Colter's Hell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Colter's Hell
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 Location in Wyoming
Location in the United States
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| Location | Park County, Wyoming, USA |
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| Nearest city | Cody, Wyoming |
| NRHP reference No. | 73001937 |
| Added to NRHP | August 14, 1973 |
Colter's Hell is a special place in Wyoming, USA. It's an area with hot springs and fumaroles, which are like natural steam vents. You can find it along the Shoshone River near the town of Cody. This interesting spot covers about one square mile.
The area's thermal activity, meaning how much heat and steam it produces, has become less active over time. It was first described by a famous mountain man named John Colter. He explored this region in the winter of 1807–1808. Colter had left the Lewis and Clark Expedition before it ended.
Contents
What is Colter's Hell?
A Place of Hot Springs and Steam
Colter's Hell is known for its hot springs and steam vents. Hot springs are pools of water heated by the Earth's warmth. Fumaroles are openings in the Earth's crust that release steam and gases. Today, you can still see these features.
Some old, inactive geyser cones stand up to 30 feet (about 9 meters) high. These cones show where powerful geysers once erupted. Other hot springs used to be found where the Shoshone River's north and south forks meet. However, these are now covered by the water of the Buffalo Bill Dam reservoir.
John Colter's Discovery
John Colter was one of the first Europeans to explore this part of Wyoming. He described the area's steaming vents and hot water. His stories made people curious about this "hell-like" place. At the time, the Shoshone River was called the Stinkingwater River.
Colter's descriptions were sometimes confused with the much larger geysers in Yellowstone National Park. It's not clear if Colter actually visited Yellowstone's famous geyser basins.
Early Explorers and Descriptions
Other Early Visitors
Other explorers also saw Colter's Hell. A trapper named Joseph Meek visited in 1830. He had also seen the geysers in Yellowstone. Meek described Colter's Hell in a similar way, suggesting it might have had active geysers back then.
Plenty Coups (Alaxchíia Ahú), a main chief of the Crow people, camped here with his tribe in 1840. Native American tribes had known about and used these thermal areas for a very long time.
Clearing Up the Confusion with Yellowstone
For a while, people thought Colter's Hell was one of the geyser areas in Yellowstone National Park. This idea appeared in a book called Yellowstone National Park by Hiram M. Chittenden in 1895. However, Chittenden also mentioned a "tar spring" on the Stinkingwater River by the same name.
The earliest written description of Colter's Hell came from Washington Irving's account of Captain Benjamin L.E. Bonneville's journals. Bonneville's scouts visited the location in 1833. In the same year, another group from Bonneville's survey found the actual geyser basins of Yellowstone along the Firehole River. This helped to show that Colter's Hell and Yellowstone's geysers were different places.
Visiting Colter's Hell Today
Colter's Hell is located just north of US 14-16-20 on the west side of Cody. It's a historical site that helps us understand the early exploration of the American West. The area was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. This means it's recognized as an important historical location.
