The Vanishing Survey:

Captain Barlow’s Lost Reconnaissance of Yellowstone, 1871

INTRODUCTION

In the summer of 1871, two government expeditions pushed into the geyser basins and canyons of the upper Yellowstone country within weeks of each other. One, led by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden, would become one of the best-remembered scientific journeys in American history, its photographs and paintings credited with persuading Congress to create the nation’s first national park. The other, a smaller military reconnaissance under Captain John W. Barlow and Captain David P. Heap of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, has largely receded from popular memory. Yet the Barlow-Heap Expedition traveled much of the same ground, produced its own report and map, and might have left an equally rich visual record of Yellowstone’s wonders had a catastrophe hundreds of miles away, in Chicago, not intervened. The story of the 1871 Barlow Expedition is as much about what was lost as what was found, and it offers a case study in how thin the margin was between a well-documented expedition and one nearly erased from history.

ORIGINS AND ORDERS

By 1871, the upper Yellowstone had already drawn three exploring parties in as many years. Captain William F. Raynolds had been turned back by late snow in 1860, the amateur Folsom-Cook-Peterson party had slipped into the region unofficially in 1869, and the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition, escorted by a detachment from Fort Ellis under Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane, had explored much of the plateau in 1870. These earlier ventures generated enough public curiosity that, in 1871, the federal government dispatched two official reconnaissance parties into the region. Ferdinand V. Hayden and Captain John W. Barlow, chief engineer of the Military Division of the Missouri, headed investigations for the Interior Department and the War Department respectively, and their combined findings helped secure passage of the act establishing Yellowstone National Park on March 1, 1872.

Barlow’s assignment came directly from the top of the Army’s western command: General Philip Sheridan ordered him to make a reconnaissance of the Yellowstone country alongside Dr. Hayden’s survey. Captain David P. Heap, also of the Engineer Corps, shared responsibility for the topographical work. This division of labor reflected differing agency interests: Hayden’s survey pursued geology, botany, and a broader scientific inventory, while Barlow and Heap’s War Department reconnaissance served the Army’s practical need for accurate topographical maps of a largely unsurveyed corner of the northern Rockies. While informal accounts occasionally refer to Barlow as "Colonel"—a title stemming from Civil War brevet rank or his subsequent 1895 promotion—rigorous military and historical records confirm his field rank was Captain during the 1871 survey.

PERSONNEL AND THE MONTANA CONNECTION

The Barlow-Heap party was considerably smaller than Hayden’s thirty-two-member survey, and it shared military escort troops with Hayden for security. Accompanying Barlow was photographer Thomas J. Hine, whose role paralleled that of William Henry Jackson on the Hayden survey. Hine’s presence meant that two independent photographic records of Yellowstone’s geysers, hot springs, and canyons were created that summer.

The two parties organized and resupplied in the vicinity of Fort Ellis, the Army post outside Bozeman. The joint expeditions departed together from Bottler’s ranch on July 20, 1871, moving into the interior of the future park while sharing camps, escort details, and the risks of unmapped terrain.

INTO THE WONDERLAND

The reconnaissance carried Barlow’s men through a succession of natural spectacles: the travertine terraces near Gardner’s River, the geyser basins of the Firehole, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Barlow’s official report offers a firsthand description of the approach to Mammoth Hot Springs, noting that upon reaching the mouth of Gardner’s River, the party found *"a boiling hot torrent of water, some six feet wide and a foot in depth, pours out of the hillside, perfectly clear, though steaming hot,"* which he deduced was *"probably the outlet of a vast subterranean reservoir of hot water supplying the numerous boiling springs upon the mountainsides above."*

Beyond its narrative, the expedition’s chief scientific contribution was cartographic. Barlow and Heap compiled a comprehensive manuscript map from their field observations, placing it alongside the maps of W. W. de Lacy, Lieutenant Doane, and Hayden as a foundational document of Yellowstone geography. The map and narrative were submitted to Congress and published in 1872 as *Senate Executive Document No. 66* (*Report of a Reconnaissance of the Basin of the Upper Yellowstone in 1871*).

DISASTER IN CHICAGO

What might have been the expedition’s most vivid legacy—its photographic record—was almost entirely destroyed within weeks of the party’s return. The Military Division of the Missouri was headquartered in Chicago, and on October 8–9, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire devastated the city. The command’s headquarters burned, destroying Barlow's field instruments, maps, specimens, and all of Hine’s glass plate negatives.

Only sixteen photographic prints survived, saved because Hine had taken them home prior to the blaze. For over a century, these remaining images were presumed lost. In April 1998, independent researcher Dr. James Brust rediscovered seven of Hine’s lost 1871 stereoviews while examining the Yellowstone collections at the New-York Historical Society. Among these was the earliest known photograph ever taken of Old Faithful in eruption.

THE REPORT AND ITS LEGACY

Despite the heavy loss of its physical and photographic collections, the Barlow-Heap reconnaissance added crucial independent War Department validation to Hayden's Interior Department findings, solidifying the political case for federal protection.

The expedition also left a lasting archival footprint. The Montana Historical Society maintains a dedicated topical vertical file (*"Barlow, J. W., Expedition, 1871"*), and the Yellowstone National Park Research Library and Archives holds field materials and mapping records from Barlow and Heap, preserving the legacy of these Army surveyors across the northern plains.

CONCLUSION

The Barlow-Heap Expedition of 1871 occupies an unusual place in the exploration of the American West: fully official, launched on the direct order of General Sheridan, and traveling in close company with the survey history remembers best. Reduced by an unrelated urban disaster to a fraction of its original documentary record, what survives—Barlow’s vivid field reports, the Barlow-Heap map, and a handful of rediscovered photographs—confirms that the reconnaissance played a vital role in the birth of the national park concept.

Original Source List

Archives West. “Yellowstone National Park Research Library and Archives Collections.” Orbis Cascade Alliance.

Haines, Aubrey L. *Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden and the Founding of the Yellowstone National Park*. United States Geological Survey, Project Gutenberg.

Haines, Aubrey L. *Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment*. National Park Service, 1974.

Montana Historical Society. “Vertical Files Index, Topical A.” Montana Historical Society Library and Archives.

National Park Service. “Through the Great Geyser Basin: The Barlow Expedition of 1871.” *Historic Roads in the National Park System*, U.S. Department of the Interior.

National Park Service. “Expeditions Explore Yellowstone.” Yellowstone National Park, U.S. Department of the Interior.

“Copelin & Son (Thomas J. Hine).” *Yellowstone Stereoviews*.

WyoHistory.org. “Yellowstone, the World’s Wonderland.” Wyoming State Historical Society.