Travelling Northwestern Montana

Northwestern Montana—
A Trip Through Time and Space

by Bill Breakstone, Somers, New York, August 13, 2009


The Rocky Mountains rise majestically from the high plains to the east and from New Mexico north well into Canada and beyond. Viewed from 36,000 feet on a west travelling jet they come upon one all at once within 100 miles or so east of Denver. Even travelling by land, they wait until the last moment to make themselves known. Once in Denver, they rise abruptly as The Front Range, spectacular in their grandeur some 9,000 feet in vertical elevation above the mile-high city.

Most visitors know the Rockies from this perspective. The high mountain ranges of the Rockies are highest in this Colorado location, and provide the most dramatic views along the entire chain. However, height isn’t everything. Some 600 miles to the north-northwest are the northern Rockies of Montana and Canada, not quite the towering peaks of Colorado but magnificent in their own right. And not only the mountains, but the high plains, so different from Colorado and beautiful beyond comprehension compared to the flat plains to the east of Denver. These are the lands of the buffalo, bison and Native American Indians who depended on those creatures for sustenance.

I recently read four historical novels written by an author who grew up on these high plains during the 1950s and 1960s. He was born and raised in a very small town on the east side of the Continental Divide within 100 miles of the Canadian border. He subsequently attended Northwestern University in Illinois and eventually moved to Seattle, where he began his writing career, a very successful one at that. He never forgot his upbringing on those high plains, and the history of the area that was settled by his forbearers’ in the latter half of the Nineteeth Century. The stories fascinated me, and it didn’t take long before I committed myself to see this country first-hand.

Weather in northwestern Montana is very unpredictable. The summer season is much shorter in the region, and it is not unusual to encounter heavy snows late into the spring, violent lightening storms and resultant forest fires through July and August, and, again, heavy snows at any time in the fall. Just last May of 2009 the high plains received over two-and-a-half feet of snow with twelve-foot drifts that paralyzed the area for close to a week. Thus, early August seemed just about the right time to avoid the chances of running into any of these weather-related occurrences.

My plan was to spend a few days exploring the high plains written about in the novels, then four days in nearby Glacier National Park. The town of Dupuyer was my original destination. It had been settled in the mid-1880s by French descendants from Canada, and thereafter by immigrants from Scotland and the Eastern States who sought land to make a living from and start what they hoped would be a life of promise, if not at the expense of hard work and trying climate conditions.

Dupuyer was and still is at the southern border of the Blackfoot Indian Country, now an extensive Reservation of unparallel beauty encompassing some 100 square miles to the South of Alberta and the east of Glacier National Park. It’s not much of a town these days—some several dozen buildings on U.S. Route 89, including two small restaurants, a small, country grocery store, one church, an elementary school, an automobile repair shop and a population of approximately 300 people. The nearest towns are Valier, 25 miles to the northeast, and Browning, on the Blackfoot Reservation, some 60 miles due north. Forget about McDonalds or Burger King—you’re lucky to even find a gas station, no less a bank!

The town is about a two-hour drive from Great Falls and it’s regional airport. A four-lane highway, Interstate 15, runs north from Great Falls to the Canadian border crossing, 125-miles to the north. The speed limit is 75 MPH, recently set prior to which there was none at all, understandably so, as traffic is just about non-existent and the road straight as an arrow. This applies not only to this Interstate, but all the paved roads in the region.

If one would imagine wide-open country, this is it! But not boring in the least. The area is undulating high grassland, intersected by the occasional river or creek coming out of the Rockies that lie some 50 miles to the west. The locals refer to it as “Two Medicine Country,” taking the name of the major tributary, which flows from the mountains and joins, first, the Marias River, and then the Missouri some 100 miles to the east. There are few bison left on these grasslands, but cattle galore, mostly Black Angus.

About 70 miles to the northeast, the high plains are interrupted by the Sweetgrass Hills, which rise some 3,000 feet out of the prairie, the highest lone mountains amongst these wide open spaces. They were my first destination the morning of my second day in Montana, and remote and beautiful they were. The paved road leading straight to them turned to dirt some ten miles away, and as I passed a farmyard, two hands looked at me and my Ford Mustang as if I were crazy being out there, and as the road turned into a two-track path, I started to agree with them. But ten miles further on, we were back on a decent dirt track and a half-hour later, a paved highway that led back west to Interstate 15. There’s nothing like having a real good map in hand as security, and my DeLorme Gazetteer was my trustworthy guide.

Back in Dupuyer, I explored the surrounding countryside within a twenty-mile radius on dirt roads that were perfectly passable and traversed the lands described in the novels. There was little left of the settlements of Scott homesteads from the late 1800s, just a deserted log cabin or two along the way. Sheep raising had been the business back then, and none were to be seen at all—just miles and miles of grassland with Black Angus as far as the eye could see.

