Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park, Second Edition

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Sometimes, despite the park service’s warnings, “people will do what they want to do,” says Wiggins. When Wiggins took his own young children to the park’s geyser basins, “I held onto them very tightly, and we didn’t go off the trail. Yellowstone’s a beautiful place, but it’s also a very dangerous place.”

A Brief History of Deaths in Yellowstone’s Hot Springs

Whittlesey saw the chapters unrolling in his head. He’d already written and published books on history and knew where he could find the pertinent information. He published the book in 1995. Scott's death is the first in 16 years in a Yellowstone thermal feature, the twenty-second on record, according to park officials. But the death comes on the heels of an accident just Saturday evening when a father slipped while carrying his 13-year-old son off trails in the Upper Geyser Basin. Other means of death were: murder, suicide, lightning, earthquake, bison, eating poisonous plants, avalanches, cave-ins, falling trees, forest fires, battles (between Indians and whites in the1800's), horses, accidental shootings, diving, structural fires, stove explosions, stagecoach accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, airplane crashes, etc. The book also contains a chapter on people who are missing (usually for unknown causes) and presumed dead. Because this information was not readily available from the park, Whittlesey gathered his data by poring over park superintendent records and local news reports. Kirwan’s eyes were totally white, as if blind, and his badly burned skin had already began peeling off. When another man on the scene ran over and tried to remove one of Kirwan’s shoes, his skin started to flay off. Later, rangers found two large pieces of skin shaped like human hands next to the spring.The second half strays away from deaths and accidents that occurred because of Yellowstone and became an account of deaths that happened in the areas close to the park, but not as a direct result of Yellowstone itself. This part was less interesting, not because those people didn't matter, but because the account of their deaths strayed from the premise of the book. Moosie never made it out. His body was not recovered, though oils from his body caused small eruptions in the water in the day following. Some folks require the park’s wildness and yet deny its right to exercise its wildness upon them.”--Lee Whittlesey LW: A hot spring. The idea of falling into one just terrifies me. If you read the chapter, you’ll see why. Grizzly bears would be second. Probably bison third.

Death in ‘Yellowstone’ So Far - We Got This Covered Every Death in ‘Yellowstone’ So Far - We Got This Covered

Colin Nathaniel Scott, 23, was more than 225 yards (206 meters) off a boardwalk at popular Norris Geyser Basin Tuesday morning when he slipped and fell in, according to the National Park Service. Rangers on Wednesday were attempting to recover his body.Last week, 23-year-old Colin Nathaniel Scott of Portland, Oregon, walked off the designated boardwalks in Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin and fell into one of the park’s acrid, boiling hot springs. The water, some of the hottest in the park at approximately 199 degrees, likely killed him in a matter of moments.