Montana Magazine - May/June 2016

War Horse: Masterpiece may celebrate a horse killed at Little Bighorn

May | June 2016

the official

to

issue

Glacier to Yellowstone

Yellowstone at Night

Photographer captures the unique nighttime skies of Yellowstone

Off the Beaten Path

Eight great hikes between the parks

Hundred Year Journey Retracing Mary Roberts Rinehart's trek through Glacier

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Big Sky Lake - Escape to this quiet, fully furnished log home with 3 bedrooms, a separate guest suite & an expansive triple garage. Just 50 minutes from Missoula, private Big Sky Lake is a one-of-a-kind spot for Montana Recreation. $730,000 Julie Gardner • (406) 532-9233 • jgardner@ERALambros.com

ON THE COVER War Horse: Masterpiece may celebrate a horse killed at Little Bighorn

May | June 2016

the official

to

issue

Glacier to Yellowstone

Yellowstone at Night

Photographer captures the unique nighttime skies of Yellowstone

Off the Beaten Path

features

44 War Horse

34 100 Years On

56 A Fine Place to Work

Photographer captures the magic that most people miss

Hundred Year Journey Retracing Mary Roberts Rinehart's trekthrough Glacier

Retracing Mary Roberts Rinehart's 1915 trek through Glacier Park

$5.95 USA $6.95 CANADA

By monitoring astronomy websites, Robert Howell is able to time his visits to Yellowstone National Park in order to be there on occasion when the aurora borealis is visible. Here, the green and red play of light adds a touch of color to this photo of a geyser erupting.

MAY | JUNE 2016

26 Yellowstone at Night

Eight great hikes between the parks

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ISSUE 257

Honor for a blue roan slain in Montana

Brickmaster Archie Bray's vision pays off for Helena

40 8 Wild Hikes

The Montana Wilderness Association makes recommendations for a gorgeous hiking trip

reader photo

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Livingston photographer Robert Howell’s fascination with the night sky, especially as viewed from Yellowstone National Park, has won him acclaim for his astronomy photographs.

He is active in the local camera clubs and regional photography workshops. His award- winning images have been chosen by NASA for its Astronomy Picture of the Day; TIME Magazine for its TIME for Kids schools publication; by collectors worldwide; and by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich, which include Howell on its Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2014 shortlist.

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GREEN-UP ON THE GALLATIN Larry A. Holle of Bozeman shot this photo about 100 yards south of the Axtel/Ankey bridge just off U.S. Highway 191 in Gallatin County on Mother’s Day of 2015. He shot it using a 24-70 mm lens with a Nikon D3S.

W W W. M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E . C O M

contents

26

34 IN EVERY ISSUE

10 | Letters/Reader photo 11 | Show & Tell 11 | Under the Big Sky 12 | Pictured in History 12 | Behind the Scenes 14 | Portfolio 22 | Montana book reviews 62 | Hidden Gem 66 | Glimpses

40

44

FEATURES 26 | 34 |

40 |

44 |

56 |

Yellowstone at Night Retracing a trek through Glacier 100 years on Eight wild hikes between Yellowstone & Glacier War Horse: Honor for a blue roan slain in Montana A fine place to work: Brickmaker Archie Bray’s vision pays off for Helena

ALL MONTANA, ALL THE TIME!

Visit MontanaMagazine.com for fresh content and special online extras!

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FROM THE EDITOR

ETHNIC MONTANA: BEHIND THE HYPHENS, THERE ARE STORIES

T

he story goes that in the days of the Copper Kings, a spy for the concern called Amalgamated fell down a crosscut in the mines at Butte and landed right in the dust in front of a foreman working for Frederick Augustus Heinze, the opposition. Sizing up the situation, the foreman inquired gently if the fellow wouldn’t mind telling where he had come from – dropping in so unexpectedly like that? The miner replied, coolly brushing the dust from his clothes as he walked away, “County Galway.”

Did it happen? It made a good yarn, anyway, in Joseph Kinsey Howard’s classic Montana: High, Wide and Handsome.

Montana is still a place where we can all celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with more verve than most places.

Consider that a company called SafecoInsurance.com announced earlier this spring that not one, but two Montana towns were among “The Top 15 Midsized Cities with the Most Irish St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” Butte-Silver Bow took the top spot in that ranking and Missoula came in at No. 13.

Of course we don’t only celebrate with the Irish. We do the same for Norway’s Constitution Day, Syttende Mai, or Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo. We look behind each other’s hyphens to understand the ethnic richness that makes up the Americans. And we put up with one another’s outlandish customs and impossible names because America has always been an ethnic place, and so has Montana.

Certainly it seemed so to me when I was growing up. My grandfather, Severin Hanson, a child of Norwegian immigrants, once homesteaded, along with his brother, Gunder, and his sister, Hilda, in the area around Winifred, Montana. My best guess is that it was early in the 1920s. My mother always figured it was because her dad wanted to raise cattle, and the Red River Valley of North Dakota was too rich for that. But maybe the country around Winifred was too lean. Grandpa and sister Hilda returned to North Dakota. My great-uncle, Gunder, stayed.

But as every ethnic group has learned, that’s part of becoming the Americans – becoming Montana. Not every seed that’s planted here gives a crop. Some dreams fail.

Montana might be a place of great disappointment for some, but that’s part of what goes into the making of a place.

Consider another ethnic group that was busy here before most European immigrants: the Lakota. In this issue we write about No Two Horns, a Lakota warrior and artist who is there when Custer’s troops attack at the Little Bighorn. We know only a part of his story – he lost a war horse that he loved in that battle, and he drew and he carved that event, like the shell-shocked veteran he may have been, for as long as he lived. The greatest military victory the Lakota ever had was, for him, a time of personal sorrow and loss that played out on the plains of Montana.

What I hope Montana Magazine can do, with a little help from our readers, is more of this same sort of story. We want to tell what a good, hard land this is under the buffalo grass and timber – how things worked out, and sometimes how they didn’t. We want to look behind each other’s hyphens and delve into family histories to find the individual narratives that help make up the big story of Montana. We want to explore the Great American Dream, theme and variations, as it played out here in this place where the Great Plains bump up against the mountains. There will be stories to tell.

Lance Nixon, editor editor@montanamagazine.com | 406-523-5250 fb.com/MontanaMagazine | @montanamagazine |

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A DIVISION OF LEE ENTERPRISES Mark Heintzelman Publisher mark.heintzelman@lee.net

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MONTANA MAGAZINE (ISSN 0274-9955) is published bi-monthly at 500 South Higgins Avenue, Missoula, MT 59801.

Periodicals postage paid at Missoula and at additional mailing offices. MONTANA MAGAZINE, registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, is owned by Lee Enterprises, Inc. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Montana Magazine, P.O. Box 8689, Missoula, MT 59807-9902. Subscribers: please send your old address or mailing label as well as your new address when you move. Allow six weeks advance notice. The Postal Service will not forward your magazine unless you guarantee forwarding postage with your local post office.

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All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ® 2016

WHERE IN MONTANA?

Use this map to help guide you through the state as you read the stories in this issue 100 Years On

War Horse

Glacier National Park: Retracing Mary Roberts Rinehart's 1915 trek through Glacier Park. Page 34

11

93

Whitefish

Libby Noxon

Plains St. Regis

135

2

Polson

28

Chinook

15

r ive ri R ou s s Mi

Ronan 93

200

83

Superior 90

Missoula

Lolo

Cla

200

Bi g 43

Helena

1

Deer Lodge 15

Ho

le Riv

er

9

2

Geraldine Fort Peck Reservoir

Livingston

41

90

Bozeman

1 Gardiner

6

212

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

West Yellowstone

1. Gallatin County: Page 6 – Reader photo 2. Freezout Lake WMA: Page 10 – Reader photo 3. Malta: Page 12 – Reader historical photos 4. Wibaux: Page 14 – Photographer’s portfolio 5. Troy: Page 22 – Hometown of Montana writer Richard Fifield 6. Yellowstone National Park: Page 26 - Yellowstone at Night

WRITE TO US! We would love to hear from you.

200S

Glendive Wibaux

59

Roundup Ryegate

87

4

iv eR Yellowston Miles City 94

Forsyth

Baker

Ekalaka

Park City Columbus Absarokee 310 Red Lodge Cooke City

12

7

Billings

212

R

15

Circle

200

12

Big Timber

90

ive r

Fairview Sidney

191

Whitehall

Virginia City

16

13

Jordan

Lewistown

White Sulphur Springs

Madison

d ea rh ve iver a Be R

Wolf Point

24

Harlowton

f Jef

Dillon

3

Fort Peck

191

r ve

Wisdom

16 13

Glasgow

Malta

191

Plentywood

Scobey

24

87

Canyon Ferry Lake

Boulder

Butte

Anaconda

Darby

Zortman

89

Lincoln Drummond 141

Philipsburg

93

87

er

200

rk Fork

Hamilton

Harlem

Great Falls 10

200

Seeley Lake Ovando

Milk Riv

Dodson

River

Thompson Falls

Teton River

Swan Lake

35

2

Maria s

Conrad

Bigfork

Havre

Chester

Shelby

East Glacier

2

Flathead Lake

200

Browning

West Glacier

Kalispell 2

Opheim

7

Ri

2

89

er s on

Troy 56

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

37

er

Eureka

5

Little Bighorn: Honor for a blue roan slain in Montana.

Page 44

Hardin

212

59

Ashland

Broadus

90 Bighorn Canyon Nat'l Rec.Area

8

Yellowstone at Night

Yellowstone National Park: Photographer captures the magic that most people miss. Page 26

7. Glacier National Park: Page 34 - Retracing a 1915 trek through Glacier 100 years on 8. Little Bighorn: Page 44 - War Horse: Honor for a blue roan slain in Montana 9. Helena: Page 56 - A Fine Place to Work 10. Highwood Mountains: Page 62 - Shonkin Sag is one of Montana’s geological marvels 11. Whitefish: Page 66 - Glimpses

Address letters to: Montana Magazine Editor P.O. Box 8689 | Missoula, MT 59807-9902 or email: editor@montanamagazine.com.

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Kalispell: The Town that killed Demersville

March | April 2016

GREAT STORY ON KALISPELL

Dear Mr. (Vince) Devlin and Montana Magazine, What an excellent article with accompanying photos by Tommy Martino you wrote in the March/April 2016 magazine, “Kalispell: The Town That Killed Demersville.” For more information about Kalispell’s early history, I invite you to read Kalispell Cornerstones, by Gail Shay Atkinson (my former last name) and Jim C. Atkinson.

You provide a good “snapshot” of our good town in the Flathead and the material is well supported by the facts you included. The photographer is to be commended for the carefully chosen photographs accompanying the article.