My hosts at the Bed and Breakfast named Inn Dupuyer were Rita and Joe Christian, life-long residents of the area. The Inn itself was a charming, expanded farmhouse, recently renovated, but preserving the wide-board flooring and log and stucco walls that dated from the 1920s. Joe is a cancer survivor who spent a harrowing winter travelling for treatment down to Great Falls, and is Supervisor for Pendora County. What with the medical treatments Joe needed, the Christian’s had cut way back on the B&B business, but with Joe’s prognosis as good as it now is, he and Rita plan to get right back with it.

The following morning, I was on the road early and headed
for Glacier. US 89 took us north to US 2 and Browning, a much larger town and headquarters of The Blackfeet Nation. It was and remains an eastern stop on The Great Northern & Santa Fe Railroad, the northern most transcontinental rail between the Midwest and West Coast. Driving northwest from Browning on US 2 and then US 89, the road climbs the brief foothills of the Rockies, passing over The Hudson Divide, a 6,000 foot high butte that separates the watersheds of the Columbia River Basin from the waters heading northeast into the Hudson Bay watershed. To the south lies the Missouri and Mississippi basin, leading eventually to the Atlantic. The dividing line is actually Triple Divide Peak on the Continental Divide, where mere inches are the difference between a raindrop heading north, northwest, or southeast.

The best view of the entire trip was at the crest of this Hudson Divide looking west to the high mountain valleys of Glacier National Park and the 10,000+ foot high Stimson Peak, the second highest in the Park outside of Mt. Cleveland. This was the only location I could find with a direct view of Stimson and its nearby glaciers. From this point, the highway descended to lower St. Mary’s Lake, and on to the north into the Park and Sherburne and Many Glacier Lakes. On the eastern shore of Many Glacier is one of Glacier Park’s three historic lodges, two built by The Great Northern Railroad to attract early 20th Century tourists to this American Switzerland. Many Glacier, MacDonald and Glacier Park Lodges were all constructed between 1910 and 1913, and are marvels of engineering with their huge log supporting pillars and beams.

The more recent St. Mary’s Lodge lacked the historic interest, but had a kitchen that was by far the best of the lot. It’s namesake lake is also the most picturesque with a view due west to the high peaks of the Park. From the Park Entrance at the east terminus of the lake, Going-To-The-Sun-Mountain-Highway travels along the northern edge of the Lake to Logan’s Pass, at an elevation of 6,700-feet. The vertical rise from St. Mary’s on this east side of the Divide is 2,500-feet; add another 2,500-feet on the descent to Lake MacDonald on the western slope, as the Flathead Valley there is at considerably less elevation.

At Many Glacier Lodge that morning, I purchased the first of many books and photographs of Glacier at their Gift Store. One book, GLACIER: A Natural History Guide by David Rockwell, proved to be an invaluable study of the Park’s geology and wildlife, and provides a detailed description of the interdependence of both upon the existence and future natural welfare of this and any natural environment.

The Park’s geology is fascinating, and far different from the Colorado Rockies formation. I mentioned to Joe Christian on the last evening of my stay that the hardest concepts for us to comprehend were those of time and distance. First, the time span between our Universe’s creation and now; second, the distances involved from our point of reference to another—the space between where we stand now and other continents, or other planets or galaxies. Such is the case with the geologic development of the Earth’s natural features. The mountains of Glacier National Park were a result of tectonic plate movement that developed over a time span of almost 2 billion years. To make it as simple as possible, a vast lakebed was formed that long ago some 70 miles to the west of Glacier. Sediment accumulated over 1.25 billion years. Then the earth’s plates moved, with the Pacific Plate subducting under the North American plate and falling into the earth’s mantle. What was then the North American Continent was slammed by landmasses in the Pacific, creating enormous pressures that folded the western North American landmasses creating our Rockies. In the Glacier Park area, the ancient Belt Seabed was pushed over the then existing young mountains to create what are now the peaks of Glacier. This was named the Lewis Overthrust.

Scientists discovered in the late 1970s that contrary to pre-existing theories, where it was assumed that older rock always laid below newer formations, in fact in many cases the old overlay the new. It took another 20 years for these scientists to realize what plate tectonics could possibly do; that older rock could be uplifted on top of the younger sediments, as was the case at Glacier. The Belt Lake sediments actually moved 70 miles to the east and now lay on top of the Glacier Park peaks. This is perfectly visible when one looks at these mountains, and sees the dividing line (or fault) that rises from west to east two-thirds up most of the mountain ridges.

Of course, a lot more was in play here, but those details are best left with the geologists.

