Ekalaka

Medicine Rocks State Park was once a sea of sand dunes. About 61 million years ago during the Tertiary Era, a large freshwater river deposited fine-grained sands along its shores. From there, coastal winds blew the sand into dunes that eventually compacted into soft sandstone. That soft rock was especially susceptible to wind erosion, which caused hollowed out hols in the face of the rock. The Medicine Rocks exhibit crossbedding, where thin layers of sandstone lie at angles with thick sandstone beds. For millions of years, the wind has sculpted the soft sandstone into many strange and bizarre shapes that like shifting clouds, almost overwhelm the imagination in their complexity and ability to inspire wonder. Native Americans early recognized the distinctiveness of the Medicine Rocks. They used the area as a vision quest site, meeting place, shelter, and as a lookout to spot enemies and bison. A Lakota named Charging Bear called the rocks a place "where the spirits stayed and medicine men played." Like the Native Americans before them, non-Indian settlers also recognized the uniqueness of Medicine Rocks as a place to gather and enjoy on of Montana's geologic wonders.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

If you had visited Medicine Rocks 61.5 million years ago, you would have needed gills to breathe!

A vast river once flowed through the regions, depositing layers of underwater sandbars along its deep channel. Over time, other rivers buried the sandbars with mud. Eventually the rivers dried up, and mineral-rich ground water saturated the buried grains of sand, cementing them together to create sandstone.

Millions of years later, erosion exposed the sandstone at the prairie surface. Wind began sculpting the soft sandstone into the mottled pillars, arches and buttresses you see today. This fragile landscape is constantly changing - and slowly disappearing. Please respect these natural processes by not defacing the rocks during your visit. Thank You!

Nature's Artistry

The formations at Medicine Rocks show cross bedding, where thin layers of sandstone lie at angles within thicker beds due to the movement of the ancient river. Sandstone reveals many other unique characteristics as it gradually erodes away.

Hollows and halos As sand cemented into stone, mineral matter formed around tree limbs and trunks trapped in the sandbars. Eventually the wood disintegrated, leaving a hollow in the sandstone surrounded by a dark "halo."

Pits, caves and holes

Swirling winds continually erode pits in the rock faces, sometimes carving out deep caves in the sandstone that may eventually bore through to the other side.

Tan vs. red sandstone

An iron oxide called limonite gives this sandstone its tan color, but red streaks indicate that another iron oxide called hematite was carried downstream from sandstone eroding in South Dakota's Black Hills.

Mudrock seams As the sandbars moved downstream 61.5 million years ago, they picked up pieces of eroding riverbank that later settled as seams of chunky white sediment called mudrock within the sandstone.

Erected by Medicine Rocks State Park.

Some people claim an old buffalo hunter figured that starting a thirst emporium for parched cowpunchers on this end of the range would furnish him a more lucrative and interesting vocation than downing buffalo. He picks a location and was hauling a load of logs to erect his proposed edifice for the eradication of ennui when he bogged sown in a snowdrift. "Hell," he exclaimed, "Any place in Montana is a good place for a saloon," so he unloaded and built her right there. That was the traditional start of Ekalaka in the '80s and the old undaunted pioneer spirit of the West still lingers here.

When it became a town it was named after an Indian girl, for on the Powder River, who was the daughter of Eagle Man, an Oglala Sioux. She was a nice of the War Chief, Red Cloud, and was also related to Sitting Bull. She became the wife of David H. Russel, the first white man to settle permanently in this locality.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, fire destroyed four Main Street buildings, including the First National Bank. When the economy recovered, local contractor V. E. Figg designed and constructed this 1940 commercial structure. With contrasting white stucco, glass block, and black tile, the Streamline Moderne style building asserted Ekalaka’s modernity while signifying a belief in the town’s future. The building’s west half served as the offices of the First National Bank until 1970. Retail stores operated here during the 1970s. Then the bank used the building for storage. In 2011 Summit National Bank donated it to the Town of Ekalaka. Now the Town Office, the interior still boasts the original bank vaults and much of the original wood trim and paneling. Rickard Hardware, owned by C. G. Mac Rickard, originally occupied the east half of the building. After the hardware store closed, the building housed a furniture store before becoming a meat locker in 1945. The locker rented freezers and processed meat in the back of building and sold ice cream in the front. In 1954, Joe and Helen Blutt purchased the business. After electricity became locally available, the need for locker services declined so the Blutts expanded the front area into a teen hangout. For over twenty-five years, kids met at “The Locker” to listen to the juke box and play foosball, pinball, and pool while enjoying malts, burgers, and fries. The Locker closed in 1998 and remained vacant until the Ekalaka Public Library moved here in 2013.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

If you had been a Texas cattle baron in the 1880s, the endless miles of lush grasslands and open range surrounding Medicine Rocks would have seemed like heaven on earth.

Enormous cattle ranches - running thousands of head each - once dominated the Montana prairie. But during the winter of 1888-1889, deep snow and severe cold decimated herds in the area by up to 90 percent. The barons eventually moved out, but some of the cowboys stayed behind and established their own ranches. They found success by putting up winter feed, allowing cattle to survive the harsh climate. Soon homesteaders moved in and the towns of Baker and Ekalaka sprang up.

