Friday Photo: Road Trip

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-1348

L. A. Huffman took this photo of a car traveling down a dirt road between 1915 and 1920. Note the American Red Cross sign on the back of the vehicle.

15,000 Miles by Stage

Update: I originally titled this post "10,000 Miles by Stage" by mistake. The actual title of Carrie Strahorn's book is 15,000 Miles by Stage.

Carrie Strahorn wrote a wonderful book—still in print—about stagecoach travel in the West called 10,000 15,000 Miles by Stage. She and her husband Robert were newly married in 1878 when they traveled through Montana and other western states. Mrs. Strahorn’s astute observations about the characters they encountered, stage stops, hotels, and scenery are very entertaining.

Carrie Strahorn is the author of 10,000  15,000 Miles by Stage.
Photo courtesy Idaho Historical Society.

The Strahorns stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Helena. The desk clerk gave them a room key, but they were astonished to discover that no one expected them to lock their door. Mrs. Strahorn writes that they encountered no tramps, no beggars, and no burglars. Unlike other towns along the railway routes where there was crime and poverty, Helena, although isolated, had none of that. Although citizens could not wait for rail service, “It seemed a pity,” Mrs. Strahorn writes, “to propose a railroad to such a happy community.” Among the characters she describes are two memorable women she encountered in the hotel dining room. They were angular in figure, tall, slim, with long features. Each had tried to outdo the other with tiny, elaborate spit curls from the center parts of their foreheads to their earlobes, and they were so prim and precise that they almost appeared to be machines.

The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Helena was one of the best in the region. The Helena Board of Trade published this sketch of the lobby in 1887. Montana Historical Society Research Center.

Mrs. Strahorn goes on the say that that there were so few women out west that military men begged their friends to send for sisters, cousins, and aunts. Sometimes, Mrs. Strahorn writes, they were weird specimens of the fairer sex like the two at the Cosmopolitan, but even they in their minority could reign as queens. They could dance, ride, and flirt to their hearts’ content and marry, too. The success of such women diminished as the population grew and single men had more choices. But in the 1870s, the frontier was a fact and not a fiction. A woman in the Far West was a blessing sent direct from Heaven, or from the East, which was much the same thing in those days.

Early-day Travel on the Helena to Fort Benton Road

By the mid-1860s, Helena had surpassed Alder Gulch in population. Roads ran in all directions to Gallatin City, Virginia City, Deer Lodge, and Fort Benton. The road between Fort Benton and Helena was an especially well-worn path used by stagecoaches, horsemen, and freighters traveling between these two key settlements. The road saw heavy traffic from the earliest days of Montana Territory until the advent of the railroad in 1883. Bullwhackers performed an essential task, walking alongside the laboring teams. Their cracking whips kept the animals moving, especially on uphill grades. Way stations along the route offered respite as it was hard going for both humans and livestock. Malcolm Clarke’s ranch, today headquarters of the Sieben Ranch, was among the early stops.

A small span of mules and their freight wagon await unloading on Helena’s Main Street in 1874.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 954-200.

The Benton Road, not the same as Helena’s Benton Avenue, entered Last Chance Gulch via North Main Street as did the other major routes to Prickly Pear Canyon and Gallatin City, Deer Lodge, and Virginia City. The popular notion that the Benton Road entered Helena by way of Benton Avenue and wound its way down through Reeder’s Alley is physically impossible. Until 1893, buildings spread into and up the alleyway toward the dead end that was Benton Avenue, preventing all types of traffic except horseback. Freighters could never bring six or eight span of oxen, or a mule team, or several thousand-pound wagons hooked together down that steep, narrow alley. The well-traveled North Main Street route into Last Chance Gulch was flat and plenty wide enough.

All roads entered Last Chance Gulch via Main Street, as illustrated in this 1868 map. Streets on the grid from left to right: Clore (today’s Park) Street, Main (today’s Last Chance Gulch), Rodney Street, and Davis Street.
Click on the map for a bigger image. Courtesy of DNRC.

Freighters coming into town pastured their animals on the outskirts of Helena and camped overnight in the wide open spaces north of town. Sometimes the gentle, distant lowing of the oxen carried on the breeze as the animals bedded down in the evenings. The next morning, freighters hitched up the animals—but not necessarily the entire team—and brought the heavy freight wagons into town to unload.