My trip to the west side of the Divide took me over Logan Pass. It is one thing to drive over a high pass such as Logan, with two narrow lanes at the lee side of which was a three-foot high stone guard rail after which was a 3,000-foot drop-off to Macdonald Creek at the bottom of the glacier-carved valley. The driver doesn’t really get to see too much, rather must concentrate on keeping the car on the road and watching for on-coming vehicles. There’s a far better way to get the picture, and that is to make the trip in one of the old touring buses that exist only in Glacier. They’re called “Jammers”, and were originally built in 1936 by The White Motor Coach Company. Thirty-five of these buses were purchased back then, and all but two were renovated by The Ford Motor Company between 1999 and 2002. The drivers undergo orientation and training, and provide passengers with a narrative of the Park’s geology, history and wildlife. Stops are made along the way to explore nearby geologic features. Another alternative is to take advantage of boat tours on the Park’s lakes in historic steamers, also dating to the 1930s. When out in the middle of these lakes, one gets a far better view of the mountains away from the shorelines. I took advantage of both, well worth the minimal investment.

Time is taking another toll on these, and many other mountains. As one Park Ranger said in a speech at the Logan Pass Station, “I’ve been in these mountains for over 40 years. I’ve seen hard winters, and mild ones. I always presumed things would return to normal. I was in a state of denial as the glaciers decreased in volume over that time. Well, there’s no denying the fact that changes on a vast scale are in progress. There used to be over one hundred glaciers in the park in recent history; now there are only 35, and those will all be gone within 20 years.” The effect of these changes are linked with the fauna and wildlife of the Park in ways that can only be understood by careful scientific study. But they affect animals and insects from the smallest to the largest. When a species of tree, such as the whitebirch pine disappears due to infection and climate change, an entire population of birds and mammals are threatened, animals that the environment of the Park depend upon for reforestation.

Besides the mountains, the lakes, the forests, the wildlife and the high alpine tundra, the Going-To-The-Sun road itself is a man-made wonder well worth knowing about. Built by the National Park Service and the Civilian Conservation Corps during a seven-year period stretching from 1927 to 1933, it is an award-winning feat of engineering remarkable for it’s time and set a precedent for mountain road construction that lasts to this day. A fascinating book, “Going-to-the-Sun Road: Glacier Park’s Highway to the Sky” by C. W. Guthrie, is illustrated with wonderful historic photographs, and is a remarkable tale of dedication to the natural environment, human fortitude and engineering expertise at a time when machines were primitive by today’s standards.

The National Park Service followed a policy of fire suppression up until the early 1980s. It was thought that fires must be contained to preserve as best as possible the natural state of any park forest. When it was discovered that the native Indians had actually set fires to burn down overgrown forests, the Park Service re-thought it’s position on fire suppression. They quickly realized that fires were important to the well-being of forests, in that the ash laid down serves as a nutrient for re-growth and re-forestation. At the same time, they open up the canopy to light, which enables original species of trees to grow again, which in turn provides a more varied environment for wildlife of all sorts. Thus now, the Park Service only intervenes if public safety and private or Park buildings are endangered.

My four days in Glacier were complimented by side trips to Bigfork on Flathead Lake, Kalispell, and Whitefish Montana, all in the Flathead Valley to the west of the Park. The Kalispell to Whitefish region is far more densely populated than the east side of the Divide. There is virtually no open country left there. Here one finds a millionaire’s playground, with huge mountain chalets a la Vail or Aspen. What a difference from the wide-open country of the High Plains to the east of the Divide.

The trip from the Flathead Valley back east to East Glacier runs up over Marias Pass at 5,200 feet of elevation. This pass was built by the Great Northern Railway, entirely dedicated to rail traffic back in the late 1800s. The US 2 Highway was a later arrival. Marias is the pass of lowest elevation on the entire Rocky Mountain Divide, and it was surprising to witness the amount of rail traffic still using it today. Over 35 freight trains and one Amtrak passenger train use this Pass every day.

My penultimate evening was spent at Glacier Park Lodge at the East Entrance to the Park. This magnificent lodge was built by the Great Northern in 1912-1913 and is situated just east of the Park Entrance on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. The sixty gigantic timbers which support the Lodge and its 150-foot-high main entrance and atrium, were probably 500 to 800 years old when they were cut and all of them still retain their bark. At the southern end of the gallery is a huge stone fireplace, which is kept burning all day. One could stand upright within it, and whole logs are burned, not split wood at all. That evening, I sat in front of the fire with a family from Minnesota and talked of Montana and our trips, plus a little politics on the side. One meets such a diverse group of people on a trip like this, a golfer from Spokane, a husband and wife who are professors at Stamford, one in art and her opposite head of the computer science department and former chief scientist for the US Air Force, the Blackfeet Indian owner of Pierre’s Bar & Grill in Dupuyer, and on and on.

Quite a week’s trip, and the Good Lord willing, many more to come.