Approximately "fifty miles long and fifteen miles wide," Big Hole Prairie "is hemmed in by high mountains on every side except the southeast where Wisdom River passes out from it." Plate XLIX.
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Military life; Valleys
Looking westward from Cantonment Stevens in the Bitter Root valley. Lieutenant Mullan and his party "established this camp ten miles above Fort Owen." The cantonment sat a little removed from the Indian camp and consisted of "four...
Chemakane Mission named for a nearby spring, was "occupied by Messrs. Walker and Eel; but, in 1849, in consequence of the Cayuse difficulties, it was abandoned." "The site of the mission is five miles from the Spokane River, in an...
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Columbia River; Channels; Indian encampments; Canoes; Dalles (Or.)
The Dalles is a narrow place in the Columbia River, where the channel has been worn out of the rocks, below which about ten miles, is the mouth of the Klikitat River. Drawing shows an Indian encampment on the bank and a canoe on the water. Plate...
"Just below the outlet of Flathead Lake there is a series of rapids and falls, one of which, at the time, was fifteen feet high. The country to the west of the lake is a high rolling prairie. Salmon trout, three feet long, are caught in it,...
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Fort Benton (Mont.); Missouri River
"Fort Benton stands on the eastern bank of the Missouri, near the Great Bend." "The river is here perfectly transparent at most seasons of the year. The Teton River empties into the Missouri six miles below Fort Benton; the Marias...
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Assiniboine Indians; Gifts; Fort Union (Mont.)
"Fort Union is situated on the eastern bank of the Missouri River, about 2 ¾ miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. It was built by the American Fur Company in 1830, and has from that time been the principal supply store or depot of that...
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Canyons; Grand Coulee (Wash.)
"The Grand Coulee is about ten miles wide where it opens on the Columbia River at its northern end, which is a hundred feet above the water, and gradually widens toward the south; its walls, eight hundred feet high are formed of solid basaltic...
A conical mound near the center of a beautiful prairie called the "Deer Lodge". The mound stands "about thirty feet high, around the base of which are innumerable springs of hot water. On top of the mound a spring three feet in...
"Minnehaha, or the Laughing Water, called also Brown's Falls. It is situated west of the Mississippi, and distant about three miles from Fort Snelling. Ten miles above the falls the stream flows from Lake Calhoun, and it passes through a level...
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Palouse River (Wash.); Mountains
The Peluse (Palouse) River "has its source in the main ridge of the Bitter Root" Mountains, "and flows in nearly a straight course through a valley some twenty miles wide," bearing north "through a country densely timbered...
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; Salish Indians; Hellgate River (Mont.)
Drawing depicts the camp of Victor, a Flathead Chief. The camp sits on the Hell-Gate River "three miles above its junction with the Bitter Root." Plate XXXI.
Expeditions & surveys; Railroad surveys; White Bear Lake (Minn.)
White Bear Lake, "a beautiful sheet of water, bordered with timber, about fourteen miles long and two wide, with high swelling banks running back a mile or so, and rising to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet." Plate V.