Chief Joseph Trail

Appaloosa Horse Club retraces the steps of the Nez Perce

Growth & Preservation

Butte races to save its historic buildings

Buffalo People

Scavengers make use of bison kills in Yellowstone

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I am certain not to be the only reader to comment about Valerie Nelson’s opinion of Whitefish as “not so ritzy like Whitefish.” While Whitefish does have larger new buildings, including a new hotel and soon-to-be-completed new city hall, the town’s humble beginnings as a “stump town” (see the Mable Engelter and Betty Schafer book, Stump Town to Ski Town: The Story of Whitefish, Montana) and as the Great Northern rail head has much to offer folks interested in history, shopping, clean industry, dining and recreation.

Gail Shay Linne Whitefish, Montana

LONG LIVE SMOKEY THE BEAR!

Montana Magazine editor, The March-April 2016 issue was in the mailbox today. As I ate my lunch, I began reading the article on the Chief Joseph Trail. Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce suffered so much – it always brings tears to my eyes when I think of all they suffered.

Three and a half hours have passed since I first began reading this issue (and re-reading some articles) and the very first time reading an issue from cover to cover. I have a collection of many years of unread and partially read issues including the 1997 issue on wildflowers.

We were taught in grammar school about Smokey the Bear. I even taught my classes of third- and fourth-graders about Smokey the Bear. Then, I read some years ago that it was “Smokey Bear.” To me, he’ll always be “Smokey the Bear,” growing up from a cub with burned paws to a grown-up bear. Long live Smokey the Bear!

Thank you for a wonderful magazine, Aiko Kawano Billings, Montana

READER PHOTOS

SPRING MIGRATION AT FREEZOUT LAKE WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT AREA If you are a goose or a duck or a swan, it’s time to point your compass north — and Montana is fortunate to have one of the great resting spots at the foot of the Rockies for migrating flocks. Linda Sentz of Choteau, Montana, shot this image of snow geese and swans at Freezout Lake Wildlife Management Area between Choteau and Fairfield on March 12, 2016. That same week, wildlife officials were estimating there were between 500 and 600 swans at the lake, some 10,000 snow geese and assorted mallard, wigeon and northern pintail ducks, with new species arriving every day.

Linda Sentz, Choteau, Montana

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MONTANA MAGAZINE

Show&Tell

Your Big Sky Country events calendar for May and June 2016.

MAY

12 MAY

25

MAY

28-30

JUNE

4-12

JUNE

10-12

JUNE

17-19

CARRIE UNDERWOOD Billings, MT | May 12 7 p.m., Rimrock Arena in MetraPark, 308 Sixth Ave. N. The seven-time Grammy winner recently released her fifth studio album, “Storyteller.” For tickets, call 406356-2400 or visit metrapark.com.

JEWEL Missoula, MT | May 25 8 p.m., Wilma Theatre, 131 S. Higgins Ave. The acclaimed singer, songwriter, Jewel actress, poet, painter, philanthropist, and daughter of an Alaskan singer/songwriter returns to the Garden City. J.D. and the Straight Shot open the show. Call 406-728-2521 or visit thewilma.com for tickets.

MEMORIAL DAY FLEA MARKET St. Regis, MT | May 28-30 Montana's largest outdoor flea market features more than 170 vendors selling a variety of wares. Call 406-649-1304 or visit stregismtflea.org.

RED LODGE MUSIC FESTIVAL Red Lodge, MT | June 4-12 The oldest and most successful music festival in Montana attracts over 200 students annually from Montana and other states, with talented faculty from universities, colleges and symphony orchestras from across the nation. Five evening faculty concerts, two evening student recitals, and afternoon band and orchestra performances are held at the Civic Center. Call 406-855-3961.

“DEAR EDWINA” Helena, MT | June 10-12 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Grandstreet Theatre, 325 Park Ave. Edwina Spoonapple, is an advice-giver extraordinaire, like a spunky, singing version of “Dear Abby.” Edwina and her friends share wisdom on everything from trying new foods to making new friends through clever, catchy and poignant songs. Call 406-447-1574 or visit grandstreettheatre.com for tickets.

LEWIS AND CLARK FESTIVAL Great Falls, MT | June 17-19 Experience an incredible journey through the weathered pages of the daily journals kept by the fames explorers. Highlights include a bluegrass concert on Friday; and live music, art and craft vendors, Native American drummers and dancers, and a firearms exhibit on Saturday. The festival wraps up Sunday with a guided boat trip into the Gates of the Mountains. Call 406-727-8733 or visit lewisandclarkfoundation.org.

To submit a Montana event for the Montana Magazine Show and Tell calendar, email the time, date, place and short description of the event to editor@montanamagazine.com at least two months prior to the event.

UNDER THE

Big Sky VACCINATION TIME?

Drones might soon be dropping peanut butter-flavored treats laced with vaccine across some Montana prairie dog colonies under a plan to inoculate the rodents against the plague, the Associated Press reported.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said April 12 it wants to protect prairie dogs from the disease because they're the primary food source for highly endangered black-footed ferrets. The agency is taking comments through May 12 on a plan to scatter vaccineladen bait on colonies at the Charles M. Russell and UL Bend national wildlife refuges in northeastern Montana.

CODE TALKER

Native American code talker Gilbert Horn Sr. died March 27 at age 92. Horn was born in 1923 on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation and was trained as a sharpshooter in World War II, but then was trained in communications and encryption. He joined other American Indians who used their native languages during the war to send and receive coded messages to prevent intercepted messages from being understood.

HISTORY ON TAP

Two Montana bars were in the running as this magazine went to press as finalists in The Big Tap: 2016 Historic Bars Tournament Championship. The sponsor of the competition is the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Montana Standard of Butte reported that Anaconda’s Club Moderne, at 801 E. Park Ave., remains famous for preserving the original Art Deco design that characterized the place when it opened on Oct. 9, 1937.

Also in the running is the Sip ‘n Dip, 17 Seventh St. S. in Great Falls, which opened in 1962 as part of the O’Haire Motor Inn. It’s famous for live mermaids swimming in a glassed-in pool in the bar backdrop.

CROW HISTORIAN AND WAR CHIEF

Joseph Medicine Crow, the last surviving war chief of the Crow Tribe and a revered historian of the Crow people, died April 3 at age 102, state and national news media reported. President Obama awarded Medicine Crow the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Raised in a log house near Lodge Grass, Medicine Crow had a healthy appreciation for the history of his tribe, which he documented in several books. His work examined the Crow people’s origins as a split-off group from the Hidatsa, and details of daily life, such as how the Crow used buffalo jumps, and how they acquired and used the horse, among other topics.

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PICTURED IN HISTORY

RANCHING IN MALTA Ted Kelly of Malta sent these photos of his grandparents on their farm/ranch six miles east of Malta, Montana. The photo of the man with the wagon shows his grandfather, Amos Kelly, ready to go to town in about 1915. The other shows his grandparents, Amos and Effa Kelly and their son, Ted’s father, Lynn Kelly, with the family’s first car in 1918. “We could read the date on the license plate. After some thought and looking at other cars we are sure it is a Ford Model T,” Ted Kelly told Montana Magazine. “They came to this area by wagon with two other families from Hardin, Montana, in 1913. They had a ranch east of Malta which was in the family until 2001.”

BEHIND THE SCENES: SHONKIN SAG

Above: Helena science teacher Rod Benson photographed friends Mark Smith, left, and Kacey Askin on a hike to the Shonkin Sag laccolith, the long rock formation stretching away to the left.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

According to the American Geological Institute’s 1997 Glossary of Geology, geologists W.H. Weed and Louis Valentine Pirsson wrote in 1895 that the name “Shonkin” was an Indian name for the Highwood Mountains of central Montana.

Later sources say it’s specifically a Blackfeet name.

It exists now as the name for the Shonkin Sag, near the town

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of Shonkin, Montana, and also – perhaps more significant for geologists – as the root of the word “shonkinite” that Weed and Pirsson used to describe the rare, dark igneous rock that is found only in that part of Montana and a few other places in the world. According to Enclyclopedia Brittanica, shonkinite is also found in Ontario, in British Columbia, and in the islands of Celebes and Timor

in Indonesia.

Near Shonkin Sag, shonkinite forms the largest share of the stratified laccolith – the igneous stone that pushed its way between layers of sedimentary rock, causing a dome-like structure, sometimes with sheer sides.

Read more about the Shonkin Sag on page 61.

T

here are many things to love about Montana.

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2016

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PORTFOLIO: CHILD OF THE PLAINS

The community of St. Philip's, and St. Philip's Catholic Church, were established by Polish immigrants who settled south of Wibaux in the early 1900s.

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child of the

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plains Photographer celebrates the beauty of eastern Montana

By Lance Nixon

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PORTFOLIO: CHILD OF THE PLAINS

Above: The crew from Hardy Farms harvests winter wheat in this "classic doubleheader" in southern Wibaux County near the North Dakota border.

Right: Located approximately 30 miles south of Miles City, where the community of Beebe once stood, Road 538 heads east-southeast toward Powderville.

Opposite: A yucca colony along Montana Highway 7, south of Wibaux, at its peak in early July.

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W

ibaux-area photographer Jeri Dobrowski has seen it quite often when traveling in other states when she lets people know she’s from the state of Montana – instant recognition of what Montana is supposed to be like. It’s just that their vision of Montana is nothing like her Montana – Wibaux County, up against the North Dakota state line.

“They smile: ‘Oh, it’s beautiful – I love the mountains.’ And having been raised on the Plains, that’s not my Montana. That’s not where my roots are,” says Dobrowski.

True, Wibaux County has Blue Mountain, at the north end of the county, which the official highway map of Montana lists at 3,077 feet of elevation – a high point in the high plains. But that’s not what people in other states think of as Montana.

“I look at them and say, ‘Well, that’s not my Montana. I was raised on the opposite end of the state and it’s grassland, rolling hills.’ They look at me with confusion – they don’t associate anything with Montana other than the mountains. So I do my briefest explanation of the wide open spaces and cattle grazing and glorious sunsets, and they still are convinced that Montana is mountains.

I don’t necessarily convert anybody. They still usually typically walk away with mountains in mind.”

Dobrowski speculates that the parks – especially Yellowstone and Glacier – may have a lot to do with forming visitors’ attitudes about Montana.

Fortunately, a picture’s worth a thousand words, and Dobrowski goes about armed with a battery of Canon cameras from time to time to document her Montana. Much of her work is focused on a handful of counties: Wibaux, Fallon, Dawson, Prairie, Custer, Carter and Powder River.

“The mountains are beautiful, but honestly, after I’ve been in the mountains for a while, I’m anxious to get back out to where I can see space.

The sunsets, to me, are unrivaled in eastern Montana. The biggest challenge is trying to capture the expanse.”

Whether trying to capture the width of a wheat field, the bigness of the sky or a gallop of horses streaming across the plain, trying to frame immensity remains a puzzle. It affects how Dobrowski shoots.

“Just trying to capture that within a photograph is difficult. They’re almost all horizontals. It just doesn’t lend itself to the vertical.”

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PORTFOLIO: CHILD OF THE PLAINS

Above: Riders gather horses on the final day of fall roundup at Makoshika Breaks Ranch southeast of Glendive.

