Townsend

Shortly after the discovery of gold in Confederate Gulch, freighters established a road between Helena and Diamond City. The Missouri River was a barrier to travelers until John Oakes established a ferry in Black Rock Canyon in 1865. A small settlement, called Canyon Ferry, flourished at the ferry crossing. Its hotel, saloon, stage station, stable, and dry goods store served travelers and local residents. In 1898, Samuel Hauser's Helena Water and Electrical Power Company built a stone dam at a narrow point in the canyon near Canyon Ferry. A little over a half century later, in July 1949, the Bureau of Reclamation began construction of a massive concrete dam just downstream of the old structure. Since 1954, the dam has produced hydroelectric power and water for irrigation. It backs up a reservoir 25 miles in length with 76 miles of shoreline. Canyon Ferry Reservoir took two years to fill, flooding thousands of acres of farmland and inundating the communities of Canyon Ferry and Canton. Today the reservoir provides water for irrigation and recreation for fishermen, boaters, and other sportsmen.

On September 17, 1947, a Montana Air

National Guard A-26 aircraft carrying Lieutenant Colonel Willard S. Sperry and Sergeant Charles L. Glover crashed in the Big Belt during an early season snowstorm. Both men served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and Colonel Sperry was the first commander of the Montana Air National Guard.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

"See out at sunrise, the current very strong; passed a remarkable bluff of a crimson coloured east on Starboard intermixed with Stratas of black and brick red slate..."

Imagine canoeing against the Missouri's current, never sure of what might be around the bend. The red-hued cliffs on the west side of the river must have been a pleasant surprise for the Corps of Discovery on that early summer morning in late July.

Look upriver to the south for a glimpse of York's Islands, another landmark noted in the journals.

Today, the Crimson Bluffs are managed for public enjoyment by the Bureau of Land Management with the assistance from the Crimson Bluffs chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

From the river, the bluff's iron-laden earth is vibrant red when lit by the sun's early morning rays. Sgt. Gass noted in his journal on the same day "...passed a bank of very red earth, which...the natives use for paint."

Erected by Bureau of Land Management, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.

J. P. Kearns came to Townsend from Benton, Wisconsin, in 1899. Business-educated and experienced, Kearns astutely recognized the town’s need for a new financial institution and founded the State Bank of Townsend only three months later. The bank was first located at 312 Broadway Street. Then in 1916, plans for a new building were begun. Albert Mooreman and Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, a firm specializing in bank plans and construction, designed the Neo-classical style building. The structure features an imposing entrance in temple motif framed by columns and pilasters with a pediment of colored sandstone. Completed in 1918, its secure and commanding presence came to be especially significant during the hard financial time ahead. Despite drought, depression, and the area’s dependency on an agricultural economy so devastated by these circumstances, the State Bank of Townsend managed to survive when many small-town banks did not. J. P. Kearns’ cautious loan policies and conservative banking methods provided a solid foundation for long-term success. For almost a century, the State Bank of Townsend has been owned and operated in principal by members of the same family that chartered it, thus setting a record unmatched by any other bank in Montana.

Erected by Montana National Register Sign Program.

In 1864, prospectors discovered promising placer gold deposits in Confederate Gulch, named for their political sympathies during the Civil War. This led to a huge gold rush that brought thousands of people to the gulch and the discovery of some of the richest placer gold deposits in Montana.

The placer gold came from gravel in Confederate Creek and from gravel bars above the creek deposited during the Pleistocene Epoch (Ice Age). Gold from Montana Bar, a 2-acre gravel deposit on a bench above the gulch, was so plentiful it actually clogged the miner's sluice boxes. Some miners may have taken $15,000 to $21,000 (in modern currency) per pan. The bonanza ended after only three years, and the gulch was all but empty by 1900. In all, Confederate Gulch produced nearly $150 million in gold.

The gold-bearing gravels overlie the Precambrian Spokane, Greyson and Newland Formations of the Belt Supergroup, deposited in an inland sea over a billion years earlier. These extremely old rocks were brought to the surface by huge thrust faults that stacked older rocks over younger, forming the Big Belt Mountains.

Confederate Gulch is crossed by a line of igneous plutons, including Miller Mountain, Boulder Baldy, and Mount Edith, all of which formed from a single magmatic event. The magma intruded the Belt Supergroup rocks between 69 and 74 million years ago, solidifying to rock before it reached the earth's surface. The pluton on Miller Mountain has been extensively prospected as a lode gold source.