Friday Photo: Indian Twin Motorcycle

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 84-83 f18

A couple, probably John and Fannie Westling, poses on a 1911 or 1912 Indian Twin motorcycle. The photo was taken in the Bitterroot Valley.

The Gold Nugget

In the early summer of 1857, Granville Stuart and his brother James were en route from California to visit their parents in Iowa. Granville became very ill near the future site of Corrine, Utah, delaying their journey for seven weeks. During this delay, an armed confrontation between the Mormon settlers in Utah and the United States government made travel along the emigrant routes impossible. When Granville could travel, Hudson’s Bay employee Jacob Meek advised them to head for the Beaverhead valley where they could safely wait out the Mormon conflict.

Granville Stuart, 1883. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-260

It was this circumstance that led to Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. On Christmas Day of 1857, as the Stuarts and others camped in the Beaverhead valley, trader Richard Grant had built a three-room log cabin for his family, and he invited those camped in the area to Christmas dinner. Among the invited guests were the Stuart brothers, Jacob Meek, and Reece Anderson. Grant had hoarded some flour for the feast. The men had not tasted bread in a long time, and so soda bread, chokecherry preserves, dried buffalo meat, boiled smoked buffalo tongue, and coffee made a remarkable feast. Granville’s widow many years later claimed that at this Christmas dinner, Richard Grant gave Granville a gold nugget as a gift, claiming it had been mined at a certain creek in the territory. This supposedly led the Stuarts and Reece Anderson to prospect along Gold Creek the following May 1858. There they made Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. It was later proven, however, that the gold nugget Christmas gift that prompted the Stuart party to prospect had really been mined in California. So that first gold discovery was actually an incredible coincidence.

P.S. Remember Granville's crazy book-buying trip?

Stagecoach versus Automobile in Yellowstone Park

In his book Death in Yellowstone, Lee Whittlesey details all the known catastrophes that have occurred in Yellowstone National Park. He writes of the last stagecoach wreck that happened in the park in 1916 and was likely the reason horse-drawn conveyances were thereafter removed from the park. The automobile had already more or less taken over Montana’s roadways. 1916 was the only year that the park had both automobiles and horses on the same roads. The Wylie Camping Company was operating a four-horse coach, number 26, on its way from Mammoth to Gardiner. The coach was only a mile into its trip when driver H. E. Thompson suddenly came upon a stalled automobile in the middle of the road. The frightened horses bolted and sent the coach careening down the road. The driver narrowly avoided going over an embankment, but the coach overturned, ejecting all nine passengers. A number of them were caught between the coach and a rocky wall. Three passengers sustained serious broken bones. It was then apparent that horses and automobiles simply could not share the roads in the park. The following summer, 1917, there were no more horses on the park’s roads, only automobiles. One old time stage driver noted, “Here’s luck to all you spark-plug cleaners. You have gasolined in here at last; may you have the success in the future that I have had in the past.” And with that, the rattling, sputtering infernal internal combustion engine took over the park.

Coaches wait to carry passengers from the train station in Gardiner, Montana, into the park.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-400

Early Aviation in Montana

Eugene Ely and Cromwell Dixon celebrated aviation firsts in Montana in 1911, and ironically, both young pilots met tragic ends soon after. Twenty-five-year-old Ely was already famous as the first pilot to take off and land on a naval ship. The well-known aviator was also the first to fly an airplane in Missoula. On June 28, 1911, he took off and landed at the baseball field at Fort Missoula. He made three successful flights, the third with his mechanic as a passenger. It was the first dual flight in Montana. His Curtiss Pusher airplane arrived at the Missoula depot by train after similar flights in Butte, Great Falls, Kalispell, and Lewistown. To transport excited spectators to the fort for the event, both the railroad from the Bitterroot Valley and the Missoula streetcar line added extra cars. Over three thousand people witnessed the flight. On October 18, 1911, at the Georgia State Fair in Macon, Georgia, Ely died after jumping from his plane as it crashed. In Helena, Cromwell Dixon made headlines that same year. On September 30, spectators watched him take off from the fairgrounds and land on the west side of Mullan Pass, becoming the first aviator to cross the Continental Divide.

