Beginning in 1900, no place was more closely associated with “Cowboy Artist” Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) than his home and log-cabin studio. Born into a prominent St. Louis family, Russell arrived on the frontier in 1880, just in time to witness its closing. In spite of his late entrance, he spent his career chronicling—through art and story—what he termed “The West That Has Passed,” a rugged, but beloved, landscape inhabited only by cowboys, Indians, cattle, and wildlife. For a time after arriving in Montana Territory, Charlie supported himself by working as a cowboy. Yet even while riding the range, he was never without his watercolors, pencils, or modeling wax. In 1894, Russell quit cowboying to pursue art full-time. Two years later he married Nancy Cooper, gaining not only a wife, but an expert business manager who would play a crucial role in transforming the self-taught artist into a national celebrity. In 1900, the couple built this modest frame house from which Nancy managed the business aspects of Charlie’s career. Three years later, they constructed “a log studio… just a cabin like I [Charlie] used to live in”—only this time it was built of telephone poles. Thereafter, as Nancy noted, “to the end of his life he loved that … building more than any other place on earth and never finished a painting anywhere else.” Today the house and studio stand as memorials to Montana’s favorite son who epitomized, for both his contemporaries and for future generations, the spirit of the mythic West.
]]>Petroglyphs and pictographs cover the sandstone cliffs of Deer Medicine Rocks, some of which may date to two thousand years ago. People, animals, designs, and inanimate objects cover all sides of the monolith. They include shield-bearing warriors etched long before horses arrived on the plains, horses and riders, tepees, elk, deer, mountain sheep, bears and bear paws, horse tracks, and guns. The exact origins of most of these images are unknown. Some of them resemble Shoshone petroglyphs in the Great Basin region; others resemble the images on Lakota winter counts. Still other evidence points to the makers being Crow and Cheyenne. Several of the designs, including turtles, lizards, v-necked humans, and bisected circles and circles containing dots are Cheyenne and Lakota religious symbols. Interpretations of actual designs differ, but in accordance with Cheyenne theology the rocks with their ever-changing visions of life and the future continuously affect people throughout the world. The site’s most famous pictograph, and the reason Deer Medicine Rocks is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, records a vision that came to Hunkpapa Lakota holy man Sitting Bull during a sun dance held in June 1876, approximately two weeks before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The vision showed U.S. soldiers tumbling into the tribes’ camp, upside down. Then he heard a voice: “I give you these because they have no ears.” Sitting Bull interpreted this to mean that the “blue coats” would attack in great numbers, without strategy or understanding, and that his people would prevail.
]]>Communal bison hunting required tremendous sophistication and a deep understanding of bison behavior and Northern Plains topography. Although sites varied considerably, the ideal location for a large-scale hunt had water and good grazing nearby to attract a bison herd. It also had places for hunters to hide as they lured the bison, over a period of days, to a landform featuring a steep bank or cliff. There, hunters frightened the shaggy beasts into stampeding over the edge while fellow band members waited below to kill the animals wounded in the fall. Remnants of this collective enterprise can be found at First Peoples Buffalo Jump, one of the longest continuously used communal hunting sites in North America. More than fourteen hundred rock cairns still stand here, forming forty-seven stone alignments, some of which make up mile-long drive lines. Other constructions include low rock walls, possibly designed to trip bison to increase the impact of their fall. Four bone middens (beds filled with bones) reflect the tens of thousands of bison processed at the site. Tipi rings still mark the campsites, where families lived for weeks as they gathered, not just to hunt and process meat, but for reunions, weddings, and religious rituals. The site’s ceremonial significance is reflected in its pictographs, petroglyphs, and large stone circle, thought to be used for ceremonies. In use from approximately 4,000 BC until circa 1,700 AD, First Peoples remains important to present-day Native tribes, who continue to “visit the property for regular sacred and celebratory ceremonies.” Its national significance has also been recognized by the United States government, which designated First Peoples as a National Historic Landmark in 2015.
