August 17 was the first time that Dr. Raymond G. Bayles, an active Bozeman MD, had got to bed at a decent hour in weeks. The tremors he felt in Bozeman were strong enough to damage buildings on Montana State College campus in Bozeman. Recently Bayles had bought the 50-room Stagecoach Inn at West Yellowstone, and he was concerned about the Inn and its employees. The phone service to “West” was out. As the night dragged on, the radio brought him the news that “West Yellowstone was close to the center of the quake, and that the road to ‘West’ was impassable.”

He chartered a plane at daybreak. On the way to “West,” he had the pilot fly down over the Madison Canyon. The dust had pretty much settled so they could see the massive slide in detail. Just above it a group of people (the Osts, Fredericks, Smiths, etc.) were waving for help. The lake was beginning to form in the canyon behind the slide. More people were standing near their cars and trailers halfway between the slide and the dam. Just below the dam was another caravan which included many station wagons. On the dam spillway someone had spelled OK-SOS with pancake flour in big white letters, and marked a big cross on the highway, in a spot suitable for a helicopter landing. Dr. Bayles realized that there were injured among those trapped in the canyon.

As they flew low over the lake, they saw where buildings and big sections of highway had dropped into the lake. On the usually clear surface of the lake, somehow as a result of the quake, thousands of logs appeared, probably submerged logs shaken off the bottom. There were virtually no boats visible.

At the Stagecoach Inn he found the staff huddled around a bonfire under the trees across the street, where they’d been since the heavy tremors began cracking plaster in the building. The exception was Jane Winton, a nurse, who managed the hotel, and had bravely stayed on duty at the desk.

They gathered splints, medicines—whatever emergency material they could find—and went to the airport. The pilot flew to a field big enough to land on at the Watkins Creek Ranch, on the south side of the lake about two miles from the dam.

In walking toward the dam, they found debris where the tidal wave had thrown it half a mile up from the shore. The entire south shore of the lake had risen about eight feet. After a mile’s walking they came to a spot where people were dragging their boats higher out of the water. They believed the dam was going out, and at first didn’t want to lend Dr. Bayles a boat, but he finally persuaded them. Dodging the many logs in the lake made the trip difficult. As they approached the dam, Jane Winton was frightened at the big crack in the dam’s concrete core.

“Just you keep watching that crack,” Dr. Bayles told her. “If it gets bigger, you’ll know what’s going to happen. If not, you’ll be telling your grandchildren about all this.”

“To reach the bank, we had to land through a lot of debris that had gathered at the dam. We went over the top of the concrete at 9:00,” Dr. Bayles said.