Diamond City In December 1864, ex-Confederate soldiers built log cabins adjacent to the gulch later named for them. The paths in the snow between the cabins formed a diamond pattern, giving the name to the new mining camp. When news of the richness of the gold deposits became known outside the Big Belts, the ensuing gold rush brought at least 5,000 people to Diamond City. For a short time, the camp was the seat of newly created Meagher County. The settlement boasted stores, saloons, hurdy-gurdy houses, and hundreds of log cabins. Famed Montana cowboy artist Charlie Russell believed Diamond City the most perfect type of mining camp. Today, nothing remains of the camp.

Geo-facts:

• A pluton is a mass of igneous rock that formed when magma cooled before reaching the earth's surface.

• Fossil remains of a mastodon found at Diamond City helped determine the Pleistocene age of the placer gravels.

• The Townsend Valley where Canyon Ferry Lake is situated, developed later than the thrust faults and plutons of the Little Belt Mountains, as a result of change in the tectonic style. The older thrust faults provided planes of weakness that allowed the valley to form as movement on the faults reversed direction.

• Rocks of the Big Belt Mountains originated from farther west and were transported eastward along low-angle thrust faults, whereas the rocks of the Little Belt Mountains were not transported at all.

Erected by Montana Historical Society; Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places.

On December 5, 1875, Masons in Meagher County chartered Valley Lodge No. 21 (A.F. & A.M.) in Centerville, a farming community just north of present-day Townsend. The lodge moved to Townsend in 1884, shortly after the Northern Pacific Railroad platted the town. From 1884 to 1947 the Masons met in rented spaces, first over a store and then in the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Hall. U.S. entry into World War II delayed their plans to construct their own building. Believing that it was more important to maintain “American Liberty” than to “consider our own comforts and pleasures,” the lodge decided in January 1942 to invest the money it had saved for the building in defense bonds. After the war, Helena architect Herbert Jacobson designed the lodge in the Minimal Traditional style. More common to residences than public buildings, the style, which emphasized simplicity, grew out of the need for inexpensive but well-built homes. Although lacking the ornamentation seen on earlier Masonic temples, Jacobson’s design did incorporate two quintessential Masonic elements: a cornerstone with the Masonic symbol and a second-story, windowless room where the Masons could perform rituals away from the public eye. Contractors, working with Masonic volunteers, completed the building for $30,000. They used up-to-date materials that exemplified postwar vernacular architecture, including asbestos shingles on the exterior and, on the interior, vertical knotty pine tongue-and-groove wainscoting and fiberboard (Homasote) and plywood paneling. Dedicated in 1948, the temple served Lodge 21 until 2017.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

York (ca. 1770-1831) is the only name given for Captain William Clark's slave in the journals of Lewis and Clark (Moulton, 1988).

Lewis and Clark's journals frequently refer to York, a black slave to Captain William Clark. York played an important role in the success of the Corps of Discovery. The journals document how York tended to the sick, hunted and fished for food and contributed to wildlife observation. This muscular, black man's appearance was curious to the native people the Corps encountered and he gained their respect which helped the expedition. York was given an equal vote in the Corp's decision to winter at Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Ocean in 1805. York requested his freedom upon retiring from the expedition citing his contributions to its success. However it would not be until almost 5 years later that William Clark was successful in negotiating York's freedom as a slave. Still York remained a black man in a world of slavery and segregation, history has not fully revealed how successfully this black man who traversed the continent was able to function in a society still developing its ideals of equality and freedom.

Two places in Montana are named in his honor. Yorks 8 Islands here in Broadwater County and Yorks Dry River (now Custer Creek) in Prairie County along the Yellowstone River.

Today Yorks Islands are private property. Please respect the landowners and observe these islands from a distance.

Lewis' Journal (July 24, 1805): "we saw many beaver and some otter today; the former dam up the small channels of the river between the islands and compell the river in these parts to make other channels; which as soon as it has effected that which was stoped by the beaver becomes dry and is filled up with mud sand gravel and driftwood. the beaver is then compelled to seek another spot for his habitation wher(e) he again erects his dam. thus the river in many places among the clusters of islands is constantly changing the direction of such sluices as the beaver are capable of stoping or of 20 yds in with. this animal is that way I believe to be very instrumental in adding to the number of islands with which we find the river crouded."