Right: Heading north in early spring, migrating Canada geese rest atop a sandstone formation in Medicine Rocks State Park, situated between Baker and Ekalaka.

Opposite: White frost hangs heavy on a fourstrand barbed wire fence photographed in the early hours of a frigid March morning near Carlyle.

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Mornings and evenings are best for photographing the Great Plains, Dobrowski said; she shuns the harsh light of high noon. And as a photographer in eastern Montana, she’s well aware that she is following in the footsteps of some great early photographers who helped document Montana’s frontier past.

“My family has photographs that were taken on and of our family operation by both Evelyn Cameron and L.A. Huffman. I really do feel a connection with them, because they captured a slice of my family,” says Dobrowski, whose roots in the soil of eastern Montana go back to homestead days. Her own photographs showing modern agricultural equipment such as combines at work in the rolling fields of eastern Montana are just a continuation of what Huffman and Cameron started doing more than a century ago – showing the way people live on the land.

British-born Evelyn Cameron (1868-1928) moved to Terry, Montana, with her husband in the late 19th century and compiled an impressive body of work that has been celebrated several times, notably in Donna M. Lucey’s Photographing Montana 1894-1928: The Life and Work of Evelyn Cameron. Iowa-born Laton Alton Huffman, (1854-1931) similarly, built a body of work in the years he worked in Miles City, Montana. Several books also celebrate his work, including Larry Len Peterson’s L.A. Huffman: Photographer of the American West.

Dobrowski said she, as a photographer, is often aware of the fact that she is looking on the landscapes those eastern Montana pioneer photographers saw.

“All of my great-grandfathers came here and homesteaded here,” Dobrowski said. “My mom’s and dad’s families, they’ve all been here since the late 1800s, early 1900s. They came here for a reason and I guess I’m just a child of the Plains. It was born and bred into me.”

See more of Dobrowski’s work at her website, www. jeridobrowski.com.

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MONTANA BOOK REVIEW

Rural Montana

By Doug Mitchell

takes the field in Richard Fifield’s novel Small towns in Montana are unique.

Each one has its own character and characters. In his debut novel The Flood Girls, Richard Fifield introduces us to the fictional Western Montana small town of Quinn, and the town’s women’s softball team that gives his book its name.

A Troy, Montana, native himself, Fifield provides an unapologetic, intentionally over-the-top description of rural life that will at times make you chuckle, and at other times cringe. The story itself is engaging, fast-moving and deeper than one might initially think. Written in the third person, the narrative is crisp, blunt and more than a little bit bawdy. What makes the book so special though are the characters.

My guess is if you surveyed 100 readers of The Flood Girls and asked who the main character of the book is, most would say Rachel Flood. That’s certainly fair, but for me the book was about Jake. For others it will be about Laverna Flood or perhaps even the Chief. Fifield has given us, as readers, a treasure trove of amazing

characters with whom we get to share the 250 page thrill ride that is The Flood Girls.

Montana Magazine: Richard Fifield, thank you for taking the time to visit with me a bit about your novel The Flood Girls.

This book is chock full of great characters.

After reading it, I have my favorites. After writing it, who are yours?

redemption and don’t necessarily find it. For me, my favorite character is Black Mabel. It’s not even a contest, really. I love characters that are constantly trying to be helpful, but fail miserably. Black Mabel lives in the shadows for a reason. We all know those people – weirdos who feel that they don’t deserve love, and resign themselves to the outskirts of society. Plus, I find her hilarious. I could write an entire book of the misadventures of Black Mabel,

Richard Fifield: It would be obvious to pick one of the saints – Jake, Buley, The Chief. I’m much more interested in writing (and reading) characters who seek

Photo provided by Ed Wrzesien

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The title of the book refers to the local girls softball team managed by Laverna Flood, the owner of the Dirty Shame, the dive bar in Quinn where much of

the book’s action takes place. Rachel is Laverna’s daughter, newly returned to her hometown to make amends. If you are looking for a sports book, this isn’t really designed to fit that bill. The softball action is a functional focal point, but is really more of a prop to a story that is really about people and relationships.

but I think it would be too dark for public consumption.

MM: So of you got to cast the movie, who would play Black Mabel?

RF: If I was to cast the movie, Black Mabel would be portrayed by Lily Rabe – she isn’t the hugest star in the world, but she utterly transfixes me. She steals every scene in “American Horror Story,” and she is the

perfect mix of awkward and ferocious. I would insist that makeup and wardrobe use Ally Sheedy’s character in “The Breakfast Club” as a template. I would be willing to dye her hair myself.

MM: Fair enough. Now if you got to cast yourself in a role, who would you play?

RF: With the help of some serious special effects, I would gladly play Laverna. She has the most madcap misadventures, not to mention the best lines. Plus, I wouldn’t have to play softball on screen.

MM: I am glad you brought up softball.

How did you decide to make that a main focus of the story?

RF: I absolutely love softball. The Missoula Softball Association is so much fun, and I’m honored to have been able to play and coach for the last three years. I’m NOT sporty – I always play right field, but I swing at every pitch. That’s the secret of life, I think. Richard Hugo captures it perfectly in “Missoula Softball Tournament.” There’s no more eloquent paean to the beauty of softball in Missoula. He wins. For “The Flood Girls,” I was inspired by the women from my hometown of Troy, Montana. I grew up keeping score for Big Sky, a team my sisters played on. I worshiped them.

They formed this ferocious little family, and I hope I captured that in my novel.

MM: Building on the “swing at everything” idea, how does that theory impact your process as a writer?

RF: It’s about fearlessness. I set out with the goal of writing something that I would

want to read – I didn’t let my subconscious edit what I put on the page. For the first draft, the audience was me. I’ve found that when I’m afraid of how a reader will react, I sabotage my writing. I try to be as authentic on the page as I am in real life. Life is much too short to watch pitches go by.

MM: In the book you gifted Jake with a bit of that fearlessness didn’t you?

RF: Most definitely. I hoped to instill him with a bit of the reckless faith that got me through. Where that faith comes from is one of the great mysteries of the book. I love Jake, and I hope the book speaks to kids just like him, in small towns across America.

MM: I love Jake too, and was particularly taken by the way you had Jake taking no photographs in Missoula because the truly special pictures in his mind would live forever. What are some of those pictures for you?

RF: Missoula was a pilgrimage for me, as well. In high school, during the years 1989-1993, I always begged to stop at Rockin Rudy’s, when it was located where Bernices’s Bakery is now. I spent HOURS digging through used cassette tapes.

We had no access to music in Troy – and especially alternative music. To me, that place was the coolest. Also, seeing movies at The Chapel Of The Dove underneath the Wilma completely blew my young mind. That theater was where I learned the true power of kitsch. To some, it might have looked like a fire sale of Liberace’s estate, but to me, it was my first taste of mixing high/low fashion and camp glamor.

It legitimized all of my own thrift store treasures.

MM: So what’s next for you?

RF: Honestly, I’m just taking it one day at a time. Looking too far ahead freaks me out. I know that for the next two months, Simon & Schuster has me doing book promotion. I’m traveling to Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City, Spokane, Portland. Then a tour through Montana – Butte, Helena, Bozeman, and Billings. I’m willing to come to any book club, anywhere. I adore book clubs – all I need is a guarantee of coffee, and I’ll be there. I’ve been working on my second novel, and I’m always contemplating another softball season for The Flood Girls. Whatever happens, I’m always going to swing for the fences.

The Flood Girls, by Richard Fifield | Simon and Schuster | New York, New York, 2016

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MONTANA BOOK REVIEW

Witnessing History All the news from Montana and more in a Lakota woman’s compilation of oral history

By Lance Nixon

The news from Montana travels by unshod pony across the divides and along the watersheds bleeding east to the Missouri River late that June of 1876, but it still travels faster than the U.S. military. Within days it is being whispered in a home south of the Standing Rock agency where a little girl, born in October 1871 to a full-blood Lakota woman named Ithatewin, Wind Woman, and an Irish immigrant from County Cork named Charles McCarthy, stands outside listening.

One day she’ll write it down: “I listened to the animated conversation going on inside. Mother was saying, ‘Don’t repeat it, but my cousins just came in and went out again this morning. They don’t want it known here among the white people.

Every soldier of the Custer command from Fort Lincoln that went out west has been killed – even the Ree scouts and the Crow scouts are all killed.’”

The news couldn’t be contained. The extended families of the Lakota quickly spread the word.

“It was not long till the news of the battle was known in every camp, while the white people didn’t know for many days, till the news was brought down on the boats,” Waggoner wrote later.

“The Indians had struck, then retreated out toward the snowcapped, rough and reckless Bighorn Mountains, where pursuit was almost impossible. My grandmother was with them out there.”

Anecdotes such as this are the reason to read the recent book from University of Nebraska Press, Witness: A Hunkpapha Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the

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Lakotas. As the book’s editor, Emily Levine, points out in her introduction, Josephine Waggoner happens along at an ideal time – “born early enough to have experienced the life of a free Lakota in the Powder River camp of the hostiles but late enough to be among the first Hunkpaphas to receive an education … she gives us the priceless gift of a heretofore unknown view of the Dakota/ Lakota world.”

Of course the Lakota/Dakota world extends into the present-day state of Montana.

Waggoner grew up to attend Hampton Normal and Agricultural College, a boarding school in Virginia where she learned to be fluent in English and got her first taste of history. That’s where she was also expelled for dating black men, Levine notes – a serious infraction at the time. She returns to Dakota. Long after her school years, under her married name, Josephine Waggoner begins building her own compilation of Lakota history, drawing on her own interviews with people who lived those times.

Historians have tapped Waggoner’s writings as source materials in the past, but Levine deserves credit for getting parts of it into print that have never been available to the public before – two manuscripts presented here in one volume. The challenge, and part of the charm, of reading this work is that it is not just one coherent history. For example, a major section of the book is given to what Waggoner clearly thought of as a separate work, “Lives of the Chiefs.”

It is exactly what it professes to be, a

collection of short biographies of notable leaders. There is fascinating material here. The man known as Hump (“perhaps one of the most daring and reckless warriors that ever lived on the plains,” Waggoner writes) snatched victory away from the Crows once when the Crows surprised the Lakota on a hunting trip on the Musselshell River in Montana. The skirmish was going against the Lakota when Hump’s father was gunned down by a Crow warrior. In his anger, Hump pursued the Crow warrior who had shot him, killed him and began using the man’s own weapon against the Crow. The battle turned and the Lakota won the day. It was that same Hump, Waggoner notes, who later made a successful raid

to steal horses of the Crow – payback time, one wonders? – by going into Montana alone on foot with nothing but a lariat tied around his waist.

Parts of Waggoner’s vast work belong more to the category of ethnology than history, and Levine does us all a service by including appendices with some of this far-ranging material.

Waggoner devotes a lot of time to interpreting year-by-year winter counts kept by various Lakota people. Some of this is among the most tantalizing information in the book and again it indicates a great deal of interaction with peoples to the west.