Cowboys, sheepherders and settlers all appreciated the beauty and uniqueness of Medicine Rocks. It was popular for picnicking in the spring, summer and fall. In 1957 Medicine Rocks became a state park, protecting it for future generations to enjoy.

Who's Who?

With the range free of fences on the eastern Montana prairie in the late 1880s, how did everyone manage to keep tabs on their livestock" Like today, ranchers used brands to distinguish their horses and cattle from others.

XIT Operating north of Miles City, Montana, the Capital Freehold Land & Investment Company ran cattle wearing this famous brand from 1886-1908.

Hashknife The Continental Land & Cattle Company ran cattle wearing this brand from the southeastern corner of Montana east to the Little Missouri River in the Dakotas from 1880-1889.

Mill Iron A tiny town southeast of Ekalaka, Montana was named after this brand, which was worn by Continental Land & Cattle Company cattle that ranged west to Miles City and north beyond the Yellowstone River from 1880-1894.

Erected by Medicine Rocks State Park.

Traveling through southeastern Montana in 1883, naturalist, writer, and future United States President Theodore Roosevelt was struck by what he called the Medicine Buttes. He wrote, "Altogether it was as fantastically beautiful a place as I have ever seen: it seemed impossible that the hand of man should not have had something to do with its formation." Indeed, mother nature spent millions of years crafting this landmark, but the hand of humans here cannot be ignored. Thousands of men and women recorded their history here, transforming the perforated sandstone monuments into a historical register with initials, names, dates, and images carved in soft stone. Petroglyphs of warriors and animals mark hundreds of years of use by indigenous people who harvested medicinal plants and performed ceremonies and religious rituals. The Lakota aptly named it "Inyan oka-lo-ka" or "Rock with a Hole in it." European explorers, and later trappers and traders, passed through and left their marks in the early 1800s. Gold seekers came through after 1862, and then a steady influx of cowboys, ranchers, homesteaders, laborers, and tourists left basic but rich information that often connects them with pivotal state, national, and world events. County officials maintained the Medicine Rocks as a park beginning in the 1930s, and it became a Montana state park in 1957. The vast collection of inscriptions at Medicine Rocks serve as enticing clues about the history of human occupation here, and with more research can yield volumes about the cultural traditions and family histories of its visitors.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

The Sioux aptly named Medicine Rocks Inyan-oka-la-ka, or "Rock with a Hole in It."

Evidence suggests the ancestors of modern-day American Indians lived and hunted in southeastern Montana beginning at the end of the last ice age, or about 12,000 years ago. The summers were cooler then, and large mammals such as woolly mammoths made for a bountiful harvest.

As the climate warmed over the next few thousand years, mammoths and other prehistoric mammals became extinct. American Indians relied on buffalo for food, shelter, clothing and tools. While hunting on the prairie around Medicine Rocks, the Northern Cheyenne, Sioux, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Crow, Shoshone and Arapaho tribes sought shelter among the sandstone formations, and gathered edible and medicinal plants growing in the sandy soil.

Clues to the Past

Artifacts recovered from the park provide valuable insight on how early people lived and survived on the Plains. Archaeologists used this evidence to better understand how American Indians may have adjusted their travel patterns, hunting and gathering methods and even their daily routines according to the resources available during each season.

Petroglyphs

Engraved images of animals, people and other abstract symbols into sandstone rock faces advertised personal feats, promoted fertility, marked territories and counted days or seasons.

Projectile Points

Flacked from stone and fit to wooden shafts, these small, side-notched arrow points could easily pierce the this hide of a buffalo.

Potsherds

These pottery fragments came from pots, bowls, mortars and other cookware makes from clay that was shaped by hand and baked in fire.

Tipi Rings

American Indians camping on the windy prairie anchored their tipi covers to the ground with rocks, often leaving a circle of stones behind when they moved on.

Erected by Medicine Rocks State Park.

With prairie stretching toward the horizon in nearly every direction, Medicine Rocks seem like a tiny "island" in a vast, grassy sea.

Indeed, the rocky buttes, spires and columns stand tall above the prairie junegrass, little bluestem and needle-and-thread. But sandstone and its accompanying sandy soils also provide a niche, or place, for pants not found everywhere in a short-grass prairie ecosystem.

Flowering plants such as silky prairie clover, Schweinitz' flatsedge and plains phlox are considered rare in Montana because they grow only in places with loose, sandy soils, and often near sandstone outcrops. Protecting the park helps ensure these species remain on the prairie for generations to come.

Hardy Residents When you think of the prairie, you probably imagine hot summers, cold winters, little moisture and lots of wind - certainly not a place for the faint-hearted. But around 250 plants - from trees and shrubs to herbs and mosses - have adapted to, and even thrive in, the harsh environment of Medicine Rocks.

Blue grama (at right)

This grass has a dense, shallow root system that secures it to the soil and deadly absorbs any rainfall.

Chokecherry

The twigs of this shrub serve as a crucial source of protein for mule deer during winter.

Narrow-leafed purple coneflower

American Indians collected this flowering herb, also called echinacea, and used it to fight infectious diseases.

Ponderosa pine

This hardy tree can grow on top of sandstone because its roots reach down to the soil through crevices in the rock.

Pottery milkvetch

The large seed pods of this sandy soil-loving plant resemble egg-shaped balloons freckled with red, purple or green.

Erected by Medicine Rocks State Park.