21 DONAHOO’S SHACK

WILLIAM “BILL” DONAHOO

COURTESY OF YELLOWSTONE GATEWAY MUSEUM, WHITHORN COLLECTION, 2006.044.2245

WILLIAM “BILL” DONAHOO

William “Bill” Donahoo arrived to Montana Territory in 1864 at age 16, in the midst of the Civil War—a likely reason for his departure from Ohio—and in the heart of the gold rush years. It’s not clear where Bill was or what he did until we find record of him in 1880, but he was likely always a jack-of-all-trades who could trap, haul freight, hunt for market meat, guide on horseback, work construction and

Bill Donahoo stood 5’10” tall, but from the looks of a 1900 photo snapped at Settergren’s OK Store in Gardiner, he might have thought himself 6’5”. He assumes the posture of a Cuban Revolutionary, strapped with a bandolier and Bowie knife, his horse piled high with provisions of salt, flour, coffee, sugar, a Winchester 1886, ax, duster, gunnysack, and the makings for a lean-to shelter, ready to live in the wilderness if not forever, then at least for a month.

adopt other trades as opportunity arose. Donahoo arrived to the Rockies on the heels of a famed roster of mountain men (called “mountaineers”) —Jim Bridger, John Bozeman, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith, Johnson Gardiner, Joe Meek, Osborne Russell, and countless unnamed adventurers and fortune seekers. Some of these legends were still alive—like Bridger and Bozeman—and Bill very well might have met and been mentored by Montana-savvy men such as these.

Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 and Bill was there to participate in its building. His time in and around Yellowstone marks an uncomfortable transition. While new arrivals like him eagerly embraced frontier opportunities, in 1877 Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce retreated before the pursuing U.S. Army through the heart of Yellowstone. The Tribe passed stunned tourists as they fled for

their lives. Perhaps Bill witnessed this and other pivotal moments from the driver’s seat of a freight wagon. Hence, Bill Donahoo represents a unique breed of creature: a Euro-American who lived in Montana Territory before Yellowstone National Park and one who lived in Montana after the park was established. Explorers convinced tourists to come to “Wonderland.” Seasonal workers like Donahoo took care of them once they arrived (and still do today).

Donahoo eventually planted himself in the town of Gardiner—established in 1880 and located 30 miles to the south of West Creek—and supported the needs of this growing park gateway community, often freighting people and goods. In 1883, Yellowstone National Park prepared itself for a stagecoach tourism boom with the construction of hotels. These budding tourism and hospitality amenities required a steady stream of supplies and laborers. Bill Donahoo worked in the employ of W.L. Henderson, owner of the Cottage Hotel and one of the

park’s earliest interpreters. The world’s first national park would soon welcome 35,849 visitors in 1917 (the first season open to automobiles). In 2017, that number would reach 4.1 million visitors from all corners of the globe.

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Stagecoach tourists pose by Liberty Cap in Mammoth. The Cottage Hotel, which Bill Donahoo helped build, is visible at left in the background. Bill was a stagecoach guide and pack trip guide in Yellowstone from the late 1800s into the early 20th century.

WONDERLAND EXISTS

The landscape Donahoo inhabited was one on the brink of colonization in full. Park County didn’t exist yet. The biggest expeditions of “discovery” into what would become Yellowstone had yet to take place. Most Americans were incredulous of, yet entertained by, trappers’ tales of bubbling pools, mountains made of diamonds and water violently spouting from the ground. The park had been thoroughly explored by Tribes and trappers, but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that the public truly paid attention to reports from the field. Trappers’ tall tales became fact with the expeditions of Folsom-Cook-Peterson in 1869, Washburn-Langford-Doane in 1870, and the Hayden party in 1871. The latter scientific expedition was accompanied by photographers and painters such as William Henry Jackson, Henry W. Elliott, and Thomas Moran. Their paintings and dageurrotypes proved that the wonders of Wonderland were real. Convinced with visual evidence, Congress established Yellowstone National Park in 1872.

In the late 1890s, we see Bill as a park guide, an occupation he held for some years. He registered with 13 head of horses. In the early 1900s, Donahoo owned a home in Gardiner, a convenient base from which he could work in the park, and which he shared with other unmarried male seasonal laborers (not unlike today’s ski and trout bums). In 1914 Bill was marked by the U.S. Census on the Sam Dailey ranch (Today, West Creek Ranch.). Here, we see the other side of his existence.

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THE PARADISE VALLEY & YELLOWSTONE GUIDING TRADITIONS

Pack trips and the guides who lead them—in Yellowstone or in the bordering National Forests and wilderness areas—are much the same today as they were more than a century ago. Horses and riders in Yellowstone follow many of the same trails that Donahoo rode. Provisions like cowboy coffee and steaks are still camp staples. Guides and guests still sit around campfires under the same stars while the howls of wolves sound from a distance. Wall tents continue to provide shelter in all kinds of weather. Some guides even tell the same stories handed down through generations of pack trip guides, stagecoach drivers and park interpreters.

