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Little Gates of the Mountains
Page 4 of 6
"Savage Gorge"  ive days and about 55 miles up the fast-flowing river from the entrance to the "gates of the Rocky mountains," and a day and a half before they reached the headwaters of the Missouri at the Three Forks, Lewis came upon "a bluff point1 where the river again enters the mountains." Thoughtfully, he added, "I beleive it to be a second grand chain of the rocky Mots." According to Private Whitehouse, Sacagawea had something to do with that notion. In the afternoon, he explained, they "passed some rough rockey hills, which we expect from the account we have from the Indian Woman that is with us, to be the commencement of the Second chain of the Rockey Mountains; but they do not appear, to be so high, as the first chain of Mountains which we have passed, nor so solid a rock at the entrance of them."2 There must have been some serious discussion about the importance of that canyon, considering what they could see in the distance, for Whitehouse wrote: "we find that we have not entered the 2nd chain of Mountains but can discover verry high white toped mountains Some distance up the River" — most likely the lofty Tobacco Root Mountains and the Madison Range.
Canyon through the "second chain" of the Rockies
Pass cursor over map to read details.  Moulton, Atlas map 64
 s this map indicates, Clark missed this "gate" also. On the 24th he observed that "the mountains on either Side [of the river] appear like the hills had fallen half down & turned Side upwards."3 On the morning of the 25th he arrived at the three forks, more than a full day in advance of Lewis and his weary crew.
At about 11 o'clock on the morning of the 26th the main party passed out of the canyon of this supposed "second chain" of the Rocky Mountains, and proceeded toward the forks. The current was still so rapid, Lewis wrote on the 26th, "that the men are in a continual state of their utmost exertion to get on, and they begin to weaken fast from this continual state of violent exertion." "The "large spring of freestone" or, as Lewis put it, "very cold and freestone water," later gained the names "Big," and the super-sized superlative, "Mammoth." In 1986 it officially became "Big Spring" (one of ten by that name in Montana alone), by authority of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Early in the 19th century the term freestone denoted any layered stone, usually sandstone, or in this instance Madison Group limestone, that easily spalled off in slabs. Communication between Lewis and Clark concerning this map may have broken down, judging from Clark's misplacement of Howards Creek and Lewis's July 25 campsite. |
Lewis's "second grand chain" never became a tourist attraction of the magnitude of the "Great gate of the rock Mounts." For a few years, however, it was one of the main scenic attractions along the Northern Pacific Railroad mainline that paralleled the Missouri River from the vicinity of the Three Forks to Helena. The tourist's guidebook informed passengers that there, the railroad "enters a savage gorge of weather-worn rocks showing stains of iron and copper, and rising to the height of several hundred feet above the track. On one side of the road runs the swift, clear current of the Missouri, and on the other, tower enormous precipices." The scenery, the description concluded, was "among the finest on the whole line of the road."4 The NP didn't enter Lewis and Clark's "Great Gates of the Mountains," but turned west to cross the Continental Divide at Helena. Ghost Town  View down the Missouri looking northwest past the site of
Lombard, about 1900. Sixteenmile Creek is at
lower left. The Milwaukee Road crossed the river
a little downstream from the NP's bridge.
 etween the "clift" and the creek, six winding river-miles upstream from the "gate" of the supposed "second chain of the Rocky Mountains," is a spot Lewis typically would have called a "handsome little plain," though he didn't this time. Here, in 1882-83 the Northern Pacific Railroad — the first line to cross the Northwest —built a sidetrack and a water tower to service its steam locomotives on the section that paralleled the Missouri River between the headwaters and Helena, Montana. In 1895 a Helena attorney named Richard Harlow set out to build a railroad up Sixteenmile Creek to haul ore from the promising silver mines in the Big Belts and the Crazy Mountains. Its western terminus, here where it intersected with the NPRR, was named for A.G. Lombard, its chief construction engineer.
All too soon the mining prospects dimmed, prompting the nickname "Jawbone" line in reference to the persistent persuasion it took to maintain the financing. In 1906 the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad — the Milwaukee Road — entered the scene, purchased the 157-mile Montana Railroad as part of its electrified main line, and bridged the Missouri River here, then continued south on the west bank of the river to cross the Divide at Pipestone Pass near Butte. Lombard thrived for several decades, accessible only by rail. After the U.S. entered the First World War (1917-18) troops were briefly stationed here to guard it against the imagined threat of German saboteurs. In 1930 it was the anonymous setting for a feature film, Danger Lights, billed as "The World's Greatest Railroad Talk Thriller," in which "the tough boss of a railroad yard befriends a young hobo and unwittingly places in jeopardy his relationship with the woman he loves." The cast included future superstars Jean Arthur and Hugh Herbert. Over the next fifty years, technological improvements and new patterns of travel and commerce rendered the Lombard way-station superfluous. By the 1970s the community was vacant, and the NPRR demolished all remaining structures. Subsequently, the Rocky Mountain Division of the Northern Pacific was purchased by Montana Rail Link, which, as of 2003 was operating twenty freight trains daily past the ghosts of Lombard.5 |
This part of Lewis and Clark's "little gates" of the Rockies is still comparatively isolated. A seasonally impassable one-lane road still begins as "improved gravel" at Toston6 but soon deteriorates into a rough, steep and dangerous rock-and-dirt trail. Through traffic by water is also somewhat inconvenient; Tosten Dam, completed in 1940 for irrigation impoundment and flood control, requires a short portage. The easiest avenue to a closeup of the short canyon is, ironically, from outer space, through the medium of Google Earth.7 Googlian Glimpses   f you have Google Earth on your computer, click here. The necessary file, titled "google_LittleGatesMountains," will appear on the desktop behind this Web page. Close or hide this Web page and double-click on the file to open Google Earth. After it opens, double-clicking on each of the yellow push-pins or each of the six files listed under "Places" in the sidebar menu at page left, will take you to a closeup oblique view of each location: "Bluff Point," "Big Spring,"8 "Toston Dam," "Lewis's Camp, July 25," "Howard's Creek," and "Garden Gulch." As experienced Google Earth visitors know, there is a navigation tool in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, consisting of a compass with which the map can be rotated, a vertical slider to control altitude above Earth, and a horizontal slider with which the map can be tilted to create a three-dimensional effect. To return to the parent Web page, click on the link in any location's text-box that reads "Return to 'Little Gates of the Mountains'."
