The topography of Montana is very different from what is generally
supposed by those who are not familiar with it, and this erroneous
impression is largely due to the fact that the country is very
mountainous in the older inhabited and better known portion of the
State, which lies in its southern corner near the Idaho and Wyoming
lines; this region was first inhabited by those pioneers of western
civilization, the prospector and miner, and in consequence of this and
of the wild grandeur of the Yellowstone National Park, the generally
preconceived notions of the topography and resources of the State are
of forests and streams teeming with game and fish, and rugged mountains
occupied by a few isolated mining camps and cattle ranches.
On the contrary there are scattered over various parts of the State
many large towns, two of which, Butte and Helena, have each about
20,000 inhabitants, while only one-fourth of the area of the State is
over 5,000 feet in altitude, and at least two-thirds of it is below
4,000 feet.
The mountainous district of the State, which occupies but two-fifths of
the total area, is in the southwestern portion; these mountains are in
fact but the last remnants of the great rockies breaking down from
Wyoming and Idaho and terminating in the broad flat plains of the
Saskatchewan River on the north, and of the Missouri River on the north
and east.
It is in these great mountain ranges that the Clarke's Fork and Snake
Rivers, two of the principal branches of the Columbia, after rising in
the western and southern portions of the State join the Columbia on its
way to the Pacific Ocean; among these mountains in the northern portion
of the State the Saskatchewan River rises and flows thence to the
Arctic Ocean; while the great Missouri and one of its principal
branches, the Yellowstone River, rise in these mountains and after
flowing northward nearly to the British line turn and flow eastward and
join the Mississippi on its way to the Atlantic.
The highest mountains in Montana are in Park, Gallatin, Madison and
Beaver Head Counties, in which latter the furthermost branches of the
Missouri, the Beaver Head and Big Hole Rivers, which form the Jefferson
river, have their sources at the summit of the Rocky mountains, and it
was here that those intrepid explorers, Lewis and Clarke, first crossed
the Continental Divide in 1805 to the headwaters of one of the branches
of the Snake river.
In these counties a few of the highest peaks reach an elevation of
11,000 feet, and from here the main range of the Rockies bears off to
the north in a long, continuous and rugged ridge of sandstone and
porphyry, with extensive beds of limestone north of the headwaters of
the Dearborn River, and gradually falling off in elevation, until near
the British line the highest peaks are less than 7,000 feet above the
sea.
From this same axial point in the southwest corner a main spur or
branch of the Rockies, called the Bitter Root Mountains, bears
northwesterly and falling away in height, gives out with an elevation
of 2,200 feet in northern Missoula County where the Clarke's Fork river
leaves the State, cutting across the foot of this range.
East of Madison and Jefferson Counties, and along the southern border
of the State, are numerous short mountain ranges, often 10,000 feet and
sometimes 11,000 feet in elevation, which have generally a north and
south trend and fall off near the middle of the State to a continuous,
broad, and nearly level high prairie, or as it is locally called "bench
land," which continues to fall slowly in the same direction.
Do not imagine that these great ranges of mountains are wild and
uninhabited for such is not the case; they are merely great mountain
masses, and between, among and on top of them are other minor ranges of
mountains, usually having symmetrical and regularly sloping sides,
which are separated by broad, level and very fertile valleys,
everywhere inhabited and cultivated by the aid of irrigation, while
herds of cattle, horses and sheep graze on the hillsides.
Even among the roughest mountains a man may travel alone on horseback
sure of finding shelter and food somewhere in the course of a day's
journey, as was done by the author during the past summer, when he rode
over 2,000 miles in various parts of the State. In the more rugged
places mining camps may be met with when everything else fails.
At present these mountain valleys are the more thickly inhabited
portions of the country, both because of the mines and because farming
pursuits are more cheaply and conveniently followed owing to the
greater abundance of small and easily controlled streams of water,
which render irrigation possible even by the poorest settler. Only in
the southern portions of Gallatin and Park Counties are the mountains
so forbidding as to be uninhabited, and then in limited areas only.
One of the remarkable characteristics of the Montana mountains is their
great regularity and smoothness of contour. It is probable that ice
action during the glacial period may have planed off the
irregularities, so characteristic of the elsewhere rugged outline of
the Rocky Mountains. Between these symmetrical ranges of mountains lie
the broad and fertile valleys before referred to. These are generally
valleys of construction, and in some former geologic period were
occupied by lakes whose beds have since been drained by the streams, as
they cut their way out of the mountains.
It is the extensive deposits from the ancient lakes which give to these
valleys their fertile soils, while the unusual mildness of their
climate is largely due to the fact that they are seldom over 5,000 feet
in altitude, and the high mountains surrounding them shelter them from
the severe winds which, sweeping over the plains of Dakota, become the
much dreaded "blizzards."
East of the Tongue River and north of the Yellowstone and Missouri
Rivers, the level bench lands are everywhere below 3,500 feet in
elevation, and often below 2,500 feet, and are very dry and devoid of
water, though covered by an abundant growth of fine bunch grass. These
bench lands are traversed by a few narrow, deep "couleés" or "washes"
having bluff banks 50 to 300 feet high, dry during most of the year,
though roaring torrents in the early spring months.
It is on these bench lands that irrigation will find its greatest
field, for here is a comparatively mild climate owing to the low
altitude, and here the soil is fertile, warm and deep.