John Colter’s Time in the Bighorn Basin

It was at this exact time of year, fall in northwest Wyoming, when John Colter set out alone and on foot from a fur trading post east of today’s Billings. Between the fall of 1807 and the summer of 1808, Colter explored at least 400 miles through the Bighorn Basin and the Absaroka Range, including around the base of Cedar Mountain and along the South Fork of the Shoshone River. He was likely the first person of European descent to walk alongside the Stinkingwater (Shoshone) River as it flowed (then unobstructed by Buffalo Bill Dam) through what would later become the City of Cody.

Colter’s Background

A few years earlier, John Colter, a single man from Kentucky, had already visited the northern Rockies, so he had an idea of what to expect. In 1804-5, he was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, hunting and scouting for the Corps of Discovery as they made their way upstream in keel boats and pirogues on the Missouri River. In search of a good passage to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri to its headwaters in Montana, then proceeded over the Bitterroot Mountains on foot and horseback until they could float downriver to the mouth of the Columbia River near today’s Astoria, Oregon.

Along the way, Colter was a trusted and respected member of the party, but it was clear from the expedition’s journals that he enjoyed his solitude as well. Colter often left and rejoined the main party as it moved, hunting and camping on his own for days at a time. As the Corps of Discovery returned downstream toward St. Louis at the end of the successful expedition, Colter asked permission to leave the party to join the fur trade along the tributaries of the Yellowstone River. At first, he trapped along the Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone River with two partners and lived in a crude shelter in the Sunlight Basin.

Exploring Northwest Wyoming

But by 1807, Colter helped build Fort Raymond, a new fur trading post at the juncture of the Bighorn River and the Yellowstone River, about fifty miles east of today’s Billings. His new employer, Manuel Lisa, asked Colter and three others, including George Drouillard, another former member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, to explore in four different directions. Colter was given the huge area southwest of the fort, and his assignment was to visit as many Apsáalooke (Crow) villages as possible to let everyone know that the trading post was open for business. He wore a thirty-pound backpack that included his food and blanket, knife, tomahawk, and powder horn. He carried his long rifle in one hand as he headed southwest into the Bighorn Basin.

Colter did not leave a journal to describe his solo travels, but several years later he returned to Missouri to visit his friend and former colleague, William Clark. He apparently described his route to Clark, who then placed a tantalizing dotted line labeled “Colter’s Rout” [SIC] on a hand drawn manuscript map published in 1810.

Over the two centuries that have followed, generations of historians have grappled with these limited clues, and many disagree about Colter’s probable loop and even the direction he took. However, nearly all historians agree that Colter walked through the area that would become Cody. Along the tabletop bench above the Stinkingwater River near today’s Cody Walmart, Colter saw unusual geothermic activity including bubbling hot pots (now nearly dormant) and returned to Manuel Lisa’s fort with vivid descriptions of the area along Yellowstone Avenue now called “Colter’s Hell.” Nearby to the west, Colter may have visited a well-known Apsáalooke village at the juncture of the North and South Forks of the Shoshone River, a spot now under the waters of Buffalo Bill Reservoir.

Cody Heritage Museum

At the Cody Heritage Museum in downtown Cody, local history is displayed chronologically in a counter-clockwise circuit from the front desk. Alongside information about Cody’s early geologic history and its thousands of years of Native American history, a placard mentions Colter’s epic trek through the Cody area. His journey through northwest Wyoming in 1807-08 is both mysterious and undisputed. It marks a significant period in Cody’s prehistory when Euro-American trappers and traders first mingled with local native people on land that was part of the new Louisiana Purchase and yet still wild and unclaimed by the private landownership that would follow by the 1870s.

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