Waggoner recorded two versions of what she identified as Lone Dog’s Winter Count. For the year 1800, it records that 30 Sioux were killed by the Crow; for 1805, eight Sioux were killed by the Crow; in 1812, many wild horses were caught. In 1813, 27 Mandans were surrounded and killed by the Sioux. In 1815, Hunch back, a chief, was killed by Utes; and so on.

An Oglala winter count records some events stretching back even further in time. For example, Waggoner’s notes in Lakota and English record for 1789, Toka Sunka wakhan anyankapi – “First time – horse – to ride horseback.” Again 1812 is listed as the first time the Lakota caught wild horses; 1817 is the first time they saw striped Navajo blankets; 1832 is Skutani wic aktepica, “Kootenai – man – kill they.” In 1874 the Ute Indians stole horses. The year 1880 is down in Waggoner’s record of this winter count as Toka wasicu tipi ota pi ca, The first time they lived in white man’s houses.

This text by Waggoner and Levine is a marvelous look from the inside at one of the great peoples of the Plains, written at a time when those who had seen the Lakota at the height of their power were still alive to talk about it. It will become an important research text. Despite the hefty price tag, many enthusiasts of Old West history and many libraries will want this volume on their shelves.

Witness: A Hunkpapha Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas, by Josephine Waggoner. Edited and with an introduction by Emily Levine. 745 pages with index. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-8032-45648. List price: $85 hardcover.

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Yellowstone AT NIGHT

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Story by L ance Nixon Photos by Robert Howell

Photographer captures the magic that most people miss

S

ometimes by dark the sky will open, stars will wheel and the meteors and the aurora borealis will blaze. And if Robert Howell has planned it all just right, he will have the shutter of his camera wide open to capture the show.

Because after a trip around the world some years ago, Howell settled down in Livingston, close to one of his favorite places on this earth – Yellowstone National Park. He’s photographed the park in every season, including the one most people miss: Night. And he usually photographs it looking up. For although he works in the hotel/hospitality industry, Howell has made a reputation on the side as an astronomy photographer. He goes to Yellowstone to gaze at the stars the way other people go there to watch wildlife.

“Photographing Yellowstone with the night sky is a moving experience. It’s a whole new way of seeing Yellowstone,” Howell told Montana Magazine. “The iconic landscapes are there, the geysers are still erupting, but you don’t have hundreds

LEFT: Photographer Robert Howell lives in Livingston, Montana, intentionally close to the park in order to visit Yellowstone after dark to spend all night photographing the stars.

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of cars around – everyone’s gone to bed. You’ve got the whole park to yourself. You hear more. You hear the rumbling and you feel the rumbling on the boardwalk, and it’s not footsteps because there are no people there – it’s the actual geysers that are gurgling. The stars go all the way down to the horizon – it’s just magical.”

He’s no novice at this. The United Kingdom’s Royal Observatory has a prestigious Astronomy Photographer of the Year award.

Howell hasn’t won, but he was on the observatory’s short list for the award in 2014. That’s an indication of how seriously he takes this pursuit of photographing the night sky.

“Nighttime photography involves

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long exposures. If you go to Yellowstone you have that higher elevation, so you have to be prepared for cold nights. I know the park very well, so I go out with an idea of what I want to shoot depending on how much moonlight there will be,” Howell says.

“There are some tricks to the trade. With digital cameras now you can more easily shoot at nighttime but they’re all long exposures. They can go from 10, 15, 30 seconds to minutes and even hours at a time.

So you set up the camera on a tripod and you compose as best you can and take some test shots and you go from there.

“Typically the light that you get is really ambient light or the

light of the sun even if it set three hours earlier and the moonlight.

With long exposures you can catch the movement of the earth, which makes star trails. You can catch the aurora borealis, and shooting stars.

And the camera will catch colors that your eyes don’t see when you go out at night.”

Howell finds it remarkable that the painter Vincent Van Gogh once wrote a letter to his brother, Theo, in which he remarked that it seemed to him there were more colors in the night sky than at any other time.

“Isn’t it amazing that he recognized that? And that’s without a digital camera,” Howell said.

Today, scientists know there are 17,000 Earth-sized planets in our

Milky Way galaxy alone, Howell said. There are two super telescopes in space that help scientists know there are 500,000 billion – that’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b’ – galaxies and counting. That’s the kind of thing Howell thinks about in his long, dusk-todawn sojourns in Yellowstone.

“There’s time for contemplation and rekindled questions we may have had as kids – star gazing and wondering about things we can’t quite understand.

We might not know what the future will bring any more than understand the mind-boggling number of possibilities there are with planets in other galaxies,” he said. “But by capturing the starlight that has traveled for light years, I hope to have viewers pause, stare deeply, and wonder. My goal for the viewer is to stare past the recognizable foreground, the tiny stars and even the Milky Way and marvel at what is beyond … and what is right here at our feet. How unique it is. How significant we are on the ‘Pale Blue Dot.’”

You’re actually out there for hours.

You’re forced to become quiet and

poets

patient and just stare. We all become once we're out there.

- Robert Howell, Photgrapher

ABOVE: Steam of fumaroles rises with the sunrise. Howell captured this image after an all-night vigil photographing iconic landscapes framed by the night. A fumarole, or steam vent, occurs when a feature has so little water in its system that the water boils away before reaching the surface. These vapors are super-heated, with temperatures as high as 280 degrees Fahrenheit (138 degrees Celsius).

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: Earth’s horizon seems to reach out to the dome of the sky. A meteor streaks across the sky. Stars hang like fruit in these trees in Yellowstone photographed against the night sky. OPPOSITE PAGE: Time-lapse photography catches the stars in their courses wheeling above Yellowstone, the steam of White Dome Geyser erupting and a rare appearance of an aurora.

Fortunately, scientists on the pale blue dot that is Earth have the kind of research going that helps astronomy photographers.

“There’s a couple satellites watching the sun all the time and you can get alerts when there’s a possibility that a solar blast is headed for earth,” Howell said.

“They can predict how low it will go in latitude.”

That worked out perfectly for Howell in October 2012.

“On that particular day I knew there was a possibility that the aurora would show all the way down to Yellowstone. So I drove to my favorite geyser, the White Dome Geyser. If you’re on a boardwalk

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looking at the dome geyser, you’re facing north, and of course that’s where the aurora’s going to be. So I was ready with a couple cameras and of course the geyser goes off every 30 or 40 minutes. Sure enough, there was a huge aurora that showed up and I was there all night. And on top of that, behind me was a full moon rising, which lit up the whole landscape. So it all came together.”

Howell sells his images in the park through concessionaires there. He also sells them online through his website, www.YellowstoneAtNight.com.

But he tries to make the prints as much a one-off experience as seeing Yellowstone’s night skies by being there.

“I actually specialize in having them printed on metal. They just look gorgeous on metal. Some people think it looks like glass, some people think it looks three-dimensional, and the stars really pop. It’s a sheet of stiff aluminum that the photo is fused to. I do canvas and I do paper prints as well. But I especially use the metal.”

By visiting Howell’s web page, people can also check out the link to the satellite that monitors solar activity.

Howell teaches people to shoot the night sky, too. He starts by telling them they are shooting for something even more elusive than starlight.

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“When I shoot, I’m really trying to bring back the feeling, the mood, the sensation that I get out there and turn people on to it. It’s really awe-inspiring to be surrounded and framed by the night,” Howell said.

“These guys that I shoot with are always amazed. I tell them we’re going to be shooting for sensations.

It’s a challenge.”

And it never fails to affect people, he said.

“I get comments all the time from people about remembering when

they were kids looking up at the stars, wondering what’s out there.

That’s rekindled all the time when you go out there as an adult with a camera. You’re actually out there for hours. You’re forced to become quiet and patient and just stare. We all become poets, I think, once we’re out there.”

Of course Howell, the poet, shoots some other subject matter with his camera.

“I photograph other things, too, but it is my passion – Yellowstone at

GEAR FOR THE NIGHT SKY Here’s a short list of the photography gear Robert Howell uses for shooting Yellowstone at night: Camera: Nikon D700

Tripod: Really Right Stuff TVC-3X

Lens: Nikon 12-24mm ƒ/2.8 Rokinon 35mm f/1.4 Rokinon 14mm ƒ/2.8

Tripod Head: RRS BH-55

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night,” he said.

Among the other things he photographs, Howell said, is Gallatin County’s women’s roller derby – the Gallatin Roller Girlz.

“It’s altogether different from nighttime photography. You get in the middle of the rink with them and you shoot with one eye looking through the camera and the other eye watching out for elbows. It’s great fun – fast and furious.”

The stars in their courses are more gentle by far.

ABOVE: The Roosevelt Arch seems not only the gate to Yellowstone National Park but also the gate to the galaxy in this photo that captures the light of distant stars.

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RETRACING A 1915 TREK THROUGH

100 YEARS ON

Story and photos by Chris Peterson

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n 1915, author Mary Roberts Rinehart penned the book, Through Glacier Park in 1915. It was a travelogue of a 300-mile journey through Glacier, starting and ending in East Glacier at the train station. Guided

by Howard Eaton, she traveled by horseback through the park with a party of more than 40 people, including famed artist Charlie Russell.

In 2015, my publisher read Rinehart’s book and thought it would be a good idea if I re-created the journey, 100 years later. I’ve done this sort of thing before. In 2014 I retraced a journey originally done by Bob Marshall in 1928 in Northwest Montana. That project ended up being 200 miles. Since I’m fairly fit, I figured the Rinehart book couldn’t be much worse.

So I got out the maps and started doing research and read Rinehart’s book a few times over and pieced together the route I thought she took, since the book had no maps. Based on her descriptions, I still don’t think they traveled a full 300 miles, but then again, I didn’t think it really mattered how far they traveled exactly. Because a journey is not about exact miles, it’s about joy and happiness, misery and pain. These feelings are not mutually exclusive, of course. In the wonderful and unforgiving landscape that is Glacier National Park they can be felt all together in the span of a few minutes, sometimes even seconds.

The first few steps were taken in February; the journey began in earnest

LEFT: Wildlife and the nature were as grand in 2015, when Chris Peterson retraced Mary Roberts Rinehart’s journey, as they were when she made her original trek through Glacier National Park in 1915. Shown here is a mountain goat Peterson photographed.

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in April and it all came to an end in September. I walked something in the neighborhood of 240 miles, more than half of it with my autistic son, HJ. We endured snowstorms, rain, hurricane-force winds, blazing heat, bear encounters and the thick smoke of wildfires. I won’t say it was fun, but it was an adventure, the sort only Glacier National Park, one of the finest landscapes in the entire world, could serve.

The title of the finished work is Through Glacier Park, 1915-2015, A Celebration of a Classic Journey. The Hungry Horse News published the book.

Here are two stops along the way.

APPISTOKI FALLS The wind is howling. It is April and snowing, hard, but not too cold. We are walking up the Two Medicine Road heading to Appistoki Falls. The stinging snow is horizontal.

