MONTANA

June – July, 2019

Leaving our campsite in Kalispell and saying goodbye to Glacier National Park was difficult, but on our way to The Dakotas we found more than our fair share of terrific adventures all along Interstate 90/94.

Kalispell was home for 10 days while we visited Glacier National Park. We were in Kalispell for the July 4th celebration, and while there we caught up with some needed maintenance for Aimee and replenished our pantry and freezer.

What to do in Missoula? The time we were in town was the weekend of the Missoula Marathon which included many shorter runs, and we were lucky enough to be able to cheer on the children and families’ walk/run after visiting the town’s incredible farmer’s market. We took a wonderful bike ride along Rattlesnake Creek, saw the U of Montana Grizzlies stadium, and the Grizzly Statute in honor of Theodore Roosevelt and his dedication to conservation that stands in front of the old railroad station.

A Carousel for Missoula is a volunteer-built, hand-carved carousel located on the Clark Fork River in Missoula’s downtown.

20 miles north of town is another of Missoula’s hidden wonders and oddities:  the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas.

Within the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas rests the inspiring central figure of Yum Chenmom, the Great Mother of Transcendent Wisdom.

One thousand Montana-made images of the Buddha, arranged in the shape of an eight-spoked dharma wheel, encircle Yum Chenmo. The dharma wheel literally represents the wheel of transformation; spiritual change; the turning toward awakening. The directions in which the eight spokes radiate represent the Buddhist noble eight-fold path of right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Mining put Butte on the map, and with a little bit more luck, Butte might have become the State Capitol.

But why “the richest hill on earth”?  Between 1880 and when the last mine closed in 2004, the 2-mile by 4-mile Butte District Strike had been home to not less than 45 different mining companies.  The yield of mineral and precious metal extraction from the Strike was astounding:  10.75 million tons of copper, 700K tons of zinc, 2.5 million tons of manganese, 1.85 million tons of lead, 22.7 tons of silver, 90.6 tons of gold, and 17.6K tons of molybdenum.  Not a bad day at the office!

Beginning at the visitor’s center we enjoyed a trolley tour of historic downtown Butte.  Our tour guide is the history teacher at the high school, and as a multigenerational life-long resident of Butte he had first-hand knowledge of the history of the city.  He also learned facts, anecdotes and myths by listening to family members and their friends talk about the city and events “back in the day.”  Driving the trolley is his summer job.  Those stories, some back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, were re-told today as we rode around downtown.  How interesting that one of our fellow tourists, a woman in her early 90s, had grown up in Butte and could verify most of what we were being told, and then again was surprised at some things even she had not known!

By the 1900s the town’s population grew to over 100,000; based on the miner’s country of origin, various ethnic neighborhoods sprang up.  Violence between neighborhoods occurred frequently and bloodshed was common.  But as long as the mine owners were happy, law enforcement was glad to look the other way.  An abundance of breweries and bars sprang up and businesses had no difficulty finding customers.  With a thriving red light district on Mercury Street, Butte was known as a pretty lawless town.  Our tour guide did let all of the passengers know that Brian’s credit card was on file at the Dumas Brothel (which only stopped operation in 1982!).  Oh yeah, on the other side of the coin, Butte is home to 9 Catholic churches and, at one time, 3 synagogues.

The tour included a stop at the remains of the Berkeley Pit Mine – in its day the largest copper mine on the “hill.”

A hidden wonder of the continental divide sits 3500 feet above Butte.  Completed in 1985 after 6 years in the making, Our Lady of the Rockies is a 90-foot tall homage to the Virgin Mary.  Somehow the sculptor believed this to be a non-denominational tribute to all women?

Bozeman is Montana’s 4th largest city with a current population of 50,000, and it is often on the list of America’s top 10 places to live.  The source of the Missouri River is 30 miles away in Three Forks, and from Bozeman it is a 90-mile drive along the scenic Beartooth Highway to the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  Plenty to do in this neighborhood…

On the way to Palisade Falls we passed Hyalite Reservoir…

It is a beautiful half-mile hike on a paved path to Palisade Falls, and with a little bit of work climbing over and around large rocks (boulders?) we were able to get as close to the falls as we wished.

All of the travel advisories recommended a visit to Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.  We really prefer to stay outdoors, but the museum was  exhibiting a commemoration of Genghis Khan, the Mongol Empire, and the Mongol culture which included a performance of live music and dance from a region of the world neither of us have explored in literature or in person.  Really sounded like something we shouldn’t miss.

Ancestral Peoples of the Plains would stampede a herd of buffalo towards the edge of a cliff, and because of the animals’ poor eyesight and the momentum of the herd, most would to fall to their death or become incapacitated after the fall.  People of the tribe would butcher all of the animals, and in addition to drying meat for food throughout the year, every part of the animal was used.  These areas were named Buffalo Jumps.  Near Bozeman is the Madison Buffalo Jump.

