Legends in Silver and Shadow:

The Infamous Hunter’s Hot Springs Photograph and the Mythology of the American West

Introduction: A Photograph and Its Promises

Among the many relics of the American West that have passed through

estate sales, museum archives, and private collections, few objects have

generated as much sustained curiosity—or as much scholarly

frustration—as a single nineteenth-century photograph purportedly taken

at Hunter’s Hot Springs, Montana. The image, a black-and-white group

portrait of fifteen men arranged on the porch steps of a modest hotel

building, appears unremarkable at first glance. What elevates it into

the realm of genuine historical intrigue—and what has fueled decades of

debate—is the handwritten list of names attached to its surface. That

list claims to identify, among the assembled men: Wyatt Earp, Theodore

Roosevelt, Doc Holliday, Morgan Earp, Bat Masterson, Judge Roy Bean,

Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and the formidable mountain man known

as “Liver Eating” Johnson. If accurate, the photograph would constitute

the single greatest gathering of frontier celebrities ever captured by a

camera. Historians, however, have arrived at a far less romantic

conclusion.

The photograph has circulated in Montana since at least the 1960s, long

before the internet provided a mechanism for rapid, widespread

dissemination. As researcher Jason Leaf noted in his multi-year

investigation begun in 2000, the image had quietly populated the walls

of homes, restaurants, and bars across North America, most reproductions

bearing some variation of the famous names list (huntershotsprings.net).

The consistency of that cultural footprint—combined with the

irresistible appeal of the photograph’s claimed contents—ensured that

the image would endure long past any serious expert’s initial dismissal.

This article examines the photograph from multiple angles: the history

of the location where it was taken, the origins of the spurious name

annotations, the investigative work undertaken to determine its actual

content, and what the photograph ultimately reveals about the human

appetite for myth-making in relation to the American frontier.

The Setting: Hunter’s Hot Springs, Montana Territory

Long before the arrival of European-American settlers, the geothermal

springs located approximately twenty miles east of present-day

Livingston, Montana, were already well-known to the Crow people of the

region. According to the Montana History Portal, at certain periods of

the year as many as one thousand tipis surrounded the hot springs, and

the Crow continued to use them at least until the mid-1870s, when the

western portion of their reservation—which included the springs—was

ceded to the federal government (www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/128750).

The site carried with it an indigenous significance that predated any

white settlement by generations.

The man whose name would be permanently attached to the springs was Dr.

Andrew Jackson Hunter, a Virginia-born Confederate battlefield surgeon.

According to a detailed history published in Bozeman Magazine, Hunter

was born in 1816 and had served as a physician for the Illinois Central

Railway before the Civil War disrupted his life entirely. When his

family’s farm, store, and home in Missouri were burned by those who

viewed them as Southern sympathizers, the Hunters began their westward

journey in April 1864 (Shearer). On July 18 of that year, while hunting

antelope north of the Yellowstone River, Dr. Hunter came upon the hot

springs and hundreds of encamped Crow Indians. His daughter Mary later

recorded in a memoir that her father had previously spent considerable

time at Arkansas Hot Springs and immediately recognized the therapeutic

and commercial potential of what he observed (Shearer,

bozemanmagazine.com).

Dr. Hunter established squatters’ rights on the parcel in 1870 and by

1873 had constructed a hotel and bathhouses at the site. The early years

were marked by considerable hardship—the family diary, newspaper

accounts, and memoirs describe stolen horses, destroyed gardens, and the

constant threat from traveling bands of Sioux and Blackfeet. The first

post office opened at Hunter’s Hot Springs in 1878, with Dr. Hunter

serving as its inaugural postmaster (bozemanmagazine.com). A significant

turning point came in 1882, when the Northern Pacific Railroad pushed

westward through the region, bringing its tracks within a mile and a

half of the resort’s front door. Frank Rich, Dr. Hunter’s son-in-law,

operated a complimentary carriage service from the Springdale station to

the hotel, and a second hotel—the Rich Hotel, sometimes called the Lower

House—was erected nearby to accommodate overflow guests.