In my pack I have a 1905 Conley 5-by-7 view camera, an unwieldy beast. My hope was to get in a good spot and photograph the falls, the same way they were photographed 100 years ago on Rinehart’s trip.

Eventually, I will retrace her route as best as I can. In her book Rinehart describes the journey, but only in part.

There are no specific routes laid out and no maps. But she mentions enough places and there are enough photographs to get a very good idea of where she explored the park with guide Howard Eaton and a sizable party of other guests and photographers, including artist Charlie Russell.

One of those photographs is of Appistoki Falls. We visited the falls earlier in the spring, but from the trail, the view is all wrong: One gets barely a view of the cascade and the photograph from 1915 clearly shows the falls in its entirety – a view that today is an off-trail bushwhack.

Nothing serious, mind you, just a

ABOVE: Rinehart made her journey by pack horse, similar to these packhorses that Chris Peterson photographed in black and white.

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few hundred yards up a wooded slope and a hop across the creek, a snowy, cold creek.

Splash! My kid, Hunter, is with me. He doesn’t make the jump and ends up with wet feet.

On top of the hill overlooking the falls the wind is really gusty. I set up the big old camera and the wind swirls around us. The sun is trying to shine, which is a bad thing because it’s coming up directly behind the falls, straight at the camera.

The light is yellow and murky and horrid. We wait for it to cloud up more.

It does, but the wind just rocks

the big camera back and forth. I take two pictures anyway, almost certain they won’t come out because the shutter speed is slow. The slightest movement from the camera and the pictures will blur.

I’m packing up the view camera when a bighorn sheep ewe hops along the steep slope below us.

Then, up on the edge of the waterfall on the opposite side of the creek, another bighorn sheep appears and climbs right to the edge of the waterfall and stands there.

Fortunately I also have my Leica, a digital camera that takes both color and black-and-white pictures.

I capture a few frames of the sheep and the waterfall before it bounds out of the frame.

Our journey has begun.

A COUCH FOR A QUEEN I lay that night at Red Eagle in a tent on a bed built of young trees driven into the ground and filled with balsam branches. A pack-horse had carried up the blankets and pillows. It was a couch for a queen.

This is how Mary Roberts Rinehart describes her camp at Red Eagle Lake in Glacier National Park.

One hundred years later it is a

BELOW: Peterson photographed this black bear relishing the taste of summer in a mountain meadow – the same rich habitat in which Mary Roberts Rinehart would have enjoyed glimpses of Glacier’s wildlife.

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ABOVE: A Red Eagle Lake sunrise sets the day off to a good start as photographer/writer Chris Peterson and his son, HJ, retrace a traveler’s journey from a century ago. Mary Roberts Rinehart camped at the lake in 1915.

RIGHT: Intrepid traveler Mary Roberts Rinehart is shown in this historic photograph with one of the horses she depended on in her 1915 journey across perhaps as much as 300 miles of Montana wilderness. Rinehart explored the Glacier area in 1915 – only five years after it had been set aside as a national park.

dreary evening with a heavy rain.

I’ve set up two tents at camp, one for me, the other for my son. This is his first overnight camping trip in years. The first one he was much younger and it was pretty much a disaster. This one is going much better, despite the wind, rain and cold. It will snow on the highest peaks before it stops. We both sleep well.

We hauled in our tents on our own backs, thank you very much, but with modern designs and materials, while we’re not exactly lying on

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couches for queens, we are warm and dry, which is saying something.

The beautiful thing about weather east of the Divide is that while it comes up on you in a hurry, it can leave just as quickly. By late evening the rain is reduced to a drop here and there and by morning skies have all but cleared.

It is a true Red Eagle sunrise.

Feathers of morning light splash across the peaks and the water is baby-breath calm. A big bull moose feeds in the inlet stream, just across from camp. In past years, I’ve seen

him in the lake. He’s a big beautiful creature. Seeing him is like meeting an old friend.

We have a quick breakfast and then head up to Triple Divide Pass, a place Rinehart meets with some lament.

“The trail had just been completed and ours was the first party after the trail-makers. I had expected to be the first woman on the top of Triple Divide. But when I arrived, panting and breathless and full of the exaltation of the moment, two girls were already there sitting on

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a rock. I shall not soon recover from the indignant surprise of that moment. Perhaps they never knew that they had taken the laurel wreath from my brow,” Rinehart writes.

Our journey is, quite simply, a grunt. We see one more big bull moose in the willows along the creek and then start upward. The packs and much of the gear are wet and the going is slow. The pass is agonizingly close, but the trail, which was cut for horse parties like Rinehart’s, switches back and forth and back and forth.

We get to the top and are greeted by two hikers, a bighorn sheep ewe and a half-dozen marmots with attitudes. Craving salt, one nearly hauls off with a $4,000 camera, the strap in its teeth.

Triple Divide is a special place. Water that falls on its peak drains to three separate watersheds – Pacific, Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay. We eat a slow lunch and enjoy the view while we shoo away the marmots.

A cool breeze blows and there are no bugs. The hike down to Cut Bank is a fast one. We see friends along the way, say quick hellos. There’s a steady stream of hikers heading up the pass. A hundred years later, Triple Divide is still a popular place on a glorious July day.

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Wild Hikes between Yellowstone & Glacier What’s between the parks and off the beaten path? Montana Magazine asked the Montana Wilderness Association to make some recommendations from its new online resource for hikers, hikewildmontana.org. Here’s the kind of information you can find at that website, built with the assistance of volunteers and with funding from Montana’s Office of Tourism and Business Development.

Sawtooth Lake Trail #1195 Location: East Pioneers Proposed Wilderness, Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest Roundtrip Distance: 7.4 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 1,436 ft.

Not only is this a beautiful hike into the East Pioneers, but it’s a great excuse for a scenic drive through the Big Hole Valley.

This day hike follows Clark Creek, passing through lush wildflower-filled meadows before arriving at a scenic alpine lake surrounded by rocky peaks.

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Louise Lake National Recreation Trail #168 Location: Tobacco Root Mountains, Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest Roundtrip Distance: 7.4 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 1,325 ft.

The most challenging part of this hike may be navigating the bumpy road to the trailhead (high clearance recommended). From there, enjoy a fantastic day hike to a high alpine lake tucked cradled among 10,000 foot peaks. And, on a hot summer day, there’s even plenty of shade along the way.

Teepee Creek Trail #39 Location: Gallatin Range, Custer-Gallatin National Forest

Nez Perce Pass to Castle Rock Trail #16

Roundtrip Distance: 6 mi.

Location: Blue Joint Wilderness Study Area, Bitterroot National Forest

Total Elevation Gain: 925 ft.

Roundtrip Distance: 5.8 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 1,150 ft.

Just north of Yellowstone National Park, the Teepee Creek offers views of the wild Gallatin Range. The trail gently climbs through vast acres of open meadows that offer unlimited views.

Castle Rock rises above the forested ridgelines, begging to be climbed, and rewards hikers with 360-degree views of the Bitterroot Crest and surrounding ranges.

ABOVE: Nevada Mountain, almost exactly halfway between Yellowstone and Glacier, is shown here. Photo by Tyler Courville.

BELOW: The wind tosses clouds across Warrior Mountain. Photo by Lee Boman.

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Warrior Mountain

CDT South from Rogers Pass

Location: Bunker Grizzly Core Area, Flathead National Forest Roundtrip Distance: 10 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 3,500 ft.

Location: Anaconda Hill Roadless Area, Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest Roundtrip Distance: 2-8 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 1,450 ft.

With abundant wildflowers and big views, Warrior Mountain offers a stunning glimpse into the heart of the wild Swan Range and into Bunker Creek Recommended Wilderness. From the summit you'll be looking over some of the most productive wildlife habitat in North America.

Wolverines, grizzlies, mountain goats, and elk all call the land before you home.

Access to the Continental Divide doesn’t get any easier than this. Park at Rogers Pass alongside Highway 200 and simply start hiking south along the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail.

Enjoy incredible views after just 1 mile and 1,000 feet elevation gain. Turn around here, or wander another 3 miles along the crest of the Wild Divide.

CDT Nevada Mountain

Link Lake and Nasukoin Mountain

Location: Nevada Mountain Roadless Area, Helena-Lewis & Clark National Forest Roundtrip Distance: 14.2 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 2,100 ft.

Almost exactly halfway between Glacier and Yellowstone, a hike into Nevada Mountain is a hike into the heart of the Wild Divide. The area provides key habitat for wolverines, lynx and grizzlies, and is key to linking the protected habitat to the north and south. This varied section of the Continental Divide Trail includes rolling ridgelines, open meadows with seas of wildflowers, rocky summits and ancient alpine forests.

Location: Whitefish Proposed Wilderness, Flathead National Forest Link Lake Trail #372: Roundtrip Distance: 3 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 588 ft.

Nasukoin Mountain Trail #375: Roundtrip Distance: 10 mi.

Total Elevation Gain: 3,500 ft.

Whether you’re looking for a short stroll or a longer adventure, Link Lake and Nasukoin are the perfect destination.

Both trails begin from the same trailhead.

Either hike 1 ½ miles to scenic Link Lake or (recommended) continue to Nasukoin Peak. With stunning views the entire way, old alpine larch and whitebark pines, high elevation lakes, and incredible views, the rewards of Nasukoin far exceed the effort.

ABOVE: A mountain meadow on Warrior Mountain is in bloom while snow shows on distant peaks. Photo by Lee Boman.

BELOW: A trail heading south from Rogers Pass offers a convenient way to hike the Continental Divide. Photo by Zack Porter.

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In about 1915, No Two Horns drew this picture of a blue roan war horse that was shot from under him in battle.

Note the line of the horse’s back and the way the tale is held and compare with the carving on pages 48-49.

Courtesy of State Historical Society of North Dakota.

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HONOR FOR A BLUE ROAN SLAIN IN MONTANA

BY LANCE NIXON M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 6

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Horns. He’s known to have taken it from a Crow warrior he killed in 1874 and to have used it two years later against the whites at Little Bighorn. He was a 24-year-old warrior at the time.

