The Lewis and Clark Expedition was sailing when it passed by here!

We set out at a early hour this morning and proceed on principally by the chord untill about 9 A.M. when a fine breeze sprung up for the S.E. and enabled us though the ballance of the day to employ our sails to advantage... Meriwether Lewis, May 24, 1805

An ancient seaside landscape

Sailing would have been even better over 70 million years ago!

During much of the Cretaceous Period, an expedition across North America would have required ocean-going boats. Shallow seas advance from both the north and south and sometimes met to completely split the continent. At the same time, the early Rocky Mountains were rising. Some of the mountains were explosive volcanoes, spewing volcanic ash across the whole area. Dinosaurs stomped across the land. What a time!

The modern landscape

...The country high and broken, a considerable portion of black rock and brown sandy rock appear in the faces of the hills...the whole producing but little grass... - Meriwether Lewis, May 23, 1805

The present hills and river valley were sculpted by erosion of the old Cretaceous sedimentary rocks. Most of that happened in the last 5 million years. When Lewis and Clark sailed by in 1805, the Missouri River was not where you see it today! It was flowing up against the cut bank on the opposite (south) side of the valley.

Since then, the river has snaked across its floodplain (the valley floor), as all meandering rivers will if they can. Across the river you can see a channel cut into older rocks. The little draw at its head probably used to angle down to the Missouri River when it was on the other side of the valley.

The Influence of ice In the last two million years, glaciers advanced several times from the north. At least once the ice extended past this location. A melting glacier dumped the scattered large boulders you can see around the main kiosk and on the hills all around here.

Salts

Sodium, calcium, and magnesium salts originally deposited in the ancient marine sediments are still dissolving out of the rocks into modern streams and groundwater. The salts plagued the Lewis and Clark Expedition all across central and eastern Montana. One day earlier, Lewis described the small tributaries to the Missouri:

...they afford but little water...and that is so strongly impregnated with these salts that it is unfit for use;...I have tryed it by way of experiment & find it moderately pergative, but painfull to the intestens in it's operation. - Meriwether Lewis, May 23 1805

Big clear gypsum crystals litter some exposed surfaces of the Bearpