[Geysers] Name Whiskey Flats (Stephens)

[Lynn Stephens]

Someone pointed out something to me today something I had failed to notice, probably because although I make a lot of trips to Whiskey Flats to use the facilities there and to cook dinner when I have Cassidy and Connor with me, on 95% of my trips I am approaching it from the north headed south and turn right around to go back to Firehole Lake drive.  And I've just never picked up on the fact that the sign as you approaching from the north does not read the same as the sign as you are approaching from the south.  One says "Whiskey Flats;" the other says "Whiskey Flat."  I was asked if I knew which was correct.  My response was that I didn't but I could go to the source that did--Whittlesey's Wonderland Nomenclature.  Here's what Lee wrote:
 



WHISKEY FLATS---A
small marshy meadow located just south of the Grand Loop Road about a mile
northeast of Midway Geyser Basin, and immediately east of a picnic area.


            This place
name, heavily entrenched in local usage, is a bit of a mystery.  This author has been unable to document the
origins of the name, but prevalent stories among park personnel have it that
soldiers (during army days) and/or stagecoach drivers (before 1916) used the
meadow to hide or throw away their whiskey bottles.  The name stubbornly hangs on, as in the
1970s, the Old Faithful District Ranger placed a sign here which read Whiskey
Flats.

            In
1969, guidebooks discussed the "Whiskey Flats Picnic Area" here.  At the picnic area, a natural cold spring
("Whiskey Spring") was piped by the National Park Service, but the
pipe was removed in 1976, and the spring is now gone.
 
Thank you Lee for all the work you did preparing Wonderland Nomenclature.
 
Lynn Stephens


 		 	   		  
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