The outer world supposed that Powell and all his men but one had been destroyed, though A.H.
Thompson wrote to the Chicago Inter-Ocean, which first published it, showing its absurdity.

Mrs.Powell heard the story at her father's home in Detroit and she pronounced it a fabrication, for she had received a letter subsequent to the date given for the destruction of the party.
She also had faith in her husband's judgment, caution, and good sense, so she refused to accept the tale at all, which was circulated by a man who had started from Green River Station, and who, by "pitching" this picturesque yarn, secured the sympathy and the purses of the passengers on an east-bound Union Pacific train.

He told how Powell and all the men but himself had been suddenly swallowed up in an awful place, dark and gloomy and full of fearful whirlpools, called Brown's Hole.

From the shore, where he alone had remained, he had despairingly witnessed the party disappear in a mighty whirlpool never to rise again.

But he made a mistake, so far as Mrs.Powell was concerned, in naming the spot.