Cromwell Dixon at the controls of his plane, the Hummingbird, after crossing the Continental Divide.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-849

Days later on October 2, Dixon died when his plane crashed at the state fair at Spokane, Washington. Both pilots died within two weeks of each other, having made aviation history in Montana.

Train Wreck at Boulder

At four o’clock on the afternoon of October 15, 1890, a train laden with ore on the Northern Pacific’s Helena, Boulder Valley & Butte Railroad chugged south along its rugged route from Helena to Boulder. Samuel T. Hauser filed articles of incorporation, with himself as president, and financed the line, built in 1887. Although intended to enter Butte, the line never extended to Butte and ended at Calvin. On that October day in 1890, the locomotive, four freight cars full of ore, and a caboose made its way up the nine miles to the summit of Boulder Hill at the Zenith station. This rugged route consisted of three short tunnels, several wooden trestles on a 3 percent grade, and several sixteen-degree curves. The train was moving at no more than ten miles per hour as regulations required. As the train passed over the first bridge south of the Zenith station, the trestle collapsed beneath it and the train fell into the ravine below.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.23

The caboose and one of the ore cars landed upright. Miraculously the only injury was a broken arm, but for engineer H. H. Mayhew and his seven-man crew, the accident was a horrific event. Mayhew was so traumatized he could not work and sued the railroad. He used his five thousand dollar settlement to open a cigar store in Anaconda.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.24

Northern Pacific investigators determined that the bridge design was not faulty. Rather, after the trestle was constructed, workers forgot to tighten the bolts. Northern Pacific maintenance crews spent the next several weeks tightening bolts on all the other trestles on the Helena, Boulder Valley & Butte line.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.22

Friday Photo: Advertising Butte

Are you planning a vacation this summer? Do you get ideas from travel brochures or magazines? Here's the cover of a pamphlet, published during the Great Depression, that aimed to lure tourists to Butte, Montana.

Montana Historical Society Research Center

Published in 1933 by the Butte Chamber of Commerce, the brochure describes the city this way: "Beautiful by night, unique by day, Butte is literally 'a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid.'" You can read the rest of the promotion here.

What do you think? Based on this description, would you visit Butte?

Yellowstone Trail

The Yellowstone Trail was a transcontinental road that ran from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound in the era before numbered roads and maps. As travelers exchanged horses for automobiles, they began to demand roads instead of disconnected muddy wagon roads full of potholes. The Yellowstone Trail Association was a grassroots effort that grew from this need. It was the first transcontinental route through the northern part of the United States. Begun in 1912, the trail was completed by 1919. The association did not build roads, but rather encouraged local groups to organize, choose the best roads to improve—usually near railroad routes—and fund their improvements. Montana caught the spirit of the effort and understood its potential for tourism. The Yellowstone Trail Association had chapters in many Montana cities along the trail. They organized Trail Days when businesses closed so employees could volunteer their time. There would be picnics, and volunteers would drag the dirt roads to smooth them out. Brochures and promotional literature were part of the effort to entice tourists to travel the trail. Yellow circles marked the route so that travelers could find their way.

These markers still exist in some Montana cities. The yellow circles painted on prominent buildings can be found in Billings, Livingston, Deer Lodge, and Bozeman. The Bozeman sign on the Story Block downtown at the corner of Black and Main is typical. During the 1920s, highways began to be numbered, named highways and trails became obsolete, and road maps eliminated the need for trail signs. As the Yellowstone Trail celebrates its centennial in 2012, the bright yellow markers are rare reminders of the days when a system of connected roads was a new idea.

Friday Photo: Stage Travel

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2011-65.13

Today's photo shows women traveling by stagecoach, probably near Zortman, Montana. For our last post in honor of Women's History Month, here's one woman's experience traveling by stage.

Frances M. A. Roe wrote a lively account of a stage ride through the treacherous Prickly Pear Canyon in Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife. Frances describes why she dreaded meeting an oncoming ox train on the very narrow, boulder-strewn road. Sure enough, they had not gone far when a huge freighter lumbered toward them. A sheer precipice dropped on one side and soared skyward on the other. It seemed a hopeless situation. The driver barked, “Get the lady out!” Men from the freighters sidled over. With no words spoken, they knew exactly what to do. They lifted the stage—trunks and all—up, over, and onto some of the boulders and led the horses between others. The horses stood at the edge of the precipice without a twitch while three teams of eight yokes of oxen passed by. “It made me ill,” Frances wrote, “to see the poor patient oxen straining and pulling up the grade those huge wagons so heavily loaded. The crunching and groaning of the wagons, rattling of the enormous cable chains, and the creaking of the heavy yokes of the oxen were awful sounds, and above all the came yells of the drivers, and the sharp, pistol-like reports of the long whips.” After the wagons passed, the men returned and matter-of-factly set the stage on the road. The process was repeated six or seven times as the stage traveled through the canyon.

