A dramatic change in the weather has been forecasted with daytime temperatures dropping 40 degrees into the 20’s, nighttime temperatures down to below zero, high winds and snow. This is October in eastern Montana, though snow is a bit early this year. The weather varies wildly, in all likelihood after this current winter spell passes the weather will return to the normal fall pattern with temperatures in the 50’s before winter truly sets in in late November. In any case, I have to deal with the “now” and so it is time to make a dash for home in order to get there before the storm hits Billings. The map below shows in blue the proposed path through eastern Montana as opposed to the current plan, which is to cut across the “triangle” created by the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers from Fort Peck to Glendive and then follow the interstate up the Yellowstone to Billings. Here we go!
A faint dusting of snow crunched underfoot when Joey and I took our morning walk before leaving Fort Peck and heading south to cross some of the most isolated land in eastern Montana. This is the eastern end of the Missouri Breaks, a rugged, rumpled land that borders the Missouri River for around 20 miles on either side of the river for nearly 200 miles. An eroded pre-historic ocean floor, grass and sagebrush cloak the hills and vales, barely surviving in this semi-arid land. There are few paved roads and Montana natives know not to go off the pavement during wet weather because moisture turns the soil into what is referred to as “gumbo”, a greasy, slick cloying clay mixture that can be virtually impossible to drive on, even with four-wheel drive vehicles. The mileage sign in the picture below tells me that it will be 52 miles before reaching Highway 200, which crosses central Montana from west to east. I am following a snow squall about an hour ahead of me and the first snow of the season decorates the landscape.
Fifty-two miles later I turn east on Highway 200 towards Glendive, about 60 miles to the east on the banks of the Yellowstone River. We’ve emerged from the Missouri Breaks out onto the rolling prairie of the interior. Still a semi-arid land, the soil is somewhat more fertile and the rippling plains are dotted with harvested grain fields and cattle ranches.
The little town of Brockway huddles in a dip in the prairie and serves the surrounding ranchers and farmers. Around 125 people live in Brockway, founded in 1913 as a post office and store. Brockway enjoyed a brief period of prosperity when the railroad came through in 1928 as a major shipping point for cattle and sheep. The demise of the railroad in the 1990’s ended the shipping but Brockway lives on.
The Redwater River is one of the few sources of year round water in this part of Montana, a small stream that rises in the hills south of here and flows north to join the Missouri. Major Seth Mabry, a former Confederate Army officer, came to the Redwater Valley in 1883 driving a herd of longhorn cattle up from Texas. His cattle brand was a plain circle. The ranch that he established along the Redwater became known as the Circle Ranch. The ranch changed hands a number of times and sheep were brought into the area for summer grazing. In the early 1900’s nearly 100,000 sheep grazed the grasslands along the Redwater and a saloon was built on the ranch to serve the sheepherders as well as other ranch workers in the area. The growth in sheep and cattle ranching in the area lead to the establishment of a store and post office in the old ranch house in 1905 and the post office took the name “Circle.” The surrounding lands were opened to homesteaders in 1907 and when McCone County was established in 1919 Circle became the county seat. Today around 650 people call Circle home. The small commercial area lines both sides of Highway 200 in a brief interruption to the prairie.
The George McCone Memorial Library was presented to the people of Circle in 1932 by Montana Senator John McCone and the compact McCone County Courthouse was completed in 1949.
Beyond Circle we again traverse the prairie of eastern Montana, still shining with the morning’s dusting of snow.
Fifty miles later our path reaches the city of Glendive on the eastern bank of the Yellowstone River.
Glendive
Glendive has the distinction of being one of the first railroad towns to be founded in Montana. About 40 miles from the North Dakota border the tracks of the Northern Pacific reached the Yellowstone River in 1881 and railroad established a major division point. There, on a bench above the river, they built offices, roundhouses and other support structures for the trains moving between the Great Lakes and the West Coast. Glendive was platted in a familiar pattern. The railroad tracks divide the town between the worker’s residential area to the east and a commercial area to the west. Merrill Street parallels the train tracks through the center of town and is lined with the major commercial buildings. This view has the railroad tracks and facilities on the right and the commercial buildings on the left.