If you do not have Google Earth on your computer, review the minimum configurations required for PC, Mac, and Linux systems. If your system meets the requirements, you may download the software free of charge from that same page. (Note: If your desktop computer is more than 4 years old, or your notebook computer is more than 2 years old, it is likely that you will not be able to run Google Earth.)
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Sergeant Gass reported that "six very fine springs rise on the southern shore, about four miles above the entrance of this range," and he saw more the next morning. Most of them were smaller than the Big Spring, and are either unnoticeable today, especially above Toston Dam where the reservoir covers the original riverbanks, or they have been channeled into the nearest irrigation canal. From an altitude of a mile or less above the river, a little downstream from Big Spring one can faintly make out the two rapids that were "the worst we have seen since that we passed on entering the rocky Mountain; they were obstructed with sharp pointed rocks, ranges of which extended quite across the river." Whitehouse added, "We double manned our canoes, and with difficulty got over them, by hard towing." Lewis named "Howards Creek" after Private Thomas P. Howard. In 1882 the NP's construction engineer, either unaware of Lewis's gesture, or perhaps merely indifferent toward it, named it Sixteenmile Creek because it is 16 miles downriver from the Headwaters of the Missouri. --Joseph Mussulman and Robert Bergantino, 01/07 1. This is the second-last of nearly two dozen times the journalists used the term "bluff point" since leaving Fort Mandan in early April of 1805. It was a common term used by river travelers in those days to denote a high, steep promontory visible from a considerable distance, that marked the end of a course. 2. On July 22 they had passed today's Beaver Creek, which they called "white Earth Creek...from the circumstance of the natives procuring a white paint on this crek." They recorded a number of "White Earth" rivers and creeks, but this was the only one they so-named in the Rockies. It may be supposed that Sacagawea had helped collect paint there during childhood travels with her tribe, the Shoshones, who journeyed to buffalo country annually. That same day Lewis noted that "the Indian woman recognizes the country."3. The low mountains on either side of the Missouri here constitute the western tip of another spur of the Big Belt Mountains. The tilting of the limestone strata is the result of movement along the Lombard fault, an overthrust that extends for about 14 miles south, toward the headwaters area, and is well exposed in the horseshoe canyon of Missouri River near Lombard. H.W. Lorenz and R.G. McMurtrey, "Geology and occurrence of ground water in the Townsend valley, Montana," Water Supply Paper 1360-C (1956), p. 203. 4. The Great Northwest: a Guide-book and Itinerary for the Use of Tourists and Travelers Over the Lines of the Northern Pacific Railroad (St. Paul: Riley Bros., 1886), 251. Meriwether Lewis's trip through the canyon was not mentioned. 5. William Taylor, "Train Your Lens on That! Three Hot Spots for Railfans," Montana Magazine, September-October 2003, 8-9. Mr. Taylor has also contributed some details via personal communication, February 7, 2007. 6. The land on which the town of Toston sprang up about 1882 was given by the U.S. Government to John Karns as "bounty land" for his "meritorious service" in the War of 1812, and later was sold to Thomas Toston, who operated a ferry. A large smelting operation thrived there for six years beginning in 1883, refining ore from the Big Belt Mountains with coal from the vicinity of Big Spring. 7. The minimum and recommended configurations for PC, Mac and Linux systems are listed at http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html, where one can also download the free broadband 3D application. 8. Big Spring has sometimes been termed "artesian," like the much larger (220 cfs) Giant Springs above Rainbow Dam, 186 miles farther down the Missouri River, in which hydrostatic pressure forces the water upward from a source more than 100 feet beneath the surface. However, the smaller (only 56.7 cfs in 1956) Big Spring does not qualify as an artesian spring because it flows from a limestone reservoir that is thirty feet above its discharge point, and its recharge source is even higher, somewhere along upper Sixteenmile Creek. Lorenz and McMurtrey, 1956, 215-16. Viewed up close in the satellite view (via Google Earth) below, it will be seen that Big Spring is now diverted into an irrigation channel.
Funded in part by a grant from the Montana Cultural Trust.
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