J. L. Campbell’s Guide to Idaho

J. L. Campbell’s travel guide to the Territory of Idaho, Idaho: Six Months in the New Gold Regions, was intended to aid would-be emigrants contemplating a journey to the new gold fields. Campbell traveled the region in 1863, but by 1864 when his guide was published, it was already outdated. Montana Territory had been carved out of the vast chunk of Idaho. Campbell’s guide, however, was a useful tool because it described the route from Omaha, Nebraska, to the diggings at Bannack and Virginia City. Campbell offers advice, suggests items to take on the journey, and lists good campsites. His description of the Bannack mines includes a fascinating historical tidbit. He claims that he saw an ancient mine shaft where the miners presumably dug down to gold. A large pine tree, one foot in diameter, had grown in the mine shaft, attesting to the age of the mine. A couple of ancient timber huts stood nearby. Campbell noted that in the dry climate, timber exposed to weather could last a very long time. He theorized that the mines were the work of Spaniards who came north from Mexico exploring in the 1700s as some chronicles suggest. Most modern historians agree, however, that Spanish explorers did not venture this far north. A more likely explanation for this anomaly is that the mine was a stone quarry where Native Americans dug for chert to make weapons.

A Shoshone wickiup. Image from explorebigsky.com

Certainly the timber huts are Native American wickiups, not shelters of Spanish origin. These temporary shelters do survive to great age and—along with tipi rings, rock cairns, and other manmade features—are part of Montana’s archaeological record.

Marysville Road

Have you ever driven the road out to Marysville? Here's the history of this scenic route.

The road began as a railroad grade for the Montana Central. In 1887, the Northern Pacific and Montana Central railroads raced to complete branch lines to the Drumlummon Mine and Marysville up the narrow canyon. The Northern Pacific’s line ran along one side of Silver Creek while the Montana Central ran on the other side, in the valley. The Northern Pacific won the race and successfully blocked the Montana Central from entering Marysville by refusing to grant it access through its trestle. The Northern Pacific’s route was indeed a remarkable feat of engineering. The tracks clung to the mountainsides, crossing deep gulches, all the while climbing, climbing, until it reached the famous mining camp. The final trestle made an eighteen degree curve into town, swinging the train dramatically over the gulch.


The Northern Pacific Railroad's trestle just outside of Marysville
Image via Legends of America

The Montana Central, unable to gain access to the trestle, built a depot about 1½ miles below Marysville, but it was too far away and thus not profitable. The Montana Central abandoned the line just a few years later in 1889.  The original wagon road to Marysville lay below the Montana Central grade. Once the railroad had been abandoned, travelers began using the abandoned grade and it eventually became the Marysville Road of today. The Northern Pacific’s spectacular trestle dominated the town until 1925 when the railroad pulled up the tracks and removed it. In 1931, a Marysville resident widened the former Montana central grade  into its existing configuration. Lewis and Clark County and the Montana Department of Transportation have worked together to improve it.

P.S. A shout-out to Mark Huffstetler, who's working on a book about Montana's historic railroad depots. You can follow him at Daily Montana.
P.P.S. Helena As She Was has more photos of the Northern Pacific depot and line to Marysville. Scroll down about 3/4 of the way to see them.

100 Christmases

Mary McGinnis of Butte celebrated her 100th Christmas in 1934. Andrew Jackson was president when she was born in 1834, and she was married in New York before the Civil War began. Her husband left for the gold fields of California, promising to send for her if things worked out. He did send for her in 1861, and that Christmas is the one of all the one hundred that she always remembered. That Christmas Day in 1861 found Mrs. McGinnis aboard a schooner off the coast of Central America bound for San Francisco, not far from where the Panama Canal today joins the two oceans. But there was no such shortcut back then, and ships had to go all the way around the horn of South America to reach California.

