John Colter, a veteran of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a notably self-sufficient mountain man, and an indefatigable explorer, was the first white man known to have reconnoitered this locale. In 1807, possibly traveling alone but probably escorted by Crow guides, he crossed the Stinking Water, or Shoshone River, at a major Indian-trail ford about a mile downstream from this point and discovered an active geyser district extending along both sides of the river. Steam mixed with sulfur fumes and shooting flames escaped through vents in the valley floor, and subterranean rumblings were ominously audible. Although mineralized hot springs still flow along the river’s edge, the eruptions he watched are now marked only by cones of parched stone. This was primarily Shoshone and Crow country, though other Indians also came here, especially Bannocks and Nez Percé traveling eastward over the mountains to hunt plains buffalo and pausing to test the heralded medicinal values of these stinking waters baths. Numerous tepee rings on benchlands to the east and north testify to former Indian encampments, and Heart Mountain, a famous landmark and geological oddity, stands conspicuously on the northern horizon. In the fur trade heyday of the 1820s and 1830s, mountain men named this place Colter’s Hell in honor of a respected predecessor, but early officials of Yellowstone Park later applied that name to the park’s geyser area, creating historic confusion; the true Colter’s Hell is here.