Digging Up Butch and Sundance." Their work has also been featured on radio and television programs.
Buck told Leaf the photo was not what it purported to be. He speculated that the group was made up of local ranchers and businessmen, somewhere in the West during the late 1880s. Buck also pointed out that Morgan Earp - brother of lawman Wyatt Earp - was dead by 1883 and that Butch and Sundance were too young to be in an 1883 photo. Although Meadows' history confirmed that Butch and Sundance were in southeast Montana in 1886, Buck said a photograph's date should not be changed to fit a theory.
No one, however, had ever made a critical analysis of the Hunter's Hot Springs (HHS) photo. Historians tend to dismiss it out-of-hand as being bogus and those who believe the photo authentic tend to accept it without question. Buck encouraged Leaf to find out what was known about the photo's location and date and to build his case from that point.
Leaf embraced the suggestion. In June, 2000, he launched a research adventure that would consume at least two hours of time every day for the next two and a half years. He based his research on the premise the Hunter's Hot Springs image was accurate.
"What historians had to say went in one ear and out the other," said Leaf. "I decided to accept the photo as authentic until it could be proved otherwise."

Dating the photo
First on Leaf's research agenda was an attempt to establish the place and date of the photo. Leaf said the process was amazingly easy.
"No one disputes the authenticity of the photograph - the picture does not seem to have been 'doctored' at all, in a photographic sense - it is only the list of names attached to the bottom of the photo which historians have dismissed as bumpkinesque folklore," said Leaf.
From 1886 newspaper accounts, Leaf learned that Dr. A.J. Hunter sold the resort to Cyrus Mendenhall and the hotel underwent substantial renovation after the purchase. An 1885 sketch of the hotel, provided by Crazy Mountain Museum in Big Timber, confirmed by comparison that steps were added to the porch by Mendenhall. Additional comparisons of the structure left little doubt that the photo was indeed taken at Hunter's Hot Springs, a famous resort a mile north of Springdale, Mont., which is no longer in operation.
Further newspaper research divulged that a second remodeling project in 1888 eliminated the steps when landscaping provided for a graded path to the hotel's entrance. Leaf concluded that the photograph could not have been taken in 1883, but within the period between late summer 1886 and 1888.
An 1886 date made Leaf's premise about the photo's accuracy even more plausible. Because in 1886 Theodore Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in Montana ; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were in fact working within a day's ride of Hunter's Hot Springs; and "Liver Eating" Johnston made frequent visits to the springs area.
The fact the Northern Pacific Railroad route came within a mile of the resort added more plausibility to these men being at the resort, along with many of the other Western celebrities purportedly in the photo.
"The West," said Leaf, "was really a very small place."