An advertisement for passage on a ship like the one on which Mary McGinnis sailed

Mrs. McGinnis recalled that Christmas morning on the ship, crowded with miners bound to try their luck in California. The Christmas spirit was strong among that motley group. A storm raged off the coast and waves dashed against the sides of the ship, yet the group paused for a short service to commemorate the meaning of the holiday. The vessel creaked and lurched, and a hush fell over the rough miners and assorted passengers and crew. “I could never forget it,” said Mrs. McGinnis, “if I lived another hundred years.” In due time the ship arrived at San Francisco, and Mrs. McGinnis was reunited with her husband.  She later lived in most of the major gold camps in the West and came to Butte to live with a daughter after her husband died. She outlived her daughter and most of her family, and cherished their memories, but that one Christmas aboard the ship was to her the most memorable.

Montana Trolleys

More than 80,000 trolleys once clanged over 45,000 miles of track in cities across the United States. Between 1888 and 1890, there were twenty-seven attempts to establish street railway service in nine Montana cities, but credit goes to Billings for establishing the first operational system. Two bright yellow horse-drawn cars ferried passengers in 1883. Business boomed temporarily when railway promoters offered twenty-five cent tickets and coupons for free beer at a local brewery. But the company soon went out of business. Its two wayward horses refused to keep to a schedule. Reliable service in Montana began in Helena on September 25, 1886. Hundreds watched in awe as the Helena Street Railway Company’s two horse-drawn Pullman cars made their maiden trips to the depot on newly laid iron rails. Soon, steam engines pulled some of the cars, but residents complained about the noisy, dirty coal-burning engines. Dust from the smoke settled in homes and the commotion frightened horse traffic. By the early 1890s, an assortment of trolleys operating on steam, horsepower, and the new electric system operated in Montana cities.
 

Horse-drawn trolleys like this newly-refurbished gem on Helena’s south Walking Mall once ferried passengers to the depot. Photo courtesy of Dean Rognrud.

Montana first licensed automobiles in 1913. This, World War I, postwar inflation, and changing travel patterns took their toll. The Billings Traction Company folded in 1917. Bozeman’s system closed because of complaints that trolleys pushed aside snow, interfering with automobiles. Helena’s last car entered the barn at midnight on New Year’s Day in 1928; bus service began a few hours later. The Rainbow Hotel in Great Falls hosted a funeral in December 1931 for its trolleys. Guests filed past a battered streetcar and sang specially composed songs conceding that the trolleys "ain't gonna run no more." Missoula’s streetcar service ended in 1932, Butte’s in 1937, and Montana’s last trolley bell clanged in 1951 with a final run between Anaconda’s smelter and the town of Opportunity.

Wreck of the Bertrand

John J. Roe of St. Louis founded the Idaho and Montana Transportation Line and the Diamond R Transportation Company in 1864. The company carried everything imaginable by steamboat up the Missouri River from St. Louis to Ft. Benton. Its ox-drawn freighters then carried the goods to the various destinations. The treacherous steamboat voyage took two months. The steamer Bertrand left St. Louis in the early spring of 1865 carrying an astonishing inventory bound for Fort Benton, including 6,000 kegs of nails, mining equipment, and food and clothing. The goods were to be delivered to Virginia City, Deer Lodge, and Hell Gate (present day Missoula). On April 1, the boat hit a snag twenty miles north of Omaha and sank. All passengers and crew escaped, but the inventory—fortunately insured—was lost. In 1968, the wreck was rediscovered and the goods, preserved for a century in the river’s silt, were recovered. The cargo is a microcosm of frontier life. Among the recovered items are powdered lemonade; canned pineapple; brandied cherries; imported olives; salted and dried beef, mutton, and pork; jars of French mustard, catsup, and honey; clocks and combs; lamps and mirrors; patent medicines with their paper labels intact; 3,000 textiles including bolts of silk and 137 men’s coats in 7 different styles; shoes and boots; barrels of whiskey; hammers, doorknobs, pick axes, and blasting powder; washboards; plows; and sleigh bells. It’s hard to imagine some of these luxury items for sale in primitive log cabins. The DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa includes a museum displaying some of the artifacts recovered from the Bertrand.