]]>Situated on the Missouri River near its confluence with the Yellowstone, Fort Union dominated the region’s fur trade between 1828 and 1867. With its white palisade walls and bright red roofs, it was often hailed as the “grandest fort on the Upper Missouri.” Here, Northern Plains tribes—primarily Assiniboine but also Cree, Blackfeet, Chippewa, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Sioux—delivered beaver pelts and brain-tanned buffalo hides for shipment downriver to St. Louis. In exchange, Native traders were paid in manufactured goods including beads, blankets, guns, pipes, cloth, and cookware that came to Fort Union from around the world. Part of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company, the post also hosted many notable visitors as they traveled through the region. Such guests included artists and scientists like George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Prince Maximillian of Wied-Neuwied, and John James Audubon. For most of its history, trade at Fort Union was conducted peaceably, with little conflict between the cultures involved. In 1867 the United States Army purchased the post, dismantling the structures and salvaging the building materials to use in the construction of nearby Fort Buford, North Dakota. Although little visible trace remained, the fort’s historic significance merited its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1961. Beginning in 1985, and guided by archaeological excavations and careful research, the post’s buildings were rebuilt atop the footprints of the original buildings. According to the National Park Foundation, “the reconstructed Fort Union represents a unique era in American history, a brief period when two different civilizations found common ground and mutual benefit through commercial exchange and cultural acceptance.”
]]>In the 1920s and 1930s, private automobiles replaced railroads as Americans’ primary means of long-distance travel. This meant that, among many other things, Glacier National Park was transformed from a private playground for the relative few who could afford train fare into a true “public pleasure ground.” Thousands of miles of highways had to be built to bring tourists to Montana, but the most spectacular feat of roadbuilding was the construction of Going-to-the-Sun Road, dedicated in 1933. The road crosses the “backbone of the world,” as the region’s original inhabitants, the Blackfeet, called the Continental Divide. The 52-mile-long road—48.7 miles of which have been recognized as a National Historic Landmark road— offers tourists some of the most stunning vistas found anywhere. Designed by highway engineer Frank Kittredge, the route includes a grand loop carved directly into a cliff known as the Garden Wall. It took eight years and $2.5 million to achieve this engineering marvel. Three men died during construction and many more resigned in the face of difficult and vertigo-inducing work. Hauling in supplies and equipment provided its own logistical challenge, often requiring the construction of new trails. Laborers moved mind-boggling quantities of trees, stumps, and rocks while skilled masons used native stone to build bridges, retaining walls, and guardrails that blended into the surrounding environment. The road they built—and that we still enjoy—truly fulfils its purpose: “making available to people the most and best of Nature's creation.”
]]>The buildings on the Grant-Kohrs Ranch chronicle the history of cattle ranching in the American West. Métis rancher Johnny Grant began wintering cattle in Montana’s Deer Lodge Valley in the 1850s and found success selling livestock to the Idaho and California gold camps. In 1862, he built a spacious, two-story home for his large Métis family near present-day Deer Lodge. German butcher Conrad Kohrs purchased Grant’s ranch in 1866. Kohrs—in partnership with his younger, half-brother John Bielenberg—soon built a cattle empire, grazing enormous herds on 10 million acres of open range across four states and Canada. Kohrs focused on the business and politics of cattle ranching, serving as both a territorial and state senator and president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. Always “out in the field,” Bielenberg excelled at breeding and became known for his Shorthorn and Hereford cattle and Thoroughbred and draft horses. Many pieces of historic farm equipment and dozens of well-preserved outbuildings dating from the 1860s to the mid-1900s still illustrate their vast cattle operation. The ranch house, lavishly expanded with a brick addition and decorated in the Victorian style by Kohrs’ wife Augusta, reflects the family’s success and status. In 1929, Kohrs’ grandson Conrad Warren became ranch manager and in 1940, with his wife Nell, purchased the ranch. They focused on two things: the livestock industry and historic preservation. The Warrens’ preservation efforts left behind an unmatched record of America's western cattle ranching history. The ranch, which the Warrens sold to the National Park Service, was recognized as a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and opened to the public as a National Historic Site in 1977.
