MY MOUNTAIN

Discussion of

MY MOUNTAIN

By Howard Copenhaver

MY MOUNTAIN

By Howard Copenhaver

With not much going on this past summer with the Covid and all I was rereading a book I have had for quite some time. I’m sure there are some others that have read these books written by Howard Copenhaver, They Left Their Tracks and More Tracks. Howard was from Ovando and outfitted this country for over 60 years. He was instrumental along with others in getting the Wilderness act passed, the Bob Marshal, Scapegoat, Great Bear and others.

Back in the late eighties we used to set up a hunting camp just north of Ovando the last two weeks of general season to bowhunt whitetails along the Blackfoot River. We would dig out the snow and set up a wall tent, when one afternoon this thin old man drove into our camp, I recognized who he was as he introduced himself. We were getting lunch and invited Howard to join us. He declined lunch but asked if we had hot chocolate and maybe a cookie or two. We sat and listened to some of his old stories until he had to go retrieve his grandkids from there morning hunt. He left and headed back to our treestands. Howard stopped in for hot chocolate and cookies around lunch several times that week and for years after. He wrote his books and signed all my copies, four in all.

While reading More Tracks, the other night the second chapter really hit home, it’s not a hunting adventure but a recap of the place that I have spent fifty years of my hunting and fishing life. I called Stoneydale Press Publishing Company to see if I could get permission to use this chapter in the MBA Newsletter. Dale Burk the publisher who had just passed away was a good friend and wilderness advocate along with Howard, Dale’s daughter Rachel said Dale would have been happy to let me use this piece. I hope there is something in this chapter for those of you have hunted in the shadow of Scapegoat Mountain. s I lay here in my sleeping bag on top of “My

AMountain”, Scapegoat, a huge pile of rocks and craigs that support the Continental Divide, backbone of Montana, I look as far as the eye will allow me East, North, South and West. It is not heard to visualize dreams of the past. Off to the southeast I see Lewis and Clark trudging up the Missouri headed for the Pacific. I see Indians chasing buffalo or a Blackfoot Indian war party in search of the Crow Indians. A little farther north and east is Charlie Russell and a group of cowboys raising a dust as they for the “Old Mint” bar in Great Falls. What’s that streak across the plans? It’s a homesteader and his plow. Right behind him comes a mangy crew planting post and barbed wire. I can see cattle grazing through the tall prairie grass with sheep climbing the foothills in search of feed. Elk, deer, goat, mountain sheep and grizzly bear looking down the mountain and wondering, “How long can I hold my ground?” Farther north stands the Anaconda Swelter at Great Falls, a city that covers the prairie like ringworm on a horse’s eye.

Off to the west and far below I see fertile valleys, lakes and streams, ranches and cities, sawmills and loggers with logging roads. Also, farther south, mines of silver and copper and gold. Off to the side is the “Richest Hill on Earth,” the mines of Butte. I dream I can hear the clatter of trains when I’m rudely awakened out of my trance by the roar of a Boeing 707 jet as it flies overhead.

I’ve tried to tell people of this and more. Always their comment to me has bee, “If only this mountain could talk!”

I’m going to lay here and listen and take down some notes, maybe she’ll have something to say of days long gone by and years to come. I’ll try to write them all down and pass them on. Then you’ll know she’s something that lives and man can’t change.

She’s a beautiful, spectacular mountain whose lifeblood (water) flows down her sides to head the great rivers. On the north flows the South Fork of the Flathead, to the west the North Fork of the Blackfoot. They flow on to the Pacific. To the east the Dearborn, Marias, Milk, Sun and Yellowstone rivers join the Missouri River, then flow into the great Mississippi all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Scapegoat is a name taken out of the Bible so why shouldn’t she stand high and stately over all the other mountains reigning as queen!

Well, I’m getting sleepy. I think I’ll have the last of that coffee and turn in. It’s a beautiful night. I can almost touch the stars and that moon is so bright I can see like day.

“What did you say? Hey, there’s no one here.” I must be dreaming.

“Oh, yes, there’s someone here alright. It’s me, the mountain. You lay still and listen. I’ll tell you of my past as best I can.

“Many millions of years ago I was the flat bottom of the ocean. I can prove it by the many seashells and fossils of fish and horned sharks imbedded in my face. Then a great change came and I became a prehistoric tropical plain with dense swamps and lush tropical plains bordered by a sea whose shores were lined with pin and redwood forests. These lands and swamps were inhabited by dinosaurs, large and small. There were Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous.

Then we the mountains started to grow. As we raised our heads up, the water receded, drying up the swamps and changing all vegetation and climate as well. We grew until we towered many thousands of feet high forming the backbone of America, the Continental Divide.

“Then came the Ice Age with its glaciers shifting, tearing at our sides. They slipped, leaving beautiful cirques, plateaus and canyons along with the Great China Wall. The earth heaved and buckled. How long this lasted I do not know. When it was all done, there was a great dam way off to the west somewhere near where Thompson Falls now is, causing a great lake. Lake Missoula was formed as the ice melted, raising the waters until they broke out and flooded the Columbia Basin and rushed to the Pacific Ocean below.

“If you drive down Highway 90 and stop near Missoula, the shoreline of Lake Missoula is clearly defined high on the sides of my sisters, Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel. All the valleys to the west are lake beds of washed gravel and rocks washed smooth, covered with sedimentation that has now become soil.

“Great forests of pine, fur, spruce and larch have covered our sidehills, valleys and ridges. Grasses, bushes, willows, berries, cottonwood and aspen trees are here for the use of animals, birds and man. ( To the north, south and west you;ll see great forests of trees 200 feet high. )

“As it was, you’d find Indians on both sides of this mountain. To the west were the Nez Perce and Flathead. Out east were the Crow and to the north the Blackfeet with the Cree in between. They are hunting and fishing in a land that is free. Sure, they fought over areas, but in all, it was a good life. There’s plenty of room to wander and enjoy a good life. Then here come the trappers and mountain men, and also the searchers for gold. Soon the cattlemen and farmes followed.

“You ask me where did all the animals come from? I really don’t know. I hear they walked across land or ice bridges from Russia and Asia and maybe Finland or Sweden. Your guess is as good as mine but I think The Great Spirit, God, put them here.

“I can prove all I’ve told you if you’ll just look below. To the east they are digging out fossils over 60 million years old. Right at my feet they’ve found huge fossils along the Sun River and even dinosaur eggs. Right now they are digging up Tyrannosaurus Rex that is supposed to be 65 million years old. This is to the east on the Missouri River Breaks. Just below me on Wolf Creek is a cave on Tag Rittell’s ranch. They are finding fossils and bones of animals many thousands of years old, also, a skull of prehistoric man, so the claim.”

“Hold it right here, Old Friend, you’ve lost me. Can I ask you some questions as we go along?

“What of the Hudson Bay Fur Company traders who came across the plains to the Missouri and Maris Rivers to set up trading posts with the Cree and Blackfoot Indians? When I was quite young, some prospectors came to us. They wanted us to pack them and their equipment in to the head of the Dry Fork in search of gold and any traces left by these Hudson Bay men. They had documents claiming a strike that these men had made; also a crud map of how they travelled. They came up from the prairie to Half Moon Park, then off to north and up that long ridge between Green Creek and Straight Creek, climbed up on top where they found gold in soft quartz. They needed water to wash it so they packed it down into the Dry Fork to the west. Here they made sluice boxes out of hued logs. Then they went back over the top and down to the plains. They did not cut blazes on the trees to mark their trail- they built monuments or stone and on your west face they painted the Royal British Shield. We packed them into