Lima

The Department of Transportation launched an ambitious program in 1936 to promote the state's scenic, recreational, and historical treasures. The brainchild of department engineer Bob Fletcher, the program included roadside historical markers, landscaped picnic areas, roadside museums, highway maps, and a network of ports-of-entry stations strategically located at each of the main highways at Montana's border. The stations consisted of rustic-looking log cabins, like this one, manned during the summer months by well-mannered and courteous college students duded up in blue jeans, western-style shirts, cowboy boots, and bandannas. The attendants distributed information and answered questions from visitors to Montana about its natural and historic resources, providing each out-of-state vehicle with a road map and tabloid history of the state. The MDT build this station in 1936 and it originally sat along old US Highway 91 in Lima. For two decades, thousands of visitors to Montana stopped at the cabin to learn about the state and receive a friendly welcome to Big Sky Country. The stations were an important part of Montana's tourist industry until the MDT phase them out in the 1950s.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

This area once echoed with the sound of creaking wagon wheels, cracking whips, and profanity so intense the mountains vibrated with sulfur! The old wagon road between Montana and Utah passed very close to this rest area. It first saw use in the 1840s and 1850s as the route from the Mormon settlements in Utah to the Deer Lodge Valley, and St. Mary's Mission in the Bitterroot Valley. With the discovery of gold on Grasshopper Creek in 1862 and Alder Gulch in 1863, the road became the main supply and passenger route to southwestern Montana until the Utah & Northern Railroad completed its line to Butte in 1881.

The bulk of the supplies destined for the Montana gold camps came by freight wagons pulled by oxen. The slow, plodding animals could pull a tremendous amount of cargo, often as much as nine tons per wagon set. A set consisted of three linked wagons, (a lead, swing and a trail-end), with each set pulled by up to 24 oxen. The animals were driven by teamsters called bullwhackers, "red-shirted, big-booted, brigand-looking ruffians" skilled in the use of bullwhips and profanity to keep the oxen moving along the trail. Many people recalled hearing the bullwhackers long before actually seeing them. Life on the road for these men was not easy as they had to deal with bad water, bad food, bad weather, lice, and, occasionally, road agents. Oxen could make 10 to 15 miles per day on the road with around trip to Virginia City taking about three months. If the supplies included perishable goods or other groceries that needed to get to the mining camps quickly, then mules or horses were used to pull much smaller wagons than those by oxen. By the early 1860s, stagecoaches also regularly carried passengers between southwestern Montana and Utah. A stagecoach trip to Montana took three days and nights with regular stops at stations strategically located along the road.

Lima is Montana's first railroad town. Established as a division point on the Utah & Northern Railroad in 1880, the town included a substantial depot, roundhouse, machine shop, and a vibrant business district along the tracks that consisted of hotels, restaurants, store, and saloons. Two churches ministered to the community's spiritual needs. In 1889, the Utah & Northern and the Oregon Short Line railroads merged. The Union Pacific absorbed the railroad in 1935. Lima also enjoyed an important position on US Highway 91 in the twentieth century. Along with the old establishments of the railroad era, new businesses, such as motels and service stations, joined them along the highway.

Nothing is more extraordinary and wearisome than the levelness of the road. From Corrine (Utah) to Virginia City you drive along a series of apparently perfectly flat plains, connected with each other by short canyons and valleys. Occasionally the road ascends, but by very easy gradient. There are no precipices, no torrents, no avalanches, no glaciers, nothing grand, terrible or dangerous. The idea that you are crossing the backbone of the continent, and scaling a vast mountain range, appears preposterous. -- Earl of Dunraven, August 1874

About four million years ago, this part of the North American Plate slid over a gigantic source of heat in the mantle known as the Yellowstone hot spot. In Yellowstone National Park, this heat is responsible for the geysers, mud pots, and hot springs, but in southwestern Montana, it is partially responsible for the mountains and valleys. The thermal energy deep underground bulged the curst above it as the tectonic plate moved over the hot spot, causing the Earth's upper crust to stretch. This stretching was so great that crust broke into blocks separated by steep faults that allowed these blocks to move up or down relative to adjacent blocks. This site in the Red Rock Valley is one of the down-dropped blocks, whereas the Tendoy Mountains to the west were uplifted. Geologists refer to the break separating them as the Red Rock fault. You can see the Red Rock Fault as the line along the foot of the mountains closest to the rest area. The triangular faces or facets that terminate the ridges coming toward you are evidence that this fault is very young. It ruptured as recently as 3000 years ago and earthquakes indicate that it is still actively moving.

Oryctodromeus

Paleontologist are always discovering new species of dinosaurs that are not only valuable from a scientific standpoint, but also show us how varied life was on Earth millions of years ago. About 95 million years ago a small herbivore called Oryctodromeus lived in this area. What makes this dinosaur so unusual is that it lived in burrows underground! In 2006, paleontologists discovered the fossilized skeletons of an adult Oryctodromeus and two juveniles in an ancient burrow not far from here. The skeleton showed that the animal, with its strong forearms, shoulders, and beak, was specially adapted to digging. Importantly, it also indicated that the adults took care of the young animals. Paleontologists don't know why the long-legged Oryctodromeus chose to den underground, but it could have been to avoid extremes of hot and cold weather, to evade predators and to raise their young.

Geo-facts:

• The upper sixty miles of earth's crust is called the lithosphere.

• Oryctodromeus burrows were twisting and worm-like and were about seven feet in length.

• Tendoy was a prominent Lemhi Shoshone Chief who lived in the area in the mid-19th century.

Geo-Activity:

• Oryctodromeus lived in dens much like coyotes do today. Can you think of some other animals you know about in Montana that live in dens and burrows?