Atlas Obscura recommended seeing the Bleu Horses – a set of 39 horse sculptures made primarily of steel and permanently installed on a hillside off Highway 287 just north of Three Forks.  Signs all along Highway 287 prohibit stopping and hiking up to the sculptures, but wouldn’t you know we found an unpaved area cut into the shoulder of the road to stop for a minute and take a picture or 2.

Located in Whitehall, another shouldn’t-be-missed attraction near Bozeman is the Lewis and Clark Caverns.

We have to admit that we saved the “most odd” in and around Bozeman for last.  Atlas Obscura describes Jim’s Horn House, Three Forks, as “a collection of 16,000 antlers crammed beautifully into a small shed.”  We couldn’t pass that up now could we?

Jim asks that you call and make an appointment for a personal tour of his collection.  He is engaging and personable, easily offering descriptions of his 60-year collection, the anomalies he’s found (and been given), as well as regaling his visitors with stories about hunting horns.  Jim is quite a conservationist, and he has dedicated time and work-energy to a long hiking trail that winds around and through Three Forks and the countryside.  Anyhow…check it out…

By making Billings our last stop in Montana we were within reach of Little Bighorn National Monument.  But what about Billings itself?

Billings is the largest city in Montana, but maintains the feeling of a welcoming small town.  The city is surrounded by geological outcroppings of sandstone formations known as The Rimrocks, and we decided to ride our bikes up to Zimmerman Park, and spend some time at the top.  After an easy 5-mile ride, we discovered an additional 5-mile fartoosteeptomakeituptothetop trek…oh well…time to turn around and get the car.

While riding our bikes through a nice residential area a motorist stopped and yelled something unintelligible to us – nothing angry or threatening – just something.  A little while later we were cutting through one of the parking lots at Montana State University Billings (Yellowjackets; mascot is Buzz!), and passed an employee who cleared up what we couldn’t hear from what turned out to be a kind and concerned motorist…a mountain lion had been sighted the last 2 nights roaming the very streets we were riding.  We must not have looked tasty enough?

So we finally made it to Zimmerman Park…nice view of Billings from up there…

…Do you know the tale of Yellowstone Kelly?  Did you see the 1959 movie about his life?   Neither did we.  Yellowstone Kelly is entombed in Zimmerman Park, and his story is memorialized on a series of posters along the short hiking trail in the park.  Briefly, Luther Sage “Yellowstone” Kelly was an American soldier, hunter and trapper, scout, adventurer and administrator. He served briefly in the American Civil War and then in an 1898 expedition to Alaska. He commanded a U.S. Army company in the Philippine–American War and later served in the civilian administration of the Philippines.  Yellowstone Kelly sounds like quite the patriot, and well deserving of being laid to rest with full military honors.

Pompey’s Pillar National Monument is a sandstone rock formation that stands 150 feet above the Yellowstone River.  But why a national monument?  Well, an abundance of petroglyphs are carved into the rock formation.  Not enough?  How about the signature of William Clark, co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition?  After all, Clark’s signature on the formation is the only remaining physical evidence found along the route followed by the expedition that exists. He named the outcropping after the son of expedition member Sacagawea—whom he nicknamed “Pompy”.

Little Big Horn Battlefield.  For us as children educated in the 1950s, Custer’s Last Stand had been the story of outnumbered and heroic American soldiers slaughtered by Northern Plains Ancestral People (Lakota and Northern Cheyenne) led by Sitting Bull.

The only part of the story that is true is that all of Custer’s troops died during the battle.  President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration was aggressively pursuing imminent domain and driving the Northern Plains Ancestral Peoples from their lands and nomadic lifestyle into reservations.  Custer failed to honor a peace treaty he personally negotiated 2 years before, and the other officers in the Plains command who were within 5 miles of Custer’s battle disliked him to the point of not offering a helping hand.  Hard to say absolutely, but our guess is that The Northern Plains Ancestral Peoples, left alone would not have waged war.

Little Bighorn National Monument is a memorial to all of the Americans who fought and died on the plains adjacent to the Little Big Horn river in 1876.  There are many tombstones for the US Army Soldiers, and a few for the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne who fell in battle.

The Memorial for the US Army Soldiers is located on high ground above the battlefield.  It also happens to be where their bodies were found.

However, the Memorial constructed by the Northern Plains Ancestral Peoples respectfully presents a time-line of the struggles with the US Government, the unification of tribes in response to threats and in preparation for war, the battles associated with the Little Big Horn River, and an ultimate prayer for peace.  The Memorial has a direct opening to the Army Memorial symbolically inviting the spirit of all the dead to unite and seek amity.

We have to admit that Montana has a whole lot more to offer than we expected!

Barbara and Brian