By far the largest building in town is the Burlington Northern train depot, looming on the east side of Merrill Street at the north end of the downtown strip.
Downtown Glendive sits high on a bluff above the Yellowstone River with a couple of blocks of residential housing and churches between downtown and the river bank. The crown jewel of historic homes in Glendive is the Krug House. Charles Krug and his sister Emma came to Glendive in 1881, he worked for the railroad and she was a seamstress. He built an empire over the years, eventually acquiring over 34,000 acres of land, 25,000 sheep, and 1.000 cattle as well as becoming president of the Merchants’ National Bank. In 1906 a 25 room mansion was built on the edge of the bluff over-looking the Yellowstone for the Krug family. The home remains in the Krug family.
The bench that Glendive sits on above the Yellowstone is not wide, it ends abruptly at the base of range of starkly eroded badlands that now form Makoshika State Park.
“Makoshika” is a variation of the spelling of a Lakota Sioux word meaning “bad earth” or “land of the bad spirits.” The eroded badlands are also home to numerous dinosaur fossil finds. Remembering my lingering problem with the soon to change weather, I take time for a short drive into the badlands.
The road into the state park ends at a view point high above the access canyon, leading to distant views of Glendive and the Yellowstone River Valley.
This morning’s snow is an omen of the upcoming weather. Once I leave Glendive we are on Interstate 94 heading southeast up the Yellowstone Valley. Here in northeast Montana the valley is broad and reasonably flat, home to farms, many made productive by irrigation from the river. To the south are the fields and forests of southeastern Montana, to the north our view is bounded by the badlands that rise sharply from the river.
This stretch of the Yellowstone Valley is dotted with small towns established after the Civil War as forts during the Indian Wars and/or stops for the steam ships that were starting to navigate the Yellowstone. Later they became stops on the railroad as it progressed up the valley. Today most slumber on, bypassed by the interstate, their glory days behind them but still providing essential services to local ranchers and farmers. Wheat fields blanket the benches above the river in a haze of golden velvet, while the interstate is rife with trucks carrying hay bales on their way to storage to help the cattle get through the winter ahead.
The interstate alternates between the valley floor and riding the benches above for the 75 miles between Glendive and the next major town, Miles City.
Finally the highway dips down onto the valley floor near where the Tongue River, flowing from the south, joins the Yellowstone near the “cowtown” of Miles City.
Miles City
After the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 southwest of here, the US Army established a series of forts in eastern Montana. The Tongue River Cantonment was founded in 1876 by Col. Nelson Miles at the junction of the Tongue and Yellowstone Rivers as a base for patrols that were trying to prevent the Cheyenne and Sioux involved in the battle from escaping to Canada. The location was prone to flooding so two years later the post was moved one mile west and renamed Fort Keogh. Traders and other service businesses began to come to the area to support the fort and a small settlement grew around the fort named Milestown. Once the post office was established, the settlement was christened Miles City. The dwindling of the military presence coincided with a rise in cattle and sheep ranching in southeastern Montana as well as the arrival of the railroad and the boom days of Miles City were on. In 1884 six teaching sisters from the Convent of St. Ursula in Toledo, Ohio, came to Miles City at the request of the fort chaplain. Three of them went on to establish the St. Labre Mission amongst the Northern Cheyenne about 90 miles south of Miles City but the other three remained in Miles City and established the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a boarding school where settlers from all around eastern Montana sent their children for an education. In 1897 fire destroyed the convent but as a sign of how eastern Montana felt about the efforts of the sisters, land and construction costs were donated to enable the building of a magnificent new building. The new structure was completed in 1902 on the eastern edge of Miles City (well away from the saloons frequented by the cowboys) and sisters occupied the facility until 1978.