On the other side of the Standing Rock Reservation, the South Dakota State Historical Society has in its collection a superb horse carving that some art experts believe to be

2015 from an exhibition in Paris, New York and Kansas City called “Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky.” The curator of that exhibit, Gaylord Torrence of the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, said the piece had already won acclaim as one of the finest horse sculptures in the world when it was part of another international exhibit in 1976-1977 called “Sacred Circles: Two Thousand Years of North American Indian Art.” The 3-foot-long sculpture shows all four legs of the horse, with an elongated neck and back and the front legs couched close to the body in a bound. It has a real horsehair mane and tail, as well as carefully fashioned leather reins and a bridle. The horse is shown as being riddled with bullets, red paint seeping from the wounds, while red horsehair dangling from the horse’s mouth also represents blood. The figure shows the horse’s WARRIOR ARTIST ears slanting backward in For No Two Horns – He fear or pain, as the carver Nupa Wanica in Lakota must have witnessed at – is an artist as well as the death of the animal. a warrior. Some of his It has fascinated carvings and his drawings audiences whenever it that show his exploits has been shown, and against the Crow and that continues. against the whites are New York Times art in the collection of the critic Holland Cotter State Historical Society wrote in March 2015, of North Dakota. One is “Streaked with blooda drawing of a blue horse red and stretched out being killed by gunfire Above: Red paint on this famous carving shows a horse bleeding, while a tuft of horse hair dyed red represents blood streaming from as if strained beyond at what is believed to be its mouth. Courtesy of South Dakota State Historical Society. endurance, it has the the Little Bighorn. No Two Horns depicts himself as being by No Two Horns – perhaps even a pathos of a crucified Christ. In a wounded in the left leg in the fight. tribute to that same horse killed at history of great sculpture, past and present, from the North American The same drawing shows No Two Little Bighorn.

An artist’s rendering of that continent, it has a place in the Horns still holding a short rifle close to him along with a knife and a belt carving is now the logo of the South highest pantheon.”

Such horse effigies were used of ammunition. North Dakota also Dakota State Historical Society. as “dance sticks” by the Lakota, has in its collection a .58-caliber according to the South Dakota Model 1861 U.S. percussion rifled SHOW STEALER musket that belonged to No Two That carving just returned in State Historical Society. Warriors n 1928, No Two Horns is an old Hunkpapa Lakota warrior on the Standing Rock Reservation who has fought in nearly 40 battles, and he gives an interview in Lakota to his nephew, Henry Murphy.

He’s 76 by then, with a face as rugged as the country of southeastern Montana in which he and his people met and destroyed Custer – he’ll talk about that. He’ll talk about fights against the Crow; stealing horses; losing horses.

“I have had two ponies killed by the Crow Indians in battle, and one horse was killed by the white man,” he tells his nephew.

But about that blue roan horse the white soldiers shot out from under him on the Greasy Grass, the Little Bighorn – what more is there to say about that? He’s already said it all with his hands.

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for the Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society, has a theory that if No Two Horns indeed was the carver, he may have carved the piece in Canada while the events of Little Bighorn were fresh in his mind and he had time on his hands – waiting, with Sitting Bull, to see what would become of the people.

That would fit with the date of

National Museum of the American Indian side by side with that earlier work from the South Dakota collection.

“My own opinion is, without a doubt, the South Dakota horse is a No Two Horns carving,” Torrence said.

IDENTITY OF THE CARVER He thinks so because of the Torrence as an art critic and jawline, the profile of the head, scholar said he personally has no the handling of the nostrils, the doubt about the identity of the configuration of the legs carver. He believes the and hooves, the way stylistic features give it the ears are handled on away as the work of No the carving, the way the Two Horns. wounds are depicted.

There is no historical He also believes it proof to say without a because of that later doubt that it is No Two drawing by No Two Horns Horns’ work. But there that shows a favorite is strong circumstantial horse, a blue roan, dying evidence. in a hail of gunfire in South Dakota State battle against the whites.

Historical Society “There is a fairly Director Jay Vogt said elaborate painting by No a Congregationalist Two Horns that shows missionary named Mary him and the horse being C. Collins collected shot. I think it’s the Battle the horse, probably of the Little Bighorn. on the Standing Rock That would place the Reservation, where she death of that horse in was active. She donated Montana,” Torrence said. it to the historical Mark Halvorson, society in 1920, the year curator for the State of her death. Collins Historical Society of was highly regarded North Dakota, said among the people of the Torrence is right that Standing Rock and was a a drawing by No Two friend to Sitting Bull.

Horns from about 1915 No Two Horns was a is believed to show his cousin to Sitting Bull. war horse being shot at He was with him at Little the Battle of the Little Bighorn and escaped Bighorn. with him afterward to One difficulty is that Canada. He was also with the South Dakota horse Sitting Bull when the is not – at first glance, Lakota returned to the Above: This buckskin shirt owned by No Two Horns dates from about 1910 and was decorated with porcupine quills. anyway – a blue roan.

U.S. and surrendered at Courtesy of State Historical Society of North Dakota.

Fort Buford in 1881. It’s very plausible that Collins would the work. Torrence believes it’s HORSE OF A have encountered No Two Horns from about 1880 or the late 1870s.

DIFFERENT COLOR and his work through her contact But Torrence, one of the foremost with Sitting Bull. Since artists in the STYLE experts on Native American art, reservation period were starting to Torrence is confident of the believes the carving – which was earn money by selling their work, carver’s identify after seeing some completed much earlier than the it’s entirely possible that No Two of the No Two Horns carvings from drawing – very likely was intended Horns sold her the piece. the North Dakota collection and to depict that same blue roan.

Dan Brosz, curator of collections from the Smithsonian Institution’s carved horse dance sticks to honor horses killed in battle and to help narrate their own actions in war.

Sometimes a warrior would handle the horse stick as though it were a club or straddle it as though riding.

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“If you look at the horse, you can see in all the depressions of the wood and on the face of the horse and in some other areas, significant remnants of blue pigment.”

That blue or blue-black paint is especially visible around the head and neck of the animal, Vogt said, and as Torrence noted, in depressions in the wood. Torrence adds that there is a rectangular patch on the head of the animal from the bridle to the nose that

was left as lighter, unpainted wood.

That corresponds with the way No Two Horns’ drawing from 1915 depicts the horse killed at Little Bighorn.

“That horse had a particular marking. It had a white face with a blue body. You can make out the same configuration on the South Dakota horse. At one time that horse was blue, in my estimation.

It’s been handled a lot, it has maybe gotten wet. But originally there

was blue paint over that horse,” Torrence said.

“If we assume that horse was made circa 1880, there were a number of pigments available to Native people, Plains people.

They did have a Native source for blue. It was a mineral source, as I recall. Blue pigment is one of the more rare pigments, you don’t see it all that often. One also has to recognize there were all kinds of trade materials coming into

Above: One of the great masterpieces of Plains Indian art, this carving of a horse killed in battle dates from about 1880 or the late of the wood, except for an unpainted blaze of bare wood on the forehead of the animal. Torrence believes it is the work of No Two Photo by Chad Coppess; courtesy of South Dakota State Historical Society.

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the Plains tribes at that time.

Conceivably there could be pigment from American, English, Spanish sources – stuff got traded around.

They could also boil down blankets, there was also laundry bluing that came in at a certain point. There was also a trade pigment that came in, I believe in the 1870s. You see it on parfleche. And particularly you see it on Lakota parfleche.”

The trade pigment available to Lakota people would have been

more like an ultramarine blue color, while their own native pigment from a mineral source was closer to what’s called a Prussian blue, Torrence said.

“The real issue is not so much the pigment, but rather the binder that would have been used. If that horse was painted, as it would have been, with a water-based paint, with not much binder, it would be very fugitive.”

MASTERPIECE What has never been in question at all is the quality of the work.

Torrence said people are often too quick to use the word “masterpiece,” but it applies here. But he notes that No Two Horns probably didn’t share that same concept.

“I don’t think that he was trying to do anything to impress anyone with his ability as a carver,” Torrence said. “I think he was trying to reveal to himself and to others

1870s. Art critic Gaylord Torrence has pointed out that the horse has vestiges of blue paint about the neck and head and in depressions Horns and that it is a carving to honor the same horse shown on pages 44-45 – thought to be a horse killed at Little Bighorn.

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the reality of what he experienced and his feelings for that animal.

“Words really are not adequate to express what’s going on in the carving of the horse. As near as I can say is that overall, there is something in the elongation and the posture and the twisting of form in that horse that emanates a kind of pathos. You really are witnessing a death, and a heroic death.”

That is part of the reason Torrence believes the horse is carved by No Two Horns, who, by his own pictorial account, seems to have been wounded in the same burst of gunfire that killed his horse.

“He and that horse had been to war many times. They were companions. And here in the heat of this battle, this horse was shot out from under him, he was wounded, he was thrown to the ground. It was an incredible experience. And I think like any artist – and you see this in the great ledger drawings as well – artists are reliving these moments.

This emotion gets transferred to the form itself.”

What’s captured in wood is the shattering impact of that moment.

“I think that all of that comes out in the carving,” Torrence said.

“This is why you could bring in an

expert carver today who has never ridden a horse or been in battle and ask that person to replicate the carving. They could replicate 96 percent of it and it would still be dead as a doornail. It would not have the expressive power of the horse that No Two Horns carved.

“If you look at that horse from end to end, there’s a twisting to that horse. The head twists to the right, and the rear of the horse is twisted slightly to the left. You have this elongated form lunging through space and twisting at the same time.

It’s abstracted, very much in the form of the kind of pictorial work that’s going on, where there was an elongation in pictures of horses and humans.

“It’s carved with enormous confidence. The horse’s mouth is open. Every aspect of that carving is focused on the death and heroism of this animal. There’s also something in the scale of the object, the size of it and the three-dimensionality that is very unusual.”

The carver’s feeling for the animal survives in the piece.

“Love is not too strong a word,” Torrence said. “These men and their horses were companions in battle.

They went to war together. They

knew each other intimately. There are narratives of Plains warriors who talk about a horse who pulled them out of danger when they were wounded, the horse took them to safety. If you were going into battle in those days on horseback, you had to rely on the stamina, the bravery, the intelligence, the intuitive powers of the horse you were riding.”

What war horses did in plunging into battle is unnatural for horses, Torrence notes, but they did it out of their relationship to men.

Mark Halvorson, curator for the State Historical Society of North Dakota, said the North Dakota collection has three “dance staffs” or dance sticks carved by No Two Horns in its collection, including another piece by No Two Horns called Ta Sunka Kan Opi Wokiksuye, “Sacred-Memorial-of-His-HorseKilled.” That devotion to the animal was very real and has its modern counterpart, he suggested.

“The only thing I can compare it to is modern-day Iraqi war vets.

Ask them about the dogs that they used on the war front for sniffing out bombs. These guys, when their rotations were ending, they would go to great lengths to make sure

Right: The blue-black paint is visible above and below the copper bridle, but not on the nose of the animal, where the unpainted wood may be intended to show the blaze of white. Courtesy of South Dakota State Historical Society.

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Above: One of No Two Horns’ later “dance staffs” also shows a blue horse with unpainted nose. Courtesy of State Historical Society of North Dakota.

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that dog would get back OK and they would take care of it until the day that it dies,” Halvorson said.

COUNTER ARGUMENTS Noted Lakota artist Arthur Amiotte, like Torrence, has gone on record saying that he, too, believes the South Dakota horse is the work of No Two Horns.

Jay Smith, director of the Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society, said historians still hope for some definitive evidence about the identity of the carver. But he said historians also respect artists and art critics such as Amiotte or Torrence who approach the problem of the carver’s identity based on other kinds of knowledge.

