Fifty-five to thirty-four million years ago, volcanoes erupted in several areas of central Montana. The upwelling of magma which fed these volcanoes was largely responsible for the Bears Paw Uplift and for several other isolated mountain ranges in central Montana. In some places, as the molten rock pushed its way upward toward the surface, it up-arched the layered rocks above it to form a magma dome called a laccolith. In other places, the magma rose vertically to form dikes. The dikes now look like old fallen-down stone walls protruding up through the grass of the ranchlands. Some of the magma crystallized into shonkinite, a rare rock, named for exposures near the town of Shonkin, Montana. Some of the laccoliths eroded to form large buttes, the most prominent are Square Butte northeast of Box Elder and Centennial Mountain north east of Big Sandy. While the mountains were rising, an east-west rift developed near the crest, and rocks slid both to the north and south on Cretaceous marine shales. The sliding produced many faults in the adjacent Great Plains. The faults south of the mountains are especially prominent; while most of those to the north are covered by glacial deposits.

It is not known how the mountain range got its name. According to one legend, many generations ago, an Indian man killed a deer while hunting in the mountains. Before he could return to his camp, he encountered a bear, which knocked him down and pinned him to the ground. The hunter appealed to the Great Spirit for help, who answered by filling the heavens with lightning and thunder, which killed the bear and severed his paw, releasing the hunter. Or perhaps one of the range's mountains resembles a bear's paw and gave the mountain range its name. Another tale states that to Indians looking down from the summit of one of the peaks, the ridges spread out below them resembled a bear's paw.

Geo-Facts:

• The Bears Paw Mountains were formed about 40 to 50 million years ago.

• The oldest rocks exposed in the mountain range are about 350 million years old and are composed of Madison limestone.

• Glacial ice during several glacial periods reached the lower slopes of the mountains except on the south.

Geo-Activity:

• See if you can spot any dikes, which look like deteriorating stone walls of ancient castle popping up throughout the grasslands. These dikes are cooled magma and are one clue that the area was once the site of significant volcanic activity.

Erected by

Montana Department of Transportation.

According to legend, the town and the creek got their name from the muleskinner "Big Sandy" Lane. The creek was flooded during one of his long treks from Cow Island to Fort Benton. When "Big Sandy" fluently bewailed his bad luck in superlatives reserved strictly for "skinners," the creek dried up immediately and he was able to cross! Probably a more correct version of the legend was he lost a wheel at the crossing and setup camp. Since then the creek and the camp were called Big Sandy. Regardless of origin, the campsite and crossing were used by the Cow Island and Fort Walsh Trails.

While Fort Assiniboine was being built in 1879, McNamara and Marlow erected a warehouse at the trail crossing. It was not until 1886 that Swanson constructed the first commercial establishment, a saloon in a tent. The town was born, with a boxcar for a depot and a one-room shack for the section foreman. The rest of the town consisted of the M&M warehouse and nine saloons, mostly tents on wooden platforms. After a few hours at the bar, the nightly sport was to hook onto the platforms with horses, and pull the saloons wildly across the prairie with tent flaps flying. In hot pursuit were the bar owners, yelling and swearing! It was a rip-roaring town, filled nightly with gandy dancers, cowboys, Indians, soldiers and hopefully nine saloons that provided the only entertainment.

July 10, 1866 - March 31, 1870

Near this spot soldiers of the 13th Infantry of the U.S. Army built the first permanent Army post in the Montana Territory, where the Judith and Missouri Rivers join together.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Freight was unloaded at Cow Island when water dropped so low that steamboats could not travers the upper river to Fort Benton. For 130 miles the Cow Island Trail wound along the southern foothills of the Bear's Paw to the junction at Big Sandy then southwest into Fort Benton. By summer in low-water years, freight destined for the gold fields and Canada was piled high where Cow Creek joins the Missouri.

In 1877 during his famous retreat across Montana, Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce crossed the Missouri at Cow Island. They helped themselves to some freight at the landing and attacked a wagon train in the hills, before meeting their destiny at Snake Creek south of Chinook in the Bear's Paw. There Chief Joseph uttered the famous words, "... from where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever," then passed his rifle in surrender to General Howard and Colonel Miles.