]]>Nature is, of course, the primary force that shaped Glacier National Park. However, two entities—the National Park Service and the Great Northern Railway—played essential roles in designing the built environment that contributes so greatly to the park experience. Five diverse sites comprise Glacier’s Great Northern Railway Buildings National Historic Landmark. Together they exemplify the essential role the Great Northern played in building and promoting “America’s Alps.” Four of the sites are within the boundaries of the park: majestic Many Glacier Hotel overlooking Swift Current Lake; the more modest, log Two Medicine General Store on the shores of Two Medicine Lake; and Granite Park and Sperry Chalets, both hiking/trail-riding destinations in the spectacular backcountry. The fifth site, Belton Chalet, is located adjacent to the park in the small community of West Glacier. All were completed within five years of the park’s establishment to provide visitors with amenities rustic enough to match the surroundings but posh enough to meet the expectations of well-heeled travelers. To encourage Americans to “See America First” (and, not incidentally, increase railroad profits), Great Northern president and promotional mastermind Louis W. Hill chose a Swiss chalet style architecture that featured prominent gable ends, wide eaves supported by dominant corbels, numerous balconies, and fretwork. To remind patrons that their experience was uniquely American, designers enhanced the interior spaces with rustic Western elements and American Indian motifs. By successfully appealing to both a long-held regard for things European and a burgeoning national pride, Hill fully realized “the enormous potential for using architecture as a marketing strategy,” enriching the Glacier experience for generations of visitors in the process.
]]>Before the 1800s, most peoples living in what is now Montana patterned life according to “seasonal rounds,” moving camp along well-established routes to follow buffalo or harvest roots and berries. The Hagen Site documents a different story—the establishment of a permanent village by a people in transition from the Eastern Woodlands to a Plains bison culture. Located on a bluff above the Yellowstone River north of Glendive, the site includes remains of at least one earth lodge, cache pits, and hearths. Oscar Lewis—a local rancher and “very capable and avid ‘semi’ professional archaeologist”—discovered the site in 1935 on land belonging to Glendive mayor Thomas Hagan.* Excavation continued during the late 1930s through the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), an employment relief program intended to create jobs during the Great Depression. Workers recovered more than twenty thousand artifacts including large numbers of ceramic fragments, stone and bone tools, and faunal, floral, and human remains. These findings indicate that the site likely represents a settlement from the period in which the Crow and Hidatsa peoples separated, sometime during the fifteenth century. The forebears of the Hidatsa remained in present-day North Dakota while the ancestors of the Crow moved west, initially retaining horticultural practices they brought with them from Knife River area. Sadly, adequate records were not kept during excavation (or were subsequently lost), and later cultivation of the land has hindered further interpretation of its history. Nevertheless, archaeologists agree that the Hagen Site remains extremely significant for the information it contains, and it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
]]>Traveling through southeastern Montana in 1883, naturalist, writer, and future United States President Theodore Roosevelt was struck by what he called the Medicine Buttes. He wrote, “Altogether it was as fantastically beautiful a place as I have ever seen: it seemed impossible that the hand of man should not have had something to do with its formation.” Indeed, mother nature spent millions of years crafting this landmark, but the hand of humans here cannot be ignored. Thousands of men and women recorded their history here, transforming the perforated sandstone monuments into a historical register with initials, names, dates, and images carved in soft stone. Petroglyphs of warriors and animals mark hundreds of years of use by indigenous people who harvested medicinal plants and performed ceremonies and religious rituals. The Lakota aptly named it “Inyan oka-lo-ka” or “Rock with a Hole in it.” European explorers, and later trappers and traders, passed through and left their marks in the early 1800s. Gold seekers came through after 1862, and then a steady influx of cowboys, ranchers, homesteaders, laborers, and tourists left basic but rich information that often connects them with pivotal state, national, and world events. County officials maintained the Medicine Rocks as a park beginning in the 1930s, and it became a Montana state park in 1957. The vast collection of inscriptions at Medicine Rocks serve as enticing clues about the history of human occupation here, and with more research can yield volumes about the cultural traditions and family histories of its visitors.
