How Well Do We Know Montana?

Diane Tipton, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Statewide Information Officer

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If we live here, we assume we know Montana like an old friend. But even old friends have their secrets.

It doesn’t take much digging to discover some of those secrets. For example, where is Elk River? The Old North Trail? What was the giant short-faced bear? The arctic hare?   The Pleistocene horse? Who were the people who mined chert, a glass-like stone, near Missouri Headwaters State Park at Three Forks?

People have lived on the lands we call Montana for more than 11,000 years, archaeologists say. It’s only about the past 200 of those years that are recorded as written history. That leaves roughly 10,800 years of human history documented only in the landscape, wildlife, plants, and rocks that surround us. But how do we read this ancient history?

One way to connect with these very early Montanans is by visiting a Montana State Park. Many state parks are on or near sites used by prehistoric people.

Crow people inhabited lands in the 1700s that are now part of Chief Plenty Coups State Park. The early Crow people knew the Yellowstone River as the Elk River.

The Old North Trail, a travel route along the Eastern Rocky Mountain Front, is thought by some to have been used by prehistoric bands of people for thousands of years. The Old North Trail passes near the buffalo jump at Ulm Pishkun State Park, which was in use 2,000 to 700 years ago.

Remains of the giant short-faced bear, arctic hare, and Pleistocene horse have all been found in a cave along the Rocky Mountain Front, not far from Tower Rock State Park at the Hardy Creek exit on Interstate 15.

Archaeologists also tell us that, beginning about 11,000 years ago, nomadic hunter-gatherers used mineral, animal, and plant resources plentiful in the Three Forks area near Missouri Headwaters State Park and west of Townsend along the flanks of the Elkhorn   Mountains.

Most State Parks have interpretive signs, brochures, and other information to help visitors explore Montana’s history and prehistory. Some parks, like Missouri Headwaters State Park, have individuals on staff who are steeped in the history and prehistory of the site.

Spring Meadow State Park, on the outskirts of Helena, and similar sites focus on public recreation, but they are surrounded by documented prehistoric sites.

  Recently near Spring Meadow, a cultural inventory for a stream project located a prehistoric campsite. Many other documented sites ring the Helena Valley.

A young angler fishing at Spring Meadow Lake State Park today is fishing very near where prehistoric youngsters 3,000 or even 10,000 year ago may have fished with their families.

It is easy to imagine these early people gazing out at the surrounding mountains and prairies so familiar to us—and impossible not to wonder what name they might have known them by.