In the spring of 1844, American Fur Company traders, Francis Chardon and Alexander Harvey constructed a trading post near here. Chardon had a reputation as an able and unscrupulous individual, while Harvey was "one of the most abandoned desperados known to the fur trade". The previous year, the men participated in the massacre of many innocent Blackfeet Indians who had come to Fort McKenzie at the mouth of the Marias River to trade. The resulting hostility directed to Chardon and Harvey forced the men to abandon that post and build a new one, Fort Chardon. The Blackfeet, however, would not trade at the new fort and, instead, placed it under siege. For several months, the Indians stole the post's horses, killed it's (sic) cattle, and murdered employees who foolishly got caught alone outside the stockade. Chardon had no furs to send downriver to his boss, Alexander Culbertson, at Fort Union. Culbertson fired the men and made peace with the Blackfeet. He closed Fort Chardon and burned it to the ground. Trade was re-established with the Blackfeet at a new trading post located upriver; Chardon and Harvey barely escaped with their lives. In 1855,

Isaac Steven negotiated a treaty with the Blackfeet and the Gros Ventres Indians near here.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Another wagon road headed northeast from Fort Bento to the Cypress Hills and Medicine Hat, Alberta. It passed through Big Sandy, on north near Havre and into the Cypress Hills. In 1873 Fort Benton whiskey traders massacred Indians in the Cypress Hills. As a result, the Northwest Mounted Police were organized in 1874 to bring law and order to the Northern Plains. The next year the Mounties built Fort Walsh in the hills along the road. Some supplies that came up the trail were destined for Sitting Bull and his Sioux refugees from 1877 to 1881.

The road to the southeast leads to the mouth of the Judith River. An early fur post, Fort Chardon was built there in 1844. In 1866 Camp Cooke, the first miliary (sic) post in Montana, was constructed of cottonwood logs, and endured four years of isolation before soldiers were driven out by rats. In 1855 Governor Isaac Stevens signed a peace treaty which gave Northern Plains tribes all lands east of Sun River and north of the Missouri. By 1887 the Indians had been pushed into smaller reservations, and cattle moved into the country north of the rivers. In 1884 one of Montana's big cattle ranches was established in the area by T.C. Power, a Montana merchant prince, and his partner Gilman Norris. Some original buildings remain just across the Missouri.

Erected by Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management.

Like much of Montana, the lands of the Wortman Ranch still look largely as they did even before the days of Lewis and Clark. Except for the irrigated farmland next to the river, the landscapes here haven't changed in character or appearance for hundred of years. Ranching, anchored in the lands own natural productivity, is one of the main reasons. Rangeland vegetation evolved and thrived for thousands of year with seasonal yet heavy grazing by wild animals being central to the process. Today, wildlife remain in abundant numbers and livestock grazing helps the rangeland sustain itself. With careful management the Wortman Ranch deliberately creates environmental (?) to waterfowl and wildlife, while also proceeding superior beef.

The ranch controls when, where and for how long grazing takes place and gives each pasture periods of rest. Just as trimming house plants simulates their growth, when cattle eat vegetation at the right time and to the right extent, the grazing creates harder plant and increases plant growth. When livestock graze late in the year, after plants have formed seeds, their hooves help drive seeds into the soil. This increases the successful planting of new vegetation the sustain the environment.

Gaze out over the lands around you and imagine them filled with 2,000 tipis and 15,000 Indians-it has happened at least twice. Here, enormous gatherings were called to negotiate treaties that transformed relations between Indian tribes and opened the way for Euro-American entry into Montana. The first of these treaties took place in September 1846, when the Jesuit missionary, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, brokered a peace between the Blackfeet and Flathead. Warring between these tribes had allowed the Crow Indians to prey on both of them in the course of long standing competition over buffalo hunting grounds.

Nine years later, the government charged Isaac S. Stevens, Governor of Washington Territory, with the job of negotiating a treaty that would allow safe exploration and settlement by pioneers along the Missouri River. At least 15,000 members of the Blackfeet, Nez Perce and Flathead tribes gathered here for 10 days, and the Stevens Treaty was signed on October 17, 1855. The Blackfeet called it Lame Deer's Treaty, after the name of their chief negotiator.

The treaty specified that Blackfeet homeland would consist of a large portion of present-day Montana on the east side of the Rockies-including most of the land north of the Missouri River, and most of the land north and west of the Musselshell River. Within this area of Blackfeet control, other tribes would be allowed to hunt buffalo once each year-and the U.S. Government could safely establish trade routes and developments, such as forts and telegraph lines, that were necessary to support navigation along the Missouri River.

Natawista (above), a member of the Blood tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy, was the wife of Alexander Culbertson. Culbertson founded Fort Benton and was widely recognized for promoting good relations between Indians and Euro-Americans. But it was Natawista who was most likely responsible for the success of many of her husband's endeavors. She is thought to have played a pivotal role in the successful negotiations of the 1855 Treaty.