]]>Born on a ranch near Missoula, Jeannette Rankin graduated from the University of Montana in 1902. She studied social work in New York City and worked in an orphanage before deciding that she wanted to focus on the root causes of society’s problems. Realizing that “to have decent laws for children, sanitary jails, [and] safe food supplies, women would have to vote,” Rankin became a full-time suffrage organizer in 1910. After successful campaigns in Washington and California, she returned to Montana, where she helped pass the state’s suffrage amendment in 1914. Supported by Montana’s newly enfranchised women voters, Jeannette Rankin won election to Congress in 1916, becoming the nation’s first female representative. Her first vote was against the United States’ entry into World War I. After a term in the House, Rankin lost her bid for Senate in 1918, in part because her support of striking miners had made an enemy of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Unable to secure reelection, Rankin became a full-time peace activist. She purchased a home near Athens, Georgia, but kept her legal residence in Montana, spending every summer from 1923 to 1956 here. In 1940, Rankin once again ran for Congress. Montanans sent her back to the House, where she cast the sole vote against U.S. entrance into World War II. Although Jeannette’s brother Wellington owned this property, she spent more time living in the simple, frame ranch house than he did. Due to this association, the National Park Service designated ninety acres of the ranch as a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
]]>Sacred to the Kootenai Indians whose traditional homeland encompasses the west side of Glacier National Park, Lake McDonald began attracting tourists as soon as the railroad reached the region in 1891. Recognizing the value of his property as an overnight destination, homesteader George Snyder constructed a two-story, frame hotel on the shores of the lake in 1895. In 1906, Columbia Falls businessman John E. Lewis purchased Snyder’s holdings, adding cabins to the operation. Congress declared the region a national park in 1910 and, four years later, Lewis replaced Snyder’s original structure with a much more imposing facility dubbed the Lewis Glacier Hotel. The Spokane, Washington, architectural firm of Kirtland, Cutter and Malmgram designed the three-story, Swiss style chalet to match other park structures built by the Great Northern Railway. Lewis’s lodge featured massive unpeeled logs supporting the balcony-lined grand lobby. An oversized inglenook-type fireplace on one end warmed chilled guests while spectacular lake views on the other side encouraged visitors to relax on the wide front porch or on upper-story balconies. Since there was no road to the site, construction materials had to be skidded over the frozen lake in winter and carried by boat in the spring. Likewise, guests arrived by boat until 1921 when the lower portion of Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed from Belton (now West Glacier) to the hotel. Lewis sold his hotel complex to the Great Northern in 1930, and two years later the National Park Service acquired the property from the railroad. Following name changes to Lake McDonald Hotel in 1930 and Lake McDonald Lodge in 1958, the building was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
]]>Yellowstone’s Northeast Entrance Station serves not only as a physical demarcation, but also as “a psychological boundary between the rest of the world and … a permanently wild place.” The landmark includes two 1935 buildings—a “drive-through” checking station, where rangers collect fees, count visitors, and answer questions, and a ranger station/residence. When it was built, the checking station was among the most ambitious of its kind; today it is one of the most pristine examples of its type remaining in the park system. A gable roof, which joins the building’s three log rooms, straddles US 212 as it enters and exits Yellowstone at Cooke City–Silver Gate. The building’s locally harvested lodgepole pine logs were chosen according to strict specifications. The logs were then peeled, saddle-notched, and finished with axe-cut ends and laid to form gentle, concave curves from the ground to the eaves. When, in subsequent decades, recreational vehicles became too tall to drive through the building, lanes were added to the outside rather than alter the original design. Like the checking station, the nearby ranger station/residence was designed by the Park Service’s Branch of Plans and Design in San Francisco and constructed as a Public Works project. Both facilities exemplify the era’s guiding principal for park architecture which called for the use of “native materials in proper scale” while avoiding “rigid, straight lines, and over-sophistication.” The goal of this rustic design style was to “achieve sympathy with natural surroundings and with the past.”
]]>A National Historic Landmark since 1964, Pictograph Cave provides an important window into the lives of Montana’s early hunter-gatherers. It is equally significant to the history of Treasure State archaeology. People used Pictograph Cave—and the neighboring Middle and Ghost Caves—for at least five thousand years. Ancestors of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe, which has lived in the region since at least 1700, likely created some of the pictographs; forebears of other tribes also left their mark. Early inhabitants painted over 100 images on the walls. The earliest painting—of a turtle—is over two thousand years old. More recent paintings, approximately two hundred years old, depict a flintlock gun and riders on horseback. European-imported guns and horses made their way to the Northern Plains through the tribes’ vast trade network. Other evidence of that trade network includes the fragment of a 1370-year-old coiled basket, which resembles those made in the Great Basin. Thousands of other artifacts include stone, bone, and wood hunting and gathering tools, pottery fragments, plant remains, and jewelry. The caves’ archaeological excavation began in 1936, during the dawn of Montana archaeology. The Works Progress Administration funded the excavation as part of a New Deal program to boost employment during the Great Depression. Amateur archaeologist Oscar Lewis directed the project until 1941, when professional archaeologist William Mulloy took charge of the excavation. In 1951 he published the first definitive archaeological report about the Northwestern Plains, mostly based on materials found at the caves. Recognizing the site’s scientific and cultural importance, Montana added Pictograph and Ghost Caves to its state park system in 1969.
