 In discussions with other members of the party and in his writing for the newspaper, Hedges was a vocal supporter of setting aside the Yellowstone region as a National Park, an idea originally proposed by former acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher.The Washburn party was clearly inspired by the journals kept by Charles W. Cook and David E. Folsom, as well as their personal accounts.Immediately after the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition, Folsom went to work as a surveyor for Washburn.