Showing posts with label Mammoth Hot Springs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mammoth Hot Springs. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2014

Lovelorn Light

Have you ever suffered the pain of being in love with someone who doesn't love you back? Those unfortunate souls know precisely what the term "holding a torch" means. For how long, though, does one continue to hold this torch? For some, like Ed Wilson, the answer is forever.


North entrance to Yellowstone near Mammoth Hot Springs
In 1885, Ed came to Yellowstone Park just 13 years after it was established. There were very few visitors to the park yet, especially during the bitterly cold, snow-bound winters. The U.S. Army guarded the park and there were few if any park amenities established other than the Army camps. Ed hired on as an Army scout. His duties were to guard against poachers and to provide the camps with fresh meat which he was authorized to hunt and kill. By all accounts, he was good at his job and took his duties very seriously. After catching and turning in several soldiers he had caught illegally hunting or shooting animals for sport, a few of the men didn't particularly care for him, but everyone respected him. He didn't make close friends with anyone as far as can be found. He had a reputation as being strange because he spoke of the mysterious and the unseen and, unlike the other scouts, he preferred to travel in the wilderness alone and at night. During the darkest and fiercest storms when everyone else would stay inside their shelter, Ed would always venture out to scout and never return until the storm had passed.


Mr. G. L. Henderson, a widower with 4 daughters and a son, was hired in 1891 as the Assistant Park Superintendent. He moved to the park with his children and established the Mammoth store and the post office within the park which his children managed. Ed met and fell in love at first sight with Mary Rosetta, Mr. Henderson's youngest daughter. In his own way, Ed tried to court Mary Rose to win her hand, but she didn't return his affections. She had no doubt heard the strange stories about Ed and being in his late 30's, he must have seemed ancient to the young and very beautiful Mary Rose. With her beauty and the lack of females in the park, Mary Rose had the pick of any young soldier and it soon became obvious to everyone that Ed had no chance.

On a warm day in July, Ed walked up the hill behind the Henderson's store and he didn't return. He had told nobody he was leaving and no one saw him go. Given his peculiar habits and his comings and goings while performing his duties, no one knew he was missing for several weeks. When it was determined he had not checked in and nobody had seen him for almost a month, his quarters were searched where his guns and other items he would have carried with him while out scouting were found. A group of soldiers was organized and a search was begun. After several weeks of intense searching and another month of looking with no results, the official search was called off due to the winter weather setting in.


The hill behind the store where Ed's remains were found and
where his light can still be seen.
A year had passed when one day several soldiers decided to enjoy the nice weather and a day off by hiking to the top of the hill behind the store. There they stumbled upon Ed Wilson's skeleton. Next to his remains still clutched in his bony fingers was an empty bottle of morphine. It was determined that Ed had committed suicide by poisoning himself.

Now, almost 125 years later, there's an unexplained faint light that many people have seen on the top of the hill behind the Mammoth Hot Springs Village store. Both employees and visitors have regularly reported seeing it, most of whom have never heard of Ed Wilson's story. Oh, it's not there every night, but sometimes when the clear night sky is especially dark and it seems there are a million twinkling stars shining, a door from Wilson's dimension opens into the dimension of the living. The light on the hill is where Ed sat and with a heavy, broken heart, decided it would be impossible to live without his beloved Mary Rose.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Haunting In Yellowstone

The historic Roosevelt Arch, the north entrance to Yellowstone 
National Park. It was dedicated on April 24, 1903.
Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872, but in a short-sighted budget move, the government allocated no funds for the upkeep, protection and management of the park. For the first 14 years of its existence, the park was seriously threatened by poachers killing the animals, people throwing rocks and broken tree limbs into the geysers and hot springs in a misguided attempt to stop them up, souvenir hunters broke off large pieces of the geysers and unauthorized developers set up camps for tourists next to hot springs where they built bath and laundry facilities along with toilet facilities located directly over the streams. 

Finally, Congress hired civilian superintendents to protect the land, but there were only a handful to oversee more than 2 million acres of park. In 1886, the park looked to the U.S. Army for help. The cavalry soldiers who came to Yellowstone made their headquarters at the foot of the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. Their campground was called Camp Sheridan, but after enduring 5 harsh winters in poorly constructed "temporary" buildings, a permanent post was built and named Fort Yellowstone. 


Simple headstones and wooden markers still stand over the graves
of civilian workers and family members of the soldiers.
By 1910, there were 324 soldiers stationed at Fort Yellowstone. In addition to the soldiers, there were officer's families (marriage was discouraged for enlisted men) and many civilian employees living in the fort. Most of the soldiers considered the assignment to be a good duty station as the work was varied and the scenery couldn't be beat. However, with the very hard winters, encounters with wild animals and the general hazardous duty of army life, deaths inevitably occurred.  Soldiers, wives, children and civilian employees alike were all buried in the nicely tended Fort Yellowstone Army Cemetery.

Congress eventually appropriated sufficient funds for civilian operation of the park and at sunset on July 4, 1916, an Army cannon located at the top of Capitol Hill was fired for the last time. The next day, the army left behind Yellowstone and their dearly departed friends and loved ones. The cemetery was left unattended and for the next year, the grass and weeds grew over the graves and the headstones and wooden markers faded in the winds and snows of winter. The dead didn't seem to mind. 


Even today, coffin-shaped sunken indention's in the ground can 
be found where the soldiers remains were removed.
The very next summer, however, some government official made the decision to move the army dead from Fort Yellowstone Cemetery to  the military cemetery at Custer's Battlefield in Montana. All remains of the soldiers were dug up, but the wives and children were left where they lay. 

An obviously very loved 5 year-old boy's grave. The inscription reads -
"Tis a little grave, but oh take care. Fond hopes are buried there."
That fall, reports started coming in; reports of something strange happening around the old Army Cemetery. Visitors who happened to find themselves  near the cemetery after the sun went down were hearing voices and the sounds of children crying, always coming from the direction of the fenced-in graveyard. Too many reports from too many strangers to dismiss out of hand and all of them saying basically the same thing - children crying, the sound of footsteps in the high grass when nobody could be seen and a feeling of deep sorrow and sadness overcoming those few brave enough to approach near the graves. It's been so for almost a hundred years now. 

The Park Service eventually began maintaining the cemetery; the weeds are kept cut back and an iron post fence was erected a few years ago. But sometimes, after the sun has set, people have reported the children are still crying and the voices are still calling out, calling for their fathers and husbands and friends who were taken away from them.
So many children and all destined to spend eternity without
a  daddy beside them.