author
Truman Everts
1816–1901
Best remembered for surviving a harrowing 37 days alone in the Yellowstone wilderness, this 19th-century government official became part of one of the region’s most famous early expeditions. His misadventure later helped capture the public imagination around the landscape that would become Yellowstone National Park.
1 Audiobook
Thirty-Seven Days of Peril from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871
by Truman Everts
About the author
Born around 1816, Truman C. Everts was an American government official who served as the first federal tax assessor for the Montana Territory. He was not known as a seasoned outdoorsman, which makes his place in western history all the more surprising.
In 1870, Everts joined the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition, an important journey through the area that later became Yellowstone National Park. During the trip he became separated from the group and survived alone for 37 days, enduring hunger, exposure, and injury before he was found.
A year later, he wrote about the ordeal in an account often published as Thirty-Seven Days of Peril. That story helped make his experience widely known and remains one of the most memorable survival narratives connected to Yellowstone’s early history.