By 1885, the Hunter’s Hot Springs town site included two hotels, a post

office, separate bathhouses for men and women, a one-room schoolhouse, a

dry goods store, a laundry, and several family dwellings. That same

year, Dr. Hunter sold the property to the Montana Hot Springs Company,

headed by Cyrus B. Mendenhall. Subsequent decades saw the resort pass

through additional ownership changes, ultimately becoming the Hotel

Dakota in 1909—a structure over 450 feet long with a capacity of 300

guests, boasting steam heat, electric lights, and room telephones. That

grand structure burned in 1932 and was never rebuilt. The plunge

reopened in 1948 under new owners, who operated it until 1974, when the

facility closed permanently (ktvq.com; mtmemory.org). Today the site is

private property, and the ruins of what was once a celebrated Western

spa lie scattered north of the Yellowstone near Springdale.

The Photograph: What Is Certain and What Is Not

One of the few points of genuine consensus among both believers and

skeptics is that the photograph itself has not been manipulated. The

image shows fifteen men, most standing or seated on the porch steps of a

hotel building, dressed in the clothing typical of the late

nineteenth-century American West. Researcher Jason Leaf, a Vancouver,

British Columbia resident who devoted years of his life to the question,

confirmed that the photograph appears to be an authentic, unaltered

period image: the dispute concerns not the photographic medium but the

identity annotations attached to it (mywebvault.wordpress.com; Brekke,

Montana Best Times, February 2003).

Establishing the photograph’s location required relatively little

effort. A sketch of the Hunters Hot Springs Hotel appears in Michael

Leeson’s 1885 reference work History of Montana. Comparing that sketch

with the building visible in the group portrait established the location

beyond reasonable doubt. Additional confirmation came from photographs

of the hotel taken in 1909 and provided to Leaf by Doris Whithorn of the

Park County Museum in Livingston, Montana. Whithorn’s 1909 photographs,

however, revealed something significant: the porch steps visible in the

group portrait were no longer present. Analysis indicated that Cyrus

Mendenhall had raised the ground level around the hotel when laying the

stone foundation for an annex, effectively eliminating the need for the

steps. This alteration appears to have taken place around 1888

(huntershotsprings.net).

The presence of steps in the group portrait therefore establishes a

terminus ante quem of approximately 1888. The lower end of the date

range was refined by the 1885 Leeson sketch, which shows no

steps—indicating that the steps were added after 1885. Mendenhall took

ownership in 1885 and undertook substantial renovation, making 1886 the

most probable year for the steps’ construction. Combined with historical

records placing Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Leroy Parker (later known as

Butch Cassidy), and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) in southeastern

Montana during the summer of 1886, this dating initially appeared to

give the famous names list a thread of plausibility. However, as

subsequent investigation demonstrated, plausibility of proximity is not

evidence of presence—and the famous names list fell apart under

sustained scrutiny (huntershotsprings.net; mywebvault.wordpress.com).

The Named Men: Chronological and Historical Impossibilities

The most persuasive arguments against the photograph’s famous names

annotations are chronological in nature. Wild Bunch historian and author

Daniel Buck, recognized as one of the foremost authorities on the lives

of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, stated plainly that the

photograph was “as authentic as the jackalope and as verifiable as the

legend of the vanishing hitchhiker” and confirmed that he knew of no

serious Western historian who lent any credibility to the identification

roster (truewestmagazine.com, 2007; truewestmagazine.com, 2013).