Guiding for income—whether horse, hiking or hunting trips—has always been part of the Euro-American culture and economy of Montana. Some of the earliest guides in Paradise Valley were the Bottler brothers, Phillip and Fred. The Bottler Ranch sat just south of Emigrant proper.

COURTESY OF YELLOWSTONE GATEWAY MUSEUM, 2006.044.2967 Lithograph of the Bottler Ranch, the final outpost of civilization before Yellowstone. The Bottlers and Daileys arrived well before Fort Ellis (i.e. Bozeman) was erected.

The Bottler Ranch, as captured by W.H. Jackson during his stay there. Note the endless skins hanging in the pavilion and behind. Wildlife were severely reduced with the arrival of pioneers and market hunters.

Yellowstone National Park Historian Lee Whittlesey said, “The original routes into the Park traced through Montana. You had to go north to get south. The history of exploration and explorers is rooted in Montana. The first stagecoach companies to carry tourists ran through Paradise Valley. The Park Branch line of the railroad ran to Cinnabar [just north of Gardiner].”

In the 1860s, the Bottler place marked the last outpost of civilization before entering the grounds of the park. Every expedition party that explored Yellowstone stayed here. This also means that every one of those parties had to cross Point of Rocks, and therefore through the grounds of Mountain Sky and West Creek. Aside from exploratory parties, the Bottlers hosted and guided the likes of the Irish Earl of Dunraven and other notables.

Until the 1970s, local men often guided hunting and pack trips as a seasonal supplement to ranching, construction work and other occupations. Guiding provided welcome supplementary income and locals cornered the job market. This localized guiding profession

expanded to a national employee pool as America’s recreational economy grew through the late 20th century.

In Paradise Valley one can find multi-generation pack trip and hunting outfitters who know how to survive in all manner of Montana weather. The Yellowstone seasonal employee—now drawn from a lottery of national and international applicants—is a staple and absolute necessity for supporting park gateway communities such as West Yellowstone and Gardiner, Cody and Jackson, and nearby communities such as Big Sky, Bozeman, and others. Pack trip guides, fly fishing guides, ski guides, snow coach guides, hiking guides and others are critical to the service base and economy of the Greater Yellowstone region.

COURTESY OF YELLOWSTONE GATEWAY MUSEUM, 2006.044.2345

F.J. Haynes Expedition crossing Point of Rocks in 1882. Haynes was the first official photographer of Yellowstone National Park. He stayed with the Bottlers.

DONAHOO ON THE DAILEY RANCH

In his later years, “Bill Doneyhew” was hired by Sam Dailey to squat on land near Point of Rocks. The best guess is that the territorial Dailey, always looking to maximize his claims and grazing ground, stationed Donahoo there to discourage other homesteaders. The flats around Point of Rocks were largely taken up by the Daileys, but a few successful homesteaders slipped in, like Jim and Maybelle Zimmerman, who built a home there in the early 1900s.

Many ranchers paid full-time squatters and ranch hands to stake a claim on their behalf. Sam Dailey very well could have met Donahoo decades earlier, when he and brother Andy worked in the park as freighters. Like so many

tour guides, Bill might have grown weary of park life, tourists and all their “fool tenderfoot questions.” Living alone on a foothill might have seemed like his turn at a vacation. It is here in his shack that we more clearly see another aspect of Bill, a man who lived in solitude, trapping and hunting.

The quietude here begs questions about Bill’s day-to-day existence: Did many people pass his shack? Did he hunt or trap most days, camped on the mountain, only to return a few nights a week? Could he read the newspapers that lined his walls? Did workers from the nearby Kenniston logging camp stop by his shack to share coffee or a nip of whiskey and trade stories?

Donahoo is buried in the Gardiner Cemetery on Tinker Hill with a headstone marked “Wm. Donahoo 1848 – 1926, Montana Pioneer 1864.”

PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2017 BY ARNICA SPRING RAE

Leaving the West Creek compound, an old logging road cuts uphill, passing by abandoned homesteads and sawmill camp hovels, eventually arriving to Donahoo’s shack, standing alongside his namesake Donahue Creek. Several sites on West Creek and Mountain Sky grounds feature disparate spellings between homesteader names in records versus the names that landed on the map, for example, “Kottke” versus “Kotke,” and “Dailey” versus “Daily.” Some took liberties with property lines; others took liberties with map spellings, mainly due to low literacy rates during the homestead period. The Irish “Donahoo” was subjected to such manipulation in naming the creek, the Celtic “-hoo” tamed down to a “–hue.”

A Carnation milk crate serves as a meager cabinet. Cabin dwellers commonly used newspaper as insulation and chinking. Here, editions of The Livingston Enterprise hang in tatters on the wall. A legible 1917 clipping announces the fall of Italian troops to the forces of the Central Powers. While World War I raged overseas, here lived Bill, age 71, along a tumbling mountain creek in a one-room shack, surrounded by a patchwork of international news. Mr. Donahoo never wed and the great possibility for irony abounds: to be sentenced nightly to sit before a news clipping demanding, “Read this here, you Men of the Mountains, and tell us your answer,” and not have anyone with whom to share his answer.

PHOTOGRAPHED IN 2017 BY ARNICA SPRING RAE

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