The exploits of Beartooth mountain man E.E. Van Dyke

Van Dyke was born during the Civil War, the youngest of four brothers in a Dutch-populated town along the west bank of the Hudson River. But his wanderings would take him far from that lush green environment into the Rocky Mountains and along the way etch his name in the early history of Cooke City, Yellowstone National Park and Red Lodge. In history, as in life, there are inconsistencies. According to his own hand-written biographical note on file in the Parmly Billings Library, Van Dyke made his way into Montana from Mandan, N.D., in 1880. But an account of Red Lodge’s history — “Red Lodge: Saga of a Western Area,” written by Shirley Zupan and Harry J. Owens — places him in Montana in 1876. Zupan and Owens’ account seems more likely. If so, he may have made it as far as North Dakota by train. In 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway had just arrived in Bismarck, N.D. To the south was Fort Abraham Lincoln, from which Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer would depart in 1876 to meet his demise at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Zupan and Owens say Van Dyke arrived in Gardiner by boating up the Yellowstone River. His handwritten account notes that he passed through Glendive, Miles City, Coulson (which would become Billings) and into what he called the Clarks Fork Mining District, now known as Cooke City.It was while working odd jobs in the Cooke City area that Van Dyke would first step into the history books. According to Zupan and Owens, Van Dyke hurried ahead of the Nez Perce Indians as they traveled through the country with the U.S. Cavalry in hot pursuit during their 1877 flight from Idaho to Canada. Van Dyke was able to warn the residents of Cooke City that the Indians were approaching so that they could move anything valuable and hide in the surrounding woods. The Nez Perce reportedly burned some of the mining structures in town. In 1883, Van Dyke’s father, a contractor named Earl, paid a visit to his son in Cooke City. Together they are said to have marked out the first trail from Cooke City over the Beartooth Mountains and down to Red Lodge. This was only about a year after the U.S. government had signed a treaty with the Crow Indians that allowed settlers to work the rich coal veins found in the Red Lodge area. The route over the Beartooths became known as the Van Dyke Trail. It would serve him well in future years as he ventured into the prospecting, hunting, trapping and guiding business in the region...more