Artifacts recovered from the steamboat Bertrand, displayed in the visitor center at DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge

Castle, Montana

The town of Castle in Meagher County was a wild camp where men died with their boots on. In the 1880s, two thousand residents rivaled the likes of the great camps of twenty years before. In the 1890s, the town’s death was rapid as people left by the dozens. Their log cabins waited forlornly for owners to return and claim the household goods and belongings they left behind. But they never returned, and the buildings fell into decay. Two last residents kept up hope that the town would again come to life. Joseph Hooker Kidd and Joseph Martino were the last holdouts, optimistic that Castle would revive. In 1936, as Kidd and Martino wintered in their neighboring cabins, the snow piled up in drifts as deep as forty feet. The winter was extremely severe and supplies ran out. Kidd decided to go eight miles up the road to Lennep for groceries. By evening, his cutter and exhausted team had only gone three miles. He stayed the night at the Grande Ranch and the next day made it to Lennep. On the return trip, Kidd again shoveled drifts until he finally got within a mile of Castle. His team would go no farther so he turned them loose and set out on foot, reaching Martino’s cabin late that evening. After some hot coffee, Kidd started out for his own cabin five hundred yards away. A few minutes later, Martino heard Kidd call out and saw him stagger. When Martino reached him, Kidd was dead. The population had been cut in half, its last resident left to foolishly dream that a great strike was still in Castle’s future.

The scattered remnants of Castle, Montana
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 940-607

P.S. Remember the Thanksgiving-day murder at this ghost town?

Robber’s Roost

Because events supposedly connected to Sherriff Henry Plummer and his suspected gang occurred near the Daly ranch in 1863 and 1864, mystery, legend, and mistaken identity have long been part of the history of the stage stop called Robber’s Roost. Although it never served as a gathering place for the road agents and no early-day murders have been documented there, the inn is historically important as a link between the two territorial capitals—Bannack and Virginia City—and one of few surviving log stage stations of this very early territorial period. Orlin Fitzgerald Gammell, who was born in 1846 and died in 1952, helped procure the logs that built Robber’s Roost. He says in his written reminiscence that ranch owner Pete Daly built the structure in the winter of 1866–1867, well after the vigilante hangings of Sheriff Henry Plummer and other suspected road agents.

From http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

Robber’s Roost never served as a hideout for robbers during that turbulent time, but it did later serve as an inn and stage station along the busy road between Bannack and Virginia City. So-called Robber’s Roost is actually important for a different reason. It was the place where Bill Fairweather, credited as the discoverer of the vast Alder Gulch gold deposits, died in 1875. Mrs. Daly cared for him during the final stages of acute alcoholism. He died penniless at the age of thirty-nine.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Camel Trains

If you are stressed out about your Fourth of July preparations, here's a humorous perspective:

In the earliest days of the Montana mining camps, transportation was slow, and miners often waited in vain for ox-drawn freight wagons and mule trains to deliver supplies. Bad weather frequently delayed such essential items as mail, flour, and of course, whiskey. Stories abound about freighters caught in winter storms (check out the Winter issue of Montana The Magazine of Western History for an example). Such delays caused the rationing of supplies and brought on the infamous flour riots in Virginia City. Private companies tried to improve the delivery system, and some began to employ camel trains to carry goods over the Mullan Road to remote mining camps. It sounded like a great idea. Camels could carry up to one thousand pounds of flour each, they needed little food and water, and they plodded along at a slow but even pace. They were rather like today’s postal service: neither rain nor sleet nor snow seemed to stop them. But there was one problem. Bullwhackers and muleskinners detested the ungainly critters and dreaded meeting them on the trail. A mule train could smell the peculiar odor of camel from a long way off. Camel stench on the wind made horses and mules impossible to control. A mule train laden with a supply of whiskey earmarked for the Fourth of July met a camel train on a narrow road, and the mules stampeded. When it was over, whiskey soaked the ground, the Fourth of July was dry, and the camel experiment was over.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Friday Photo: Glacier National Park Tour Bus

Did you hear? The Going-to-the-Sun Road is open, and the forecast for the park is calling for sixties and seventies all weekend. Wouldn't you love to take a tour?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 93-25 A3 214

The Blackfeet inducted western artist E. W. Deming into the tribe and named him Eight Bears for his family of eight. In this photo, the Demings pose in a tour bus circa 1914 with their Blackfeet driver, Lazy Boy, at the wheel.