]]>The 1868 Laramie Treaty guaranteed the Lakota half of present-day South Dakota and designated an additional 60 million acres in present-day Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana as “unceded hunting grounds.” After discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874, the United States tried to renegotiate the treaty. When Lakota leaders refused to sell the Black Hills, President Grant authorized an illegal war against the Lakota and their allies. In 1875, the Secretary of the Interior ordered Sitting Bull and other chiefs living in the unceded hunting grounds to the reservation. When they didn’t comply by the January 31, 1876, deadline, Brigadier Generals Alfred Terry and George Crook began the military campaign that became known as the Great Sioux War. In March 1876, Crook mistakenly attacked a village of Northern Cheyennes on the Powder River, and the band joined the fight. On June 17, 1876, Crook’s troops, along with 276¬ Crow and Shoshone allies, were heading to attack a large Lakota village on the Little Bighorn when Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors intercepted them here. The Northern Cheyenne named the battlefield “Where the Girl Saved Her Brother. The name commemorates Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who charged into the fray to rescue her brother, Chief Comes-In-Sight, after his horse was shot from under him. The six-hour battle left dead and wounded on both sides. Eight days later, while Crook’s troops were still recovering, the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne defeated the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
]]>Located along major intertribal trade and travel routes, the Missouri River headwaters was a confluence of people as well as rivers. Faded pictographs testify to long usage by Plains and Intermontane tribes, including the Shoshones, who regularly traveled here to hunt. On one such trip a Hidatsa war party kidnapped twelve-year-old Sacagawea, whom they sold to fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau and Sacagawea joined Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery at the Mandan villages in 1805, when the captains hired them as translators. Reaching Three Forks on July 27, 1805, Sacagawea told Lewis that she recognized the landscape as the site of her capture five years earlier. Although they were anxious to meet the Shoshones to trade for the horses they would need to cross the Rocky Mountains before winter, the captains understood this site as “the essential point in the geography” of the West. Naming the converging rivers after President Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State James Madison, and Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, the Corps paused several days to rest, measure latitude and longitude, and explore, before choosing to follow the Jefferson to its source. Once released from duty, corps members John Colter, John Potts and George Drouillard returned to the confluence to trap beaver. Potts and Drouillard were killed and Colter barely survived violent encounters with the Blackfeet, who were determined to keep the Americans out of their territory. Retired smelterman Clark Maudlin recognized the site’s historical significance and purchased the land, which he donated to the State of Montana. Headwaters State Park opened to the public in 1951.
]]>Travelers’ Rest is the only site where physical evidence documents the exact location of a campsite associated with the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. Situated at the eastern end of the Lolo Trail, Travelers’ Rest was used by Native peoples, most notably the Salish, Pend d ‘Oreille, and Nez Perce, centuries before Captain Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and their Corps of Discovery ever ventured west. Situated on the banks of Lolo Creek in a spot too wet for agricultural activity, the immediate vicinity of the former campsite has changed little since members of the corps slept here. Likewise, the dominant features of the landscape to the south and west—Lolo Peak and the entrance to the Lolo Creek Canyon—still offer the same view. The explorers first camped here September 9–11, 1805, pausing briefly in their westward journey to the Pacific before they began their arduous trek over the Bitterroot Mountains. They returned the following summer, homeward bound, camping here from June 30–July 3, 1806, before splitting their party into two groups. Upon leaving, Clark and his men followed a more southerly route along the Yellowstone River while Lewis’ contingent headed north through Blackfeet country to the Marias and Missouri Rivers. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and became a State Park in 2001. In 2002 archaeologists unearthed evidence of the corps’ presence including a mercury-tainted trench latrine, fire hearths, and lead used in the repair and manufacture of firearms. As noted in a 2006 National Register of Historic Places amendment, “There are few places along the entire trail from Saint Louis to the Pacific Ocean that envelope such a diverse convergence of momentous historical events, peoples, and ideas.”
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