Tackling the list of names
Leaf next turned his attention to verifying the list of names - a task much more difficult than authenticating the photograph. The researcher submitted his theories to Western history enthusiasts, historians and historical societies such as Montana Historical Society, the Pinkerton Detective Agency Archives, and the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University. Each accepted his presumption of locale, but none accepted the names.
Small details of the photograph and its list were examined and checked against proven records for clues. On the list, Earp was misspelled (Erp). Butch Cassidy's real name, Robert Leroy Parker, was noted on the photo as Geo. Parker, a Pinkerton file misnomer, but also the name of a tennis pro who played at Hunter's Hot Springs in the early 1900s. In the photo Roosevelt is listed as "Teddy Roosevelt," but he actually wasn't called Teddy until after the 1898 Spanish American War. Leaf also contacted experts to identify the rifle held by Man #8 and to date the bottle laying on the ground in front of Man #3.
"I really wanted to believe the list was true," said Leaf.
His first year of research provided Leaf a great deal of circumstantial evidence and hypothetical scenarios, but little undisputable fact. A pivotal point in his investigation came when, through evidence supplied by a family historian, Leaf ruled out Ben Greenough, a young friend of "Liver Eating" Johnston, as a group participant.
"Once I had one famous name drop out," said Leaf, "I had reason to question the rest."
In July of 2001, Leaf went public with his research, posting it on a Web site he designed titled, "Who Are Those Guys?" at www.huntershotsprings. org. The site features comparison photos of the supposed celebrities and frequent updates of information from viewers that are both critical and supportive of Leaf's opinions about the picture.
Largely because of his Web site, by the end of 2001 Leaf had uncovered at least five different lists of names written on copies of the photo identifying the mystery men. They range from recent Internet auction copy of the picture - which the seller dated 1886, apparently as a result of Leaf's research - to a copy of the photo whose list of names is believed to date from 1944.
Discoveries made during a trip to Montana provided new insight into the Hunter's Hot Springs photograph's clandestine history. In Livingston, historian Doris Whithorn, who aided and encouraged Leaf's long-distance investigation, provided what might be the first known public reference to the photo.
It was an April 23, 1964 article in The Park County News headlined, "Who Remembers T. Roosevelt, W. Earp, Bat Masterson, Liver Eating Johnston, Ken [sic] Greenough at Hunter's?" and includes the photograph and a plea to the readership for help identifying the pictured men.
With only five names on the list and the possibility that names may have been tagged on over the years, "My original theory went wrinkly at the edges," said Leaf, "and I gave it the old heave-ho."
Added to Leaf's ever-expanding amount of research material were four volumes of newspaper references compiled by Livingston archivist Miles Iverson, who noted every reference made to Hunter's Hot Springs between 1871 and 1918.
"In looking through his documentation, I couldn't understand why there wasn't mention of these people (in the photograph)," said Leaf. "Then I realized the reason they weren't mentioned is because they weren't there."

One tantalizing possibility
So who are those guys?
A major contribution to Leaf's project was submitted by a great-grandchild of Franklin Rich and Lizzie Hunter Rich, who operated the Rich Hotel at Hunter's Resort at the same time the photo was taken.
Sharon Pohlman, family archivist for the Rich family, and Al Rich, grandson of Franklin's brother A.A. Rich, submitted photos and a detailed family history. Pohlman's contribution proved to Leaf's satisfaction that Butch Cassidy was, in reality, Franklin Rich and the unidentified Man #1 was his brother Al Rich.
Leaf admits that his insistence the original list of the names on the photo was accurate until proven false skewed his investigation for two years, and he is now prepared to do an about-face - almost.
"My recanting notwithstanding, I haven't yet given up hope on the Liver Eater for the number six position," said Leaf. "There may be one celebrity in the photo, after all."
John "Liver Eating" Johnston was a well known Montana resident and his frequent visits to Hunter's Hot Springs were documented in the press and by the Rich family history.
Leaf's research project has attracted international attention. A December 2001 article in Maine Antique Digest utilized the Hunter's Hot Spring photograph and Leaf's findings as an example to decry the selling of misrepresented collectibles on Internet auction Web sites, and True West Magazine has contacted the researcher for an upcoming article dealing with his recantation.
"I don't think the photo was ever a malicious prank," Leaf said. "Copies of the photo have sold over the years and they will continue to sell in the future. No one is hurt too bad when they buy a copy. Most I've seen sell for $15 to $20 - not bad for something you'd like to believe in."
At least once the photograph sold for much higher than that. A couple years ago at a Clyde Park auction, bidding fervor for a copy of the photo took the price to about $200.
For Leaf, his research has brought its own rewards in support received and friendships made.
"Jason Leaf was the first person to make a serious effort to locate the exact site of the photograph and put a date on it," said Wild Bunch historian Daniel Buck. "That in itself was an admirable piece of work. But what came next was extraordinary. Even though he began his journey believing that the caption was correct, that the gentlemen depicted were in fact the largest assembly of Old West celebrities to perch on a porch anywhere anytime, Jason kept an open mind and went to work. He researched, he traveled, he e-mailed. Slowly, the famous names dropped away, replaced by those of Hunter's Hot Springs locals, whose photographs he had uncovered. Jason proved that nothing is impossible."
The adventure is far from over. Leaf said his goal has always been about "verifying 15 biographies" of the men pictured in the mystery photograph.
"I feel an obligation to the descendants of the guys who are really in the picture," said Leaf. "I'm positive that most would like to have a part of their history restored to them."

Used with permission from Montana Best Times