Three Waters Mountain

Three Waters Mountain. . Southwest rises a mountain given a lyrical name, one such as Indians or mountain men discovering a geographical phenomenon might have chosen. Midway of its four-mile long crest is the key point, one of only two in North America, were as many as three of the continent's seven major watersheds interlock. , Here a raindrop splits into thirds, the three tiny driblets destined to one their separate ways along continuously diverging channels to the oceans of the world. One driblet arrives in the Gulf of Mexico, 3,000 miles distant by way of Jakeys Fork, Wind River, Bighorn, Yellowstone, Missouri, and Mississippi; another joins currents running 1,400 miles to the Pacific through Fish Creek, the Gros Ventres, Snake, and Columbia; the final one descends more than 1,300 miles to the Gulf of California; via Roaring Fork, Green River and the Colorado. , Seemingly neither Indians nor fur trappers named this mountain. Locally it has been called Triple Divide Peak. but only a benchmark (11,642 ft.) and lines denoting a junction of divides point to it on the Geological Survey's map of 1906. The Survey's 1968 map (correcting the B,M to 11,675 ft.) officially names this long crest -- projecting in a northwesterly descent from the 13,800 foot glacier-swathed pecks at the heart of the Wind River Range -- Three Waters Mountain. That latter day cartographer, possessing the imagination and finding the inspiration to contrive this name, thus proved himself a worthy disciple of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and his competent assistants who were precursors and, in 1879, helpers in the founding of the United States Geological Survey.