The same neighborhood is home to the 1924 Sacred Heart Church and Miles City’s first hospital, established in a converted house in 1907. The county built the 35-bed Holy Rosary Hospital in 1908, designed in the Spanish mission style popular at the time. The Presentation Sisters of Aberdeen, South Dakota, assumed management of the hospital until well after World War II. The sisters purchased the hospital from the county in 1919 after the 1918 influenza epidemic and built a much larger flat roofed annex on the south side of the original building. The hospital served Miles City until a more modern facility was constructed in 1948. Today the hospital has been converted to apartments.
The east side was also where the well-to-do built their homes, distant from the rip-roaring downtown area frequented by the cowboys and farmers who came to town to let out some steam. Miles City became known as a center for the sale and shipping of cattle and horses, a role that continues to present times.
The downtown strip is lined with buildings constructed during the boom of the early 1900’s.
Around 9,000 people call Miles City home today and, as we have seen in travels across the west, most retail activity has migrated out of the city center and now follows South Haynes Avenue as it heads south towards the interstate entrance. There’s more to explore in Miles City but the clock is ticking, snow is on the way so I continue to head southwest on the interstate towards home.
Patches of bright green on the valley floor are evidence of one of the most valuable crops that benefit from the irrigation water provided by the river, sugar beets. We’ll see this more and more as we get closer to Billings.
Forty-five miles southwest of Miles City the interstate skirts the edges of the first town established on the Yellowstone River, Forsyth, founded in 1876 as a steamboat landing for boats traveling up the river to provide supplies to the US Army during the Indian Wars. The town was formally named Forsyth after General James Forsyth in 1882 after the railroad came to the town. Today around 1,900 people live in the area.
Forsyth
Forsyth continues to be a hub for the surrounding area, sitting at the intersection of Interstate 94 and US Highway 12 north of the Montana coal fields. The Hotel Howdy dominates the small city center strip across from the railroad tracks, first named the Commercial Hotel when it was completed in 1906. Most of the buildings along the north side of the street were built in the years prior to World War I.
The Yellowstone River was prone to flooding, particularly prior to the completion of Yellowtail Dam on the Big Horn River (a major tributary of the Yellowstone that joins the Yellowstone west of Forsyth) in 1968. A photograph from 1918 shows flood waters spreading across the street in front of the Commercial Hotel.
The east end of the small downtown strip is anchored by the imposing Rosebud County Courthouse, built in 1914.
The Federated Church building is a smaller scale version of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. The church, built after the original building was destroyed in a fire in 1919, opened as the First Presbyterian Church in 1920. Due to dwindling membership of both congregations, the Forsyth Presbyterians and Methodists joined together in the 1950’s to form the current Federated Church.
West of Forsyth the highway returns to the familiar pattern of riding the benches on the south side of the Yellowstone River Valley, occasionally dipping down to provide a glimpse of the valley floor on my right.
Just before entering one of the more treacherous stretches of highway during winter, the Hysham Hills, we take a short detour down onto the Yellowstone River Valley floor to the town of Hysham.
Hysham
Around the turn of the 20th century the region around current Hysham was home to the Flying E Ranch with thousands of cattle roaming the open range. Charlie Hysham moved to the area to manage the ranch and convinced the Northern Pacific Railroad to build a siding to off-load the large amount of supplies that the ranch needed. In 1907 the siding became the center of the small town of Hysham. As with most of eastern Montana, the period before World War I was a time of prosperity for Hysham and most of the buildings in the small town were completed.
The Great Depression devastated the local economy but a local politician, David Manning, vowed to get Montana “out of the mud” and used his influence in the state legislature to spread significant improvements across Montana’s rural area: electricity, paved roads, dams and irrigation systems. He served in the Montana legislature from 1932-1985. Just prior to embarking on his legislative career Manning designed and built the landmark building in Hysham, the Yucca Theatre. Its construction in 1931 raised the morale of the community and made the statement that Hysham would survive the Great Depression. The popularity of talking pictures were at their peak and Manning designed his theater in the Spanish mission style popular at the time. The theatre is now a small museum, closed at the moment due to the corona virus.
