Near-sighted Truman Everts was separated from the Washburn Expedition and became the first white man to get lost in what became Yellowstone National Park.
Everts' wilderness experience lasted the next 37 days. At age 54, the former U.S. Assessor from Montana Territory was the oldest man on the expedition and described as “a city man, without experience in the wild.”
Everts was finally found Oct. 16 near the north end of the park, partially deranged, starving, and nearly frozen to death. He recovered and two years later was offered the chance to become Yellowstone's first park superintendent. He declined because there was no salary involved.
Sept. 11, 1895
The University of Montana formally opened its doors in Missoula, on a day described as “damp and drizzly and generally disagreeable.”
Three hundred people jammed into the meeting hall of Willard School on South Sixth Street. The school was on loan to the university until buildings on the campus could be constructed. It became the second home of Missoula County High School in 1898.
The crowd included about 50 students, but only five who were prepared for college work. Local and state dignitaries sat on the rostrum while the Mandolin and Guitar club played an opening overture and Mary Olive Gray of the university faculty rendered Litolff's “Spinning Song” on the piano. After an address by Judge Hiram Knowles, several students in the back of the room let loose with what a reporter said “might in future be expected in the way of a college yell.”
Speeches followed from the likes of Montana pioneer Wilbur Fisk Sanders, U.S. Senator Thomas Carter and the school's first president, Oscar J. Craig.
The university became known as Montana State University in the mid-1930s. On July 1, 1965, the name was switched back to the University of Montana.
Sept. 14, 1805
Canadian fur trader Francois-Antoine LaRocque reached Pompey's Pillar, the year before Capt. William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition carved his initials in the rock.
LaRocque was assessing the country for its fur trapping potential with some Crow Indians he had met at the Mandan villages on the Missouri River. The party made a loop through southeast Montana before heading down the Yellowstone Valley.
Clark named Pompey's Pillar, a towering rock 30 miles downstream from present-day Billings, after the infant son of Sacajawea, who was with him when he carved his initials on the rock in July of 1806. The day LaRocque reached the landmark pillar, the Lewis and Clark party was in the Bitterroot Mountains 400 miles to the west, near what's now Powell Ranger Station on the Lochsa River, battling snow and hunger en route to the Pacific Ocean.
LaRocque found promising fur prospects on his exploration, but the North West Company never followed up on them. It concentrated its trading efforts in the Canadian West and Pacific Northwest.
Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or by e-mail at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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