The River They Called Stinking Water

The river running through Cody has a more polite name than it once did. In eighteen oh seven the trapper John Colter, a veteran of the Lewis and Clark expedition who had stayed behind in the Rockies, passed through this country and described the river then called the Stinking Water. The name fit.

On the west side of where Cody stands today, at the mouth of the river's canyon, the river ran through a field of sulfurous hot springs and fumaroles so pungent that the smell carried for miles downwind. Colter described a volcanically active landscape of steam and stench that later became known as Colter's Hell. For decades the river appeared on maps of Wyoming as the Stinking Water.

But as settlers arrived and boosters like Buffalo Bill worked to attract irrigation, tourism, and investment, a name that advertised a stench became a liability. In nineteen oh one it was officially renamed the Shoshone River, honoring the Shoshone people and giving the growing region a name it could sell. The sulfur springs are still here, and on a still day you can sometimes catch the old smell that gave the river its original, honest name.