Artist J.L. Weston made this painting to accompany Mary Trowbridge's story in 'Outing' magazine.
Brett French, Billings Gazette, December 28, 2020
One of the earliest stories about trout fishing in Yellowstone National Park was written by an adventurous East Coast woman. It was 1897 when Mary Trowbridge Townsend’s byline was attached to an "Outing" magazine story simply titled “A Woman’s Trout-Fishing in Yellowstone Park.” The story begins with a very detailed description of the area around the Firehole River, a waterway where she said there was “the finest trout-fishing in the Park.”
“Midway between ‘Old Faithful’ and the heavily heaving ‘paint pots,’ lies Hell’s Half Acre,” Townsend wrote in the opening to her article. “It is reached through miles of thickly wooded forest, shading both springs of clear, boiling, meteoric water, fatal to all forms of fish-life, and cold, crystal streams alive with fish.”
Ghoul fish
While the Firehole is praised, Mary paints an unfavorable picture of trout fishing at Yellowstone Lake.
“Fishing in the Yellowstone region has long been looked upon with disfavor by all true lovers of angling. They remember the Lake with its cannibal myriads of ghoul-like fish — I can hardly call them trout — big-headed, with thin, parasite-covered bodies, so starved, so eager to escape the horrors of their struggle for existence, that they rush madly at the fly, thankful for a chance to die.”
Maybe because of the condition of the fish in Yellowstone Lake, she praised the government for planting “hardy rainbow trout.” She also noted that in 1888 the U.S. Fish Commission stocked the Firehole River “with many varieties of trout.” They included Eastern brook trout, which she referred to as “dainty” in comparison with its “more aggressive Western cousin,” the cutthroat trout.
“She does provide an interesting glimpse of fishing in the park at that time,” said Paul Schullery, one-time executive director of The American Museum of Fly Fishing, author and former Yellowstone National Park historian. “People had been sport fishing in the park ever since its founding, and the first fly fishing we know of was done in the park area even before the park was established, by a member of the Washburn-Langford-Doane party in 1870. But most of those earlier accounts were published too obscurely to stick in the public mind the way her account seems to have.”
Brown
Mary saves her biggest praise, and a detailed fight scene, for a 4-pound brown trout. Unwillingly, she practiced catch-and-release when the big fish flopped off the bank back into the river. Despite the loss she managed to fill her creel with fish.
At the end of the outing, Mary waded to shore atop an active geyser basin. “My last captive being still on my line, I swung it from the river into a geyser cone. Unprepared for the temperature, my return cast brought out only a hook with skull and backbone attached; the flesh had instantly boiled off.”
This part of the article seems hard to swallow, meant more to enchant readers than represent reality, since the fish would had to have been hooked very deeply to stay on the hook. If the fish’s flesh was burned off, why wasn’t the connective tissue between the bones also lost?
Art
The two-page article was illustrated with a painting showing a woman with a brimmed hat standing in a stream, her full skirt hiked above the water. In her right hand she holds a rod out in front of her with a nearly straight arm. Slung over her shoulder is a wicker creel. In the background a forest that appears barren of foliage, as if burned, bristles as steep, shadowed peaks rise in the distance.
The artist, J.L. Weston, created other such sporting illustrations for publications, including a duck and bear hunter.
"Outing" magazine ceased publication in 1923, but during its reign printed Jack London’s novel “White Fang” in serial form. Digitized copies of the publication can now be found online.
Mary
So who was this outdoorsy woman of the late 1800s?
Townsend was a New Haven, Connecticut, socialite. Born on May 6, 1851, in Barbados, West Indies, her father, Winston J. Trowbridge, was American Consul as well as a partner in his family’s trade business.
Mary was the eldest in her family, although how many siblings she had is uncertain. She would have been around 40 years old when she began writing her outdoor articles.
In 1874 when she was 23, Mary married William K. Townsend. They had three children, the first of which was born four years later when she was 27.
William came from a prominent family that could trace its roots back to 1683 in Massachusetts. He was a Yale Law School graduate, attorney, professor and judge. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt promoted him to the U.S. Court of Appeals. An article in the book “Men of Mark in Connecticut” described the judge as “intensely fond of outdoor life and recreation” and as an “enthusiastic member of the Boone and Crockett Club.”
This helps explain Mary’s interest and access to fishing as well as hunting.
Hunting
The article Mary wrote about fishing in Yellowstone wasn’t her only contribution to sporting literature. A year earlier, in 1896, she was introduced in "Outing" magazine after writing a story about mountain goat hunting in Washington on cliffs high above Lake Chelan. The goat hunt came only after “having hunted elk, sheep, and other big game so much that some new sport was wanted,” she wrote.
That first article, titled “A Night With the White Goats,” was hailed in the New Haven Morning Journal and Courier newspaper as a “highly interesting contribution” to the magazine. The paper referred to Mary as “one of New Haven’s leading society ladies.”
The news story goes on to note that portions of the goat-hunting article have “attracted much attention” with selections appearing “in many of the foremost journals of the country. The article is devoid of any attempt at pretentious writing, but is nevertheless a concise and graphic descriptive narrative.”
After hot, difficult days spent scrambling across loose rock, Mary describes a successful end to her hunt, shooting a goat with her Winchester .45-70 rifle.
Vanished
After publication of the hunting story, it’s difficult to find any mention of Mary in newspaper archives except when tragedy struck. Her 19-year-old son died in 1898 in an apparent bicycle accident. Her daughter died in 1902 at the age of 22 from tuberculosis, called consumption back then. The daughter had been wed only two years and only a year earlier had given birth to a son. Mary’s sporting husband, William, died in 1907 at age 58 after suffering from tuberculosis for years.
That left only Mary’s son, George Henry Townsend, as the couple’s lone surviving descendant. He honored his mother by naming his daughter Mary Trowbridge.
Author, socialite, mother and outdoorswoman Mary Trowbridge Townsend died in 1929. No specific date of her death could be found, so she would have been either 77 or 78 years old. Also, no obituary could be located extolling the life of this unusual woman who introduced readers to her wild outdoor life.
Firehole Angler. Photo courtesy of Jim Peaco, NPS.