“I tend to think Gaylord Torrence is probably right in his assumption that it was one of the first horses carved by No Two Horns. If you look very closely at it, you can see that there is that bluing on the body of

the horse that makes it capable of being that blue roan that he lost at Little Bighorn. There is a very distinct possibility that it is that moment in time that is captured there,” Smith said.

But not everyone thinks so.

Halvorson, the curator of the North Dakota collection, said he remains “unconvinced” that it’s the work of No Two Horns because of differences compared to the other No Two Horns pieces; but he agrees that the South Dakota carving is one of the great achievements of Plains Indian art.

“It’s a masterpiece. It’s incredible, whether you put an artist to it or not,” Halvorson said.

Distinguished scholar George Horse Capture, for one, questioned whether stylistic differences in the lower jaw and hooves could indicate a different carver, not No Two Horns.

Torrence said some critics have

noted that the later horses carved

by No Two Horns appear to have horseshoes on them and the earlier South Dakota horse does not. But that criticism misses the fact that if No Two Horns carved that early piece in about 1880, as Torrence believes, most Lakota warriors were riding unshod Indian ponies unless they were riding shod horses they had captured.

“What they’re failing to recognize is that No Two Horns, who died in 1942, was conceivably carving for 50 years, and also reproducing the same image. And he was an artist. Of course his work would change in detail and style over a period of time. That’s true with any artist. These people who think that somehow No Two Horns standardized the form in 1880 and then just repeated it for the next 40 years, I don’t think it’s realistic at all,” Torrence said.

Torrence also believes that critics

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are mistaken about what they think are horseshoes in the later carvings.

He thinks the later carvings simply have a more detailed depiction of what is called the “hoof wall.”

Since No Two Horns’ later carvings show only one hoof instead of four – a “shorthand” of a horse, Torrence calls it – Torrence believes No Two Horns is simply investing more time carving the detail of that horse with the knowledge of horse anatomy that a Plains warrior artist would have.

Torrence said people have also counted bullet holes on the South Dakota carving and tried to extrapolate from that whether it was the same animal shown in the later artwork. He thinks that misses the point of what the artist was trying to convey.

“The idea was that this horse was struck multiple times with lots of bullets in a fusillade of fire and No Two Horns himself was hit in the leg.

“I think there’s an intensity, an

enormous intensity, in the initial carving that I would say could only come from a man who had lived through that experience. I think when you get into the 20th century, No Two Horns is repeating himself, the intensity lessens – he’s creating these for an outside market.”

Yet another possibility is that the horse in the South Dakota masterpiece – despite the blue pigment still visible on it – may indeed depict No Two Horns’ horse killed in battle, but not the horse killed at Little Big Horn. It could be one of the other two horses that No Two Horns said the Crow warriors killed in battle.

Either way, says Brosz, if it is No Two Horns’ carving, it tells a Montana story.

For example, the Crow were heavily involved on the side of the whites at the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876, just days before the Little Bighorn in what’s now

Big Horn County, Montana. The Oglala war chief Crazy Horse led the fight against the whites and their Crow allies. The Crow chief, Plentycoups, told his biographer, Frank Linderman, that he would never forget the dead horses from that conflict – and it was clear that the Lakota and their allies were feeling the loss: “The Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe needed horses very badly, and almost every night they came here to steal some of ours,” Plentycoups said of the time after the battle.

Halvorson said interviewers asked No Two Horns for detail about Little Bighorn, but not about other conflicts, so it’s not known if he was at the Battle of the Rosebud.

Torrence said at least the general location in which No Two Horns lost his war horses is not in dispute.

“Southern Montana was contested territory at the time of the 1870s.

The Crow were there, but so were

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the Lakota and the Northern Cheyenne. Inter-tribally, it was a contested area. And of course the Army was in there, too, and the Crow were allied with the Army.

No Two Horns definitely had spent time in Montana, no question. He was there at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.”

And there are those remnants of blue paint on the sculpture.

If Torrence is right about this masterwork of Plains Indian art, it may be No Two Horns’ first great statement of an experience he will still be carving and painting decades later. He remembered the blue roan the white soldiers killed at the Greasy Grass, how it sank beneath him when the volley hit them, how it bled from its mouth and side. Then, as artists do with time and materials, he gave life to that dying war horse for just a while longer – for as long as wood endures.

Above: No Two Horns here drew his blue roan carrying him safely away from a fight with another tribe. Note the line of the horse’s back just in front of the tail and the detail in the horse’s back legs, ankles and knees; compare with the sculpture on pages 48-49.

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The Archie Bray Foundation is located on a historic brick and tile factory creating a juxtaposition of rich history and contemporary craft.

Photo by Rachel Hicks, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation.

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BRICKMAKER ARCHIE BRAY’S VISION PAYS OFF FOR HELENA

BY LANCE NIXON

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t’s 1951, and a man who has made a living turning Montana clay into bricks in Helena wants to make something new. He’s always been fascinated with what clay can do, not just in bricks but in pottery and ceramics. So Archie Bray Sr. starts the Archie Bray Foundation – the very first residency program in the United States devoted solely to ceramics.

With supporters Branson Stevenson and Peter Meloy, the Archie Bray Foundation is launched with the intent “to make available for all who are seriously and sincerely interested in any of the ceramic arts, a fine place to work.”

Now, 65 years later, artists active in the ceramics world say the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts , or “the Bray” as it is commonly called, has succeeded wildly – maybe not beyond Archie Bray’s original vision, but certainly living up to his expectations.

“I think Archie Bray would be very pleased and proud – I don’t think he would be surprised, though,” says Emily Free Wilson, a former gallery director at the Bray for 10 years and now operator of Free Ceramics in Helena. “He was not just a big dreamer. He was a doer. He was very adamant about supporting the arts and getting the arts to Helena. And he did it.”

‘POTTER TOWN’

Jeremy McFarlane, owner of Jmacs Pottery in Helena, said the Bray has been a great influence in encouraging the arts – especially the ceramic arts, but other arts as well – in Helena.

“I would guess there are 300 potters in town, if not more, and probably 50 of them make a living at it,” McFarlane said. “Almost every single one of them would go to the Bray for clay or some kind of materials.

It’s become a potter town because of that.”

And the Bray draws people. Lisa Ernst of Harpfarm Pottery Works in Jefferson City, Montana, once studied with Ken Ferguson, one of the early directors of the Bray, when he taught at Kansas City Art Institute. To move to Helena, one of the places where her teacher had shaped his art and craft, seemed a natural decision.

“I came to Helena because of the

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Bray as a resource and I also liked the location,” says Ernst. “The residents are pretty much the leading edge in the ceramics field. A lot of big ideas happen, a lot of new ground is broken with how people use clay.”

In the ceramics field, Ernst added, the Bray is huge.

“It’s a landmark place. It’s international,” she said.

BRICKMAKER’S VISION

It all started because Archie Bray Sr. was an American businessman who loved the arts.

“He was operating the Western Clay Manufacturing Co., a brick and tile factory, in Helena,” said Rachel Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Archie Bray Foundation. “There was a clay deposit right on top of the pass here and that’s where they got a lot of clay for the bricks. We kind of grew out of that.”

That clay for the bricks came in by rail from the town of Blossburg, about 20 miles west of Helena.

Above: The three founders of the Archie Bray Foundation.

Archie Bray, Branson Stevenson and Peter Meloy gather in the foundation’s Pottery building, November 1951. Photo by L.H. Jorud, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation archives.

Left: The first workshop at the Archie Bray Foundation had far reaching impact on the American studio-pottery movement. Dr. Soetsu, Bernard Leach, Rudy Autio, Peter Voulkos, Shoji Hamada.

Taken in the Bray’s Pottery building, December 1952.

Photo courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation archives.

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Top Left: For the past 21 years, the Bray has collaborated with a local organization's Annual Mother’s Day Pots and Plants Sale. The Bray’s resident artists create flower pots and vases that are then filled with beautiful flowers grown in Helena. Photo by Rachel Hicks, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation.

Top Right: Long-term resident and Taunt Fellowship artist Hannah Lee Cameron working in her studio at the Archie Bray Foundation. Photo by Rachel Hicks, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation.

Bottom Left: Long-term resident and Lilian Fellowship artist Heesoo Lee working in her studio at the Archie Bray Foundation. Photo by Rachel Hicks, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation.

Bottom Right: Aruina created by Robert Harrison, 1988. Photo by Rachel Hicks, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation.

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The Western Clay Manufacturing Co. made its bricks using beehive kilns – round, coal-fired kilns that were converted to natural gas in 1931. The beehive kilns and the brick yard still survive, but the brick yard has not produced a brick since 1961, and the Archie Bray Foundation was able to purchase the entire brick yard in 1984.

The Archie Bray Foundation now occupies 26 acres.

CUTTING EDGE

Hicks said Archie Bray Sr.’s words from 1951 about his intent to provide “a fine place to work” for those interested in the ceramic arts still provoke discussion among artists about what exactly Bray meant by that. Certainly the foundation does provide an ideal setting for artists

who work with clay.

But even more important than the setting, potters say, is the influence of world-renowned artists who come to the Bray. That started early on when two now-revered Montanaborn artists – Rudy Autio of Butte and Peter Voulkos of Bozeman – became the first resident managers of the Bray.

Already in 1952, the Bray brought in renowned potters Shoji Hamada and Bernard Leach for a workshop that was a milestone for people in the ceramics world. The event was influential to both Autio and Voulkos as they pursued their own styles.

“There’s a very famous picture of all of those famous people,” says Ernst, of Harpfarm Pottery Works.

“They are like the patriarchs of the

ceramics movement. They are kind of the leading edge of why we have the level of ceramic art that we have now. Clay production nearly stopped because of the development of plastics. They brought it from craft to art.”

Nowadays, resident artists are invited by the Bray to come live in Helena for a time to make their ceramics in a supported studio environment – free studio, subsidized material costs and direct financial support through stipends and fellowships. They stay from three months to two years. Over the years they’ve come not only from the U.S., but from New Zealand, China, Korea, Ukraine, England, Thailand, Japan, Bolivia, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

tons, in 2015, Hicks said. That’s about 4.3 miles of clay, extruded, and it goes to keep the big wheels turning in potteries everywhere. Dry materials for the individual clays no longer come from 20 miles of Helena, as in the old brick factory days, but from all over North America.

And anything else a potter needs can also be bought at the Bray.

“If you want a kiln, if you want a wheel, we sell all of that,” said Hicks.

“You could basically outfit a studio.

We have had people do that.”

And the Bray has been known to

help potters out in other ways, too.

McFarlane, who teaches classes in his business, Jmacs Pottery, had two of his wheels break. The Bray loaned him better wheels than what he had in the shop until he could get his own repaired.

“The whole pottery community here is just a big family,” McFarlane said.

And for ceramic artists, that makes all of Helena and the surrounding area – not just the Bray – a fine place to work.