Not only is the theater the only building of distinction in Hysham, it is surrounded by figures representing significant icons from the area’s past: a mastodon and saber tooth tiger from pre-historic times, Lewis and Clark along with Sacajawea and her child Pompey from the 1806 expedition that passed through the area, and a buffalo, king of the prairie.
Heading south out of Hysham back towards the interstate we pass through sugar beet fields in the process of being harvested. Sugar beets from the Yellowstone Valley as well as northern Wyoming are trucked to Billings and processed at the Western Sugar factory.
Once back on the interstate heading southwest the road twists and turns through the Hysham Hills on the south side of the river. This can be very difficult driving in winter as the slight rise in elevation and shadows cast on the pavement by trees and hills create icy roads, often obscured by blowing snow. Fortunately I am still ahead of the snow and so the road is fine.
Forty miles later the path descends down to the valley floor as we near one of the icons of those devoted to the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Pompey’s Pillar.
Pompey’s Pillar
About 30 miles northwest of Billings a pillar of sandstone rises 150 feet up from the south bank of the Yellowstone River and provides an expansive view in all directions. The base of the pillar, shear on the south side, crumbling towards the river on the north, covers nearly an acre.
Now a national monument, the visitor center is closed and, to my surprise, so is the path to the top of the pillar. A locked gate and sign inform visitors that the path has been closed due to unsafe conditions posed by eroding rock.
Long a landmark to inhabitants of the area, natives decorated the pillar with petroglyphs and carvings. But, to Lewis and Clark fans, this is the holy grail of the Lewis and Clark expedition because on July 25, 1806, William Clark carved his name and the date on the north side of the pillar. This is the only physical evidence remaining of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I can’t climb up and see it in person but the National Park Service has thoughtfully provided a replica at the base of the pillar. Lewis named the formation “Pompey’s Pillar” after the newborn son of his native guide, Sacajawea.
About one hundred yards north is the bank of the Yellowstone, providing views up and down the river in a view probably virtually the same as that seen by Lewis and his expedition in 1806.
Standing on the river bank and turning around to look at the pillar, the view is up the eroded north side.
My trusty ten year-old Cannon One Shot zooms in on the upper left and a small dark square that denotes the location of Clark’s carving.
The wind is picking up and the temperature dropping as I get back on the interstate and head for home (about a half hour away), the darker blue band hugging the horizon foretells the approaching storm.
Leaving the interstate and heading into the north side of Billings, oil refinery structures pierce the sky just on the other side of the Yellowstone River, buildings of downtown loom in the background, and the cliffs of the Rimrocks rise on the right.
It’s beginning to sprinkle as I pull into my drive way around 1pm. Snow is supposed to start around 8pm so I have to unload, winterize the water system (which involves draining the water and flushing rv antifreeze throughout the system) and then put the Lunch Box in covered storage about 10 miles on the other side of town. The view as I pull into the cul-de-sac of my house is still lush and green.
That wraps up my truncated trip through the “Big Sky Country” but I can’t leave without letting you know the end of the story. I was a good boy and finished up all that I needed to do that afternoon, tucking the Lunch Box in at the storage unit around 5:30pm that day (Friday). Which was good, because the snow started as forecasted late that evening and here is what my world looked like around 36 hours later… The pavement was still warm so most of the snow that hit the street melted before sticking. Check out the bushes in the foreground outside my front door to see the real depth of the snow.
Meanwhile, out back it’s a good thing that Joey’s tail is sticking up otherwise we might lose him in the snow. When it gets this deep I have to shovel a path through the snow so he can go to the bathroom!
Oh well, that’s life in the “Big Sky Country!”
Stay safe America.
Next up: Only the corona virus knows…
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