Several of the named individuals present logical impossibilities. Morgan

Earp, identified as one of the men in the image, was shot and killed in

Tombstone, Arizona, on March 18, 1882—more than a year before the

photograph’s original claimed date of 1883, and four years before the

revised date of 1886. The original annotation listing the photograph as

taken in 1883 creates additional problems: in that year, Robert Leroy

Parker—who would not adopt the alias “Butch Cassidy” for some years—was

approximately seventeen years old, far younger than any of the adults

depicted. Lyndel Meikle, writing in the Helena Independent Record,

observed that multiple versions of the photograph existed with differing

names and dates, indicating that annotations were revised over time as

researchers eliminated historically impossible inclusions. In one

version, Alan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, was

named; he was eventually replaced by Ben Greenough—who, the record

shows, would have been thirteen years old in 1883 and did not arrive in

Montana until 1886 (helenair.com).

Similarly, the identification of the figure labeled “Teddy Roosevelt” is

undermined by the notation itself. Roosevelt was not called “Teddy”

until the 1890s, meaning any caption using that nickname would

necessarily have been written well after the alleged date of the event

(helenair.com). Meikle also contacted the Theodore Roosevelt historical

site in New York, which confirmed that while Roosevelt could not be

definitively excluded from the geographic vicinity of Montana in 1883,

he visited North Dakota that September for three weeks—traveling

directly from New York and returning directly there—which makes an

appearance at Hunter’s Hot Springs in that year highly improbable.

Roosevelt did not relocate to the West until 1884.

The Origin of the False Annotations: Harry Britton and the Shellenberg Copies

Perhaps the most consequential thread of Jason Leaf’s investigation

concerned a name that was neither famous nor recognizable: Harry

Britton, listed as figure number twelve in the photograph. Following

advice from Daniel Buck—who urged researchers to examine the names that

were not celebrated, as they might lead to authentic provenance—Leaf

spent years pursuing this obscure figure. In the winter of 2004, after

many months of correspondence, two of Harry Britton’s granddaughters,

Margaret Rootes and Hazel Walen, came forward with key information

(huntershotsprings.net).

A significant additional contribution came from Sharon Pohlman, a

great-granddaughter of Frank and Lizzie Rich—the couple who operated the

Rich Hotel at Hunter’s Hot Springs. Pohlman, serving as family

archivist, provided period photographs and a detailed genealogical

history that enabled Leaf and other researchers to identify several of

the men in the photograph as local ranchers, hoteliers, and resort

employees connected with the Hunter and Rich families. Most strikingly,

the man previously identified as “Butch Cassidy” in the photograph

appears, upon comparative analysis, to be Franklin Rich himself

(mywebvault.wordpress.com). Additionally, a later revision to Leaf’s

findings—prompted by California-based researcher and “Liver Eating”

Johnston biographer Dorman Nelson—revealed that the figure previously

believed to be the mountain man Johnston was in fact Dr. Andrew Jackson

Hunter, the resort’s founder, himself (huntershotsprings.net).

The trajectory of the annotations’ evolution was also traced through the

photograph’s physical history. Livingston photographer Fred Shellenberg

made several copies of the image in 1970 for the Harold Johnson family,

who then owned the Hunter’s Hot Springs property. It appears that it was

around this time that the names of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and

Judge Roy Bean began to appear on the photograph—names absent from

earlier versions. Previous copies, apparently circulating among the

Britton family since at least the mid-twentieth century, bore a shorter

and somewhat different list. Each generation of reproduction added to,

altered, or substituted names, reflecting both popular culture

influences of the time and the specific enthusiasms of whoever made the

copies (huntershotsprings.net). Helena-area writer Lyndel Meikle

reported being told by one source that a man named Jack Teaghman, who

had acquired resort properties in Montana around 1925 and obtained the

photograph from one of those properties, had paid someone $100 to supply

colorful names to go with the image—a claim that, while unverified, fits

the pattern of the photograph’s embellished circulation history

(helenair.com).

