STRONG, William Emerson (1840-1891)

A Trip to the Yellowstone National Park in July, August and September 1875. From the Journal of General W. E. Strong

Washington: Privately Printed, 1876. Quarto. 143pp. plus two folding maps (one partially handcolored to show the route), seven plates, and seven mounted photographic portraits.

Expertly bound to style in half purple morocco and purple cloth covered boards, marbled endpapers and edges

Provenance: Mrs. J. Y. Scammon (presentation inscription from the author)

With mounted photographs chronicling the opening of Yellowstone National Park.

An interesting journal of a fifty-three day hunting and fishing trip to Yellowstone via rail, stage, horseback, and the Missouri River, undertaken by Strong in the company of Secretary of War William Belknap, Gen. Randolph Marcy, and Gen. James Forsyth, in the summer of 1875. The narrative of the trip to Yellowstone includes descriptions of Salt Lake City and the Mormons, Virginia City, and Fort Ellis, and the balance of the narrative is devoted to Yellowstone, with rapt descriptions of the beauty of the area. While hunting and fishing they killed three buffalo, five deer, shot scores of birds, and caught some 3,000 trout in the Yellowstone River. The portraits depict Strong, Marcy, Belknap, Forsyth, Col. George Gillespie, Lieut. Gustavus Doane, and Gen. W.B. Sweitzer, and the plates include sketches of Fort Ellis, hot springs and Castle Geyser, and Yellowstone Lake. Strong was a Chicago businessman who was breveted a brigadier general during the Civil War, and who travelled extensively in the West. The Yellowstone National Park Archives has Strong's own copy of this book, in which he recorded the names of sixty-two friends to whom he presented copies, leading Dean Larsen to surmise that not more than a hundred copies were printed. The present example inscribed to Mrs. Jonathan Young Scammon, the wife of a noted Chicago businessman and Republican party leader. The Streeter copy brought $250 in 1969, and then reappeared in 2001 at Sotheby's where it sold for $14,400. A scarce account, accorded a "b" rating by Howes, and not listed in Flake.

Litchfield 50; Graff 4014; Phillips, American Sporting Books 364 (counts 6 plates and 7 photographs); Howes S1083 "b"; Streeter Sale 4101.

Item #35068

Price: $18,000.00