"My people are a good people but they are jealous and vindictive. I am afraid that they are the whites will not understand each other, but if I go I may be able to explain things to them and sooth them if they should be irritated. I know there is great danger." -- Natawista, statement reported in 1854

You stand now in an area that was one of the first to feel the rapid growth of immigration that began about 60 years after Lewis and Clark camped here. Steamboats in the late 1800s chose this area as a key stopping point, because the trees needed for wood fuel grew more densely here than elsewhere. Throughout the latter half of the century, the Missouri River was the main route for shipping and travel into Montana, and the Judith Landing area was the primary crossroads for this part of the state. Where the river had been an isolated pathway for the Corps of Discovery, it was a virtual highway for the Euro-Americans who streamed into the region later.

By the 1860s, fort and military installations were helping to safeguard travelers and settlers along the river. But for Lewis and Clark, in 1805, it was a wild and life-threatening night when they slept at their campsite here. Seaman, the dog Meriwether Lewis had brought along, saved their lives by alerting them to a charging bull bison. They sought to memorialize the experience by naming the creek across the river Bull Creek. Other evidently thought Seaman was more worthy of remembrance for it was later renamed Dog Creek.

"Last night we were all allarmed by a large buffalo Bull, which swam over from the opposite shore... he then allarmed ran up the bank full speed directly toward the fires, and was within 18 inches of the heads of some of the men who lay sleeping before the sentinel could allarm him or make him change his course, still more alarmed, he now took his direction immediately towards our lodge passing between 4 fires and with in a few inched of the heads of one range of the men as they yet lay sleeping, when he came near the tents, my dog saved us by causing him to change his course..." - Captain Meriwether Lewis, May 29, 1805

In 1855, geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden explored the upper Missouri River for the United States Geologic Service. At that time, the area was the hunting grounds of the Lakota, Blackfeet, Atsina, and River Crow Indians. A lone white man in Indian Country was often fair game to the tribes, but Hayden's passion for rocks and fossils earned him the name "He Who Picks Up Stones While Running" and a reputation for madness. The Indians left him alone. Hayden explored what would later become known as the Judith River Formation, a large area of sedimentary materials deposited in the lowland area bordering the Colorado Sea during the Late Cretaceous Period 78 to 74 million years ago. During his exploration near the mouth of the Judith River, Hayden collected many fossilized teeth, bones, and shells from the Judith River Formation. He took them to anatomy Professor Joseph Leidy in Philadelphia for identification, who classified the teeth as belonging to a new species of hadrosaur. The teeth and bones were the first dinosaur fossils found in North America. Hayden's discovery drew paleontologists to Montana in search of dinosaur fossils and to the Judith

River Formation making it a significant paleontological destination.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Once home to grazing dinosaurs, the lands surrounding you still exhibit the qualities that have made the Judith Landing area an important crossroads throughout human history. Here, at the confluence of two rivers, trees grow more densely than elsewhere in this part of Montana, and it's the easiest place to cross the Missouri for miles in either direction. The ready availability of water, wood, forage and sheltered space led numerous Indian tribes and their ancestors to converge her for seasonal hunts and meetings.

These lands were widely known, and the river routes well-traveled, long before the Lewis and Clark Expedition camped here in 1805. For the same reasons barely a generation later, two pivotal Indian treaties were negotiated and signed here. When Euro-American immigration began in earnest in the mid-1860s the Missouri River became an interstate highway for supplies and people, and this areas geography made it a primary stopping point along the way. Until railroads were completed in 1887, most everything that entered or left Montana passed here.

Ranching began on these lands in 1881, and has continued ever since. Today with the help of a program called Undaunted Stewardship the Wortman Ranch manages its land and livestock so that grazing preserves the land's historic character and maintains habitat for wildlife and waterfowl. Welcome to a glimpse of this area's ghosts, its life and its future—enjoy your visit.

1. Fort Clagett (1869-1878), trading post 2. Camp Cooke (1866-1869), first military post in Montana 3. Fort Chardon (1844-1845), a trading post that failed because Indians distrusted its founder for having led a massacre of Piegan, members of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

4. Judith River, named by Captain William Clark after Julia Hancock, his future wife, called Oo-tan-kwi-si-sa-tan, or Yellow River by the Blackfeet.

5. The original Judith Landing and site of the P-N Cable Ferry crossing at the Power-Norris Ranch where many of the structures built as early as 1880 still stand.

6. Lohs Ferry site operated 1923-?.

7. Dog Creek, called Bull Creek by Lewis and Clark.

8. Lewis and Clark Expedition campsite on May 28, 1805.

9. Indian treaty sites (1840 and 1855).

10. Wortman Ranch Headquarters 11. Council Island, named for the treaty councils that occurred on the mainland.

Erected by Undaunted Stewardship.