RESOURCE FOR ARTISTS

The Bray helps not only those artists fortunate enough to live close to Helena, though. The Bray now operates the Archie Bray Clay Business as well, which sells 20 types of wet clay suitable for all temperature ranges. The business sold 17,215 boxes of clay, or 430

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HIDDEN GEM: SHONKIN SAG

Shonkin Sag is one of Montana's geological marvels

A River Ran Through it...Once

By Lance Nixon

It’s not a destination for honeymooners the way Niagara Falls is.

But for those who take the trouble to get off the main-traveled roads and travel to the vicinity of Montana’s Highwood Mountains, a spectacle awaits: a lost lake at the foot of a dry waterfall that was once roaring with the full force of an Ice Age cataract taller and wider than Niagara.

It’s part of what’s called Shonkin Sag, and it’s one of Montana’s bestkept secrets.

Gerald T. Davidson of Red Lodge, Montana, a retired physicist who has studied that dry waterfall and the Shonkin Sag, said when it was flowing, that so-called “Dry Fall” was considerably higher and more than twice as broad as Niagara – a tumble of perhaps 250 feet. In comparison, Niagara Falls is 167 feet in height.

Geologists say the Shonkin Sag is part of an old abandoned watercourse formed when glaciers from the north had dammed up water that had no other escape route.

Rodney Benson, a teacher of ninthgrade earth science at Helena High School, said Shonkin Sag is the kind of feature that makes it a pleasure to teach science in Montana. Students can get a better picture of what went on in the state because the evidence of those big geologic events is still here on the landscape.

“We started to have ice ages roughly two and a half to 3 million years ago,” Benson told Montana Magazine. “At one time the Missouri River used to drain into the Hudson Bay area.”

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But as a result of the ice ages, Benson said, the water couldn’t continue to flow north. “Basically the ice came down and forced the Missouri River to change its course.”

GLACIAL LAKE GREAT FALLS Scientists have a good idea of what happened next to create the Shonkin Sag. Geologist David Alt wrote about the Shonkin Sag years ago in a book called Profiles of Montana Geology: A Layman’s Guide to the Treasure State. That 1984 publication of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology was prepared in cooperation with Montana Magazine.

In it, Alt wrote that geologists know there were quite a few ice ages, perhaps as many as 20 in the past 2 million to 3 million years, though it’s hard to say precisely when they happened, how long they lasted or what size glaciers they spawned. A simple problem is that every new glacier blades away evidence of the one before.

Northern Montana had at least two large glaciers east of the Rocky Mountains that brought in large boulders that clearly must have come from northern Manitoba, Alt wrote. He noted that the larger and earlier of those two most recent glaciers reached almost as far south as the Highwood Mountains, east of Great Falls, forming an ice dam.

Behind that ice dam an enormous lake formed – Glacial Lake Great Falls.

It flooded an area that reached to a point at least 10 miles west of Simms, 10 miles south of Cascade and east to

Belt, Alt noted.

Scientists know the younger of those two glaciers melted some 10,000 years ago, Alt wrote, but they’re not sure when the earlier glacier came in and caused Glacial Lake Great Falls. Their best guess is perhaps 50,000 to 70,000 years ago.

SHONKIN SAG Alt explained that Shonkin Sag is part of the old spillway channel through which water of Glacial Lake Great Falls eventually escaped. Part of that spillway can’t be seen today because it ran over glacial ice.

“The parts that were on the ice disappeared with the glacier, but those that crossed bedrock still remain as large valleys which now carry no drainage,” Alt wrote. “The most spectacular is the Shonkin Sag, a valley as much as a mile wide and 300 feet deep that slices north around the Highwood Mountains. We can think of it as part of the glacial course of the Missouri River.

The small towns of Shonkin and Highwood are on the floor of the Shonkin Sag, as are Shonkin, Teal, Crane and Mallard lakes. It is one of the most spectacular glacial meltwater channels in the country,” Alt wrote.

Alt said the overflow from Glacial Lake Great Falls must have gone north of Square Butte and dropped eventually into Arrow Creek, which feeds into the Missouri River as we know it today.

Davidson, for one, believes the key features of Shonkin Sag ought to be protected so that people can see for themselves some of what glaciers did

on the Montana landscape.

“I’ve always felt it should be a state park or a national monument or something of that sort,” he said.

There is an even larger site in Washington state that has been set aside as a park, Davidson said – also a remnant of Ice Age flooding and also firmly connected to Montana geol-

ogy. That is Sun Lakes-Dry Falls State Park, where floodwaters from western Montana escaping from Glacial Lake Missoula poured over a 400-foot cliff in a wall of water some 3.5 miles wide.

When the floods were at their greatest height, the falls at that eastern Washington location would have been four times as large as Niagara.

The Dry Falls of Shonkin Sag are a similar marvel, but far less known.

And as it stands now, Davidson said, the only thing protecting Shonkin Sag’s geological treasures is its location.

“It’s protected by the fact that it’s hard to access.”

Top: The famous Shonkin Sag laccolith, some 200 feet thick and 1 mile wide, near the western mouth of the Shonkin Sag. Lower left: A stone called “shonkinite” is named for this Montana formation.

Lower right: Lost Lake, a remnant of the Ice Age. All photos by Loring Walawander.

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TECHNOLOGY

Cybergear for the journey: New mobile-friendly website offers trail info on the go

By Lance Nixon Just in time for the start of the hiking season, the Montana Wilderness Association is wrapping up a project funded by Montana’s Office of Tourism and Business Development to give hikers a resource they access via smartphone or other device.

And it weighs no more than a URL you can easily carry in your memory: hikewildmontana.org.

“It’s not an app. It’s a website,” said Kassia Randzio, community engagement manager for the Montana Wilderness Association. “You won’t be able to download it, but it’s mobile-responsive so it will look good on your phone.”

The site makes for great planning by allowing hikers, as they’re choosing a hike, to filter by geographic area, by season, even by variables such as trail surface. There were about 200 trails in the system when the site launched in April. More will be added over time.

Although users can look for trails across the entire state of Montana, the site also allows the user to sort through specific regions: the Butte-Beaverhead area; the Wild Divide, around Helena; the Island Range, near Great Falls; the Madison-Gallatin area, near Bozeman; the Shining Mountains, around Missoula; the Flathead-Kootenai region in the northwest part of the state; and the Eastern Wildlands.

Randzio said the Helena-based Montana Wilderness Association has been working over the past year to put the site together with a grant of just over $50,000 from Montana’s Office of

Tourism and Business Development.

Daniel Iverson, communications manager for Montana’s Office of Tourism, said the project fills a definite need.

Iverson said economics data gathered about visitors to Montana showed that about 39 percent of them did some hiking while they were in the state.

Randzio said that Old Town Creative, a web developer in Whitefish, worked with the association to make the website happen. And so did about 70 volunteers – hiking enthusiasts in all parts of the state who hit the trails to photograph and document the kind of information about each hiking destination that

will make the journey more fun for the hikers.

“What you’re looking at, essentially, is local favorite hikes,” said Randzio.

And, she added, the website includes information about local businesses the hikers might want to check out as part of their journeys through Montana’s wilds.

“The small-town, authentic Montana experience is part of the adventure, too,” Randzio explained. “We want to encourage people not only to get out there on the trail, but also to support those gateway communities.”

A new website, hikewildmontana.org, gives hikers a wealth of information about some 200 trails in different parts of Montana.

Photo by Tommy Martino.

CONTRIBUTORS

Montana Magazine relies on an extensive group of professional freelance writers and photographers to fill its pages with the stories and photos of Montana. Our team is spread across the state, living and breathing the adventures Montana has to offer so they can share the stories with you. Learn more about our team here.

JERI DOBROWSKI photographer

Jeri L. Dobrowski is a fifth-generation Montanan.

Among her family's heirloom photos are originals taken by Evelyn Cameron and L.A. Huffman.

Making her home in rural Wibaux County, her photographs record life on the Plains, from the workaday to the extraordinary, including the excavation of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

ROBERT HOWELL photographer

The photo on the cover is by Livingston photographer Robert Howell, whose fascination with the night sky, especially as viewed from Yellowstone National Park, has won him acclaim for his astronomy photographs. His awardwinning images have been chosen by NASA for its Astronomy Picture of the Day; TIME Magazine for its TIME for Kids schools publication; by collectors worldwide; and by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich, which include Howell on its Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2014 shortlist.

LANCE NIXON writer

Lance Nixon is editor of Montana Magazine.

Before coming to the magazine, he was editor of a daily newspaper, the Capital Journal in Pierre, South Dakota. He is looking forward to seeking out the place where his grandfather homesteaded in about the early 1920s in Fergus County, near Winifred, Montana.

CHRIS PETERSON writer/photographer

Chris Peterson has been the photographer for the Hungry Horse News for the past 18 years. He's hiked nearly every trail in Glacier National Park and hundreds more miles in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. He lives in Columbia Falls.

DOUG MITCHELL writer

Doug Mitchell currently serves as the deputy director of the Montana Department of Commerce, and has been active in public service and community affairs in Montana for four decades. He and his wife, Julie, live in Helena and have two adult children, Garrett and Andrew.

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GLIMPSES

Stone-Cold Start of Spring Photo by Brendan Whitcomb The sun sets over breaking ice at Whitefish Lake on March 14, 2016, in Whitefish, Montana.

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Dear Montana Magazine readers, If you’re interested in learning more about the services, products and amenities offered by Montana Magazine advertisers, visit MontanaMagazine.com/let-us-know.

QUESTIONS? Email subscriber_services@montanamagazine.com

Bar W Guest Ranch ������������������������������������������������������39 The Barn at Finley Point ��������������������������������������������25 Billings Convention and Visitor’s Bureau ��������������2 Billings Logan International Airport ����������������������31 Bitter Root Brewing ����������������������������������������������������53 Butte-Silver Bow Government ��������������������������������25 Canyon River Properties ��������������������������������������������68 Demarois Buick GMC Truck ��������������������������������������54 Draught Works Brewery ��������������������������������������������52 Explorationworks! ������������������������������������������������������61 Glacier Sotheby’s International Realty ���������20, 21 Haven Writing Retreat ������������������������������������������������19

Helena Tourism Alliance ��������������������������������������������58 International Choral Festival ������������������������������������39 Lambros ERA Real Estate ����������������������������������� 3, 4, 5 Lewistown Chamber of Commerce ����������������������61 The Lodge at Whitefish Lake ������������������������������������65 Missoula Downtown Association ��������������������������43 Montana Antique Mall ������������������������������������������������50 Montana Wilderness Association ��������������������������65 Philipsburg Brewing Co. ��������������������������������������������52 Stelling & Associates ��������������������������������������������������33 Western Montana Clinic ��������������������������������������������13

Share your history with Montana Magazine Do you have a photo that reflects your Montana roots or history? We’d love to consider it for our Pictured in History section.

Email a copy of the photo, along with a brief explanation of the story behind it, the date it was taken and the names of anyone pictured, to:

editor@montanamagazine.com Please include your contact information along with the photo. Please do not send original photos or photocopies.

As we build a Pictured in History gallery, we’ll also post the photos online at MontanaMagazine.com.

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