Cultural Persistence: Why the Myth Endures

The photograph’s tenacity in popular consciousness raises questions that

extend beyond the specifics of the image itself. Arizona’s official

historian, Marshall Trimble, offered a pointed assessment in True West

Magazine: no one, he suggested, has any real idea who posed for the

Hunter’s Hot Springs photo; the men were probably acquaintances at a

social gathering, after which someone made the decision to “identify”

them as celebrities (truewestmagazine.com, 2013). The mechanism Trimble

describes is not unique to this photograph; it belongs to a broader

tradition in which ordinary relics are retrofitted with extraordinary

significance. Analogous practices have been documented in connection

with photographs from the Civil War era, the gold rush, and the

settlement of the Great Plains—periods during which photographic

documentation was rare enough that surviving images carried an outsized

cultural weight, inviting ambitious attribution.

The particular cast of characters assigned to the Hunter’s Hot Springs

photograph is also revealing. The names chosen—Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday,

Theodore Roosevelt, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Judge Roy

Bean—represent not so much the actual population of the frontier West as

a curated selection of its most cinematically familiar icons. Several of

these figures had already, by the early twentieth century, been the

subjects of popular novels, stage shows, and newspaper serializations.

By the time Fred Shellenberg’s 1970 copies began circulating with

expanded name lists, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had been

immortalized in the 1969 film of the same name. The cultural moment in

which each additional name was grafted onto the photograph appears to

correspond to periods of renewed popular interest in specific frontier

figures.

A parallel dynamic involves the photograph’s commercial circulation.

Copies of the image have sold for hundreds of dollars at antique fairs

and in private transactions (huntershotsprings.net). The economic

incentive to maintain the mystery—or to reaffirm the famous names’

validity—should not be discounted as a factor in the photograph’s

persistence. So long as there is appetite for the idea that Wyatt Earp

and Theodore Roosevelt once shared a porch step in Montana, there will

be a market for the object that promises to prove it. The photograph has

found a home not only on residential walls but in bars and restaurants

across Montana and beyond, where its romantic premise functions as

décor—an artifact that invites conversation and sustains a particular

vision of the frontier as a place where legends rubbed shoulders with

ease.

Recent Developments and the Future of the Site

In recent years, Hunter’s Hot Springs has re-entered public

consciousness through discussions about the potential revival of the

site as a resort. As of late 2023, signs posted on the property’s fence

by its current owner—the Lone Star Land and Cattle Company, owned by

Texan Russell Gordy—hinted at development plans. Longtime area residents

such as Jean Chapel recalled the resort as a community landmark, noting

that the pool operated under the Johnson family into the 1970s and

remained a significant gathering place for South Central Montana

communities (ktvq.com). A representative for the Gordy family indicated

to journalists that plans existed to rebuild the hotel using its

original design, though no definitive timeline had been established as

of the date of reporting.

Whether or not the resort is eventually rebuilt, the Hunter’s Hot

Springs photograph will almost certainly continue to circulate. The site

at huntershotsprings.net—maintained by Jason Leaf as a compendium of his

research—remains one of the more thorough amateur historical

investigations available on the subject and has helped inform subsequent

journalistic accounts. Academic institutions such as the University of

Montana’s Mansfield Library have digitized period photographs of the

resort, providing scholars with access to archival imagery that can be

used to corroborate or refute claims about the property’s physical

history (mtmemory.org/nodes/view/13227). Researchers such as Carroll Van

West have documented the site’s historical footprint through the Montana

Historic Landscape project, situating Hunter’s Hot Springs within the

broader development of automobile tourism and early resort culture in

the Yellowstone Valley (montanahistoriclandscape.com).

Conclusion

The Hunter’s Hot Springs photograph is, at its heart, a genuine artifact

of nineteenth-century Montana—a real image of real men, taken at a real

place with a documented history stretching from Crow encampments to

grand hotels. What it is not, the weight of historical evidence makes

clear, is a record of the greatest gathering of Old West celebrities

ever assembled. The men on those porch steps were almost certainly local

ranchers, resort employees, hoteliers, and travelers connected to the

tight-knit community that surrounded Dr. Andrew Jackson Hunter’s sulphur

springs on the Yellowstone—ordinary people of an extraordinary era whose

true identities were obscured, layer by layer, by a mixture of

commercial opportunism, regional pride, popular romanticism, and the

peculiar human desire to believe that heroes and legends once occupied

the same ordinary spaces that ordinary people do.

As Montana’s Historic Landscape project has noted, little remains of

Hunter’s Hot Springs today—scattered stones and fence lines where a

celebrated spa once stood (montanahistoriclandscape.com). The

photograph’s subjects are equally elusive. What the historical record

ultimately recovers is not a gathering of icons but a community: the

Hunters, the Riches, the Brittons, and the other settlers who built

something significant in an isolated corner of the West, then watched it

vanish into the ground. The famous names superimposed upon their image

are, in a sense, an inadvertent tribute to the appeal of that era—the

suggestion that wherever such a place existed, the legends of the age

must surely have found their way there. That the legends did not,

however, makes the true story no less worthy of careful remembrance.

Works Cited

Brekke, Jerry. “Livingston Montana History – Hunter’s Hot Springs

Mystery Photo.” Montana Best Times, February 2003. Reproduced at

mywebvault.wordpress.com, 26 December 2010.

https://mywebvault.wordpress.com/2010/12/26/livingston-montana-history-hunters-hot-spring/. Accessed 27 February 2026.

Leaf, Jason. “WHO ARE THOSE GUYS? Hunters Hot Springs Photograph.”

Hunters Hot Springs, n.d. http://huntershotsprings.net/page-4.html.

Accessed 27 February 2026.

Meikle, Lyndel. “Debunking the Famous Hunter’s Hot Springs Photo.”

Helena Independent Record, 7 February 2017.

https://helenair.com/business/debunking-the-famous-hunter-s-hot-springs-photo/article_02b9e735-1089-51ff-9a02-3255138ece78.html.

Accessed 27 February 2026.

Montana History Portal. “Hunters Hot Springs.” Montana Memory Project,

n.d. https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/128750. Accessed 27 February

2026.

Montana History Portal. “View of Hunter Hot Springs Resort.” Montana

Memory Project, archival photograph circa 1900.

https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/13227. Accessed 27 February 2026.

Shearer, Cindy. “Hunter’s Hot Springs: The Forgotten Opulence of a

Bygone Era.” Bozeman Magazine, 1 July 2018.

https://bozemanmagazine.com/articles/2018/07/01/102912-hunters-hot-springs.

Accessed 27 February 2026.

KTVQ News Staff. “Signs Spark Interest in Revival of Historic Hunter’s

Hot Springs.” KTVQ Billings News, 12 December 2023.

https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/signs-spark-interest-in-revival-of-historic-hunters-hot-springs. Accessed 27 February 2026.

Trimble, Marshall. “Who Are the Men in the ‘Mystery Photo’ That Claims

to Feature Some of the Old West’s Most Famous Gunfighters at Hunter’s

Hot Springs in Montana?” True West Magazine, 6 December 2013.

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/who-are-the-men-in-the-mystery-photo-that-claims-to-feature-some-of-the-old-wests-most-famous-gunfighters-at-hunters-hot-springs-in-montana/. Accessed 27 February 2026.

True West Magazine. “I Own an 1883 Photo Taken in Hunter’s Hot Springs,

Montana, That Supposedly Shows Wyatt and Morgan Earp, Teddy Roosevelt,

Butch Cassidy, Judge Roy Bean and Other Notables. Is It Legit?” True

West Magazine, May 2007.

https://www.truewestmagazine.com/article/i-own-an-1883-photo-taken-in-hunters-hot-springs-montana-that-supposedly-shows-wyatt-and-morgan-earp-teddy-roosevelt-butch-cassidy-judge-roy-bean-and-other-notables-is-it-legit/. Accessed 27 February 2026.

Van West, Carroll. “Hunter’s Hot Springs Montana.” Montana’s Historic

Landscapes, n.d. https://montanahistoriclandscape.com/tag/hunters-hot-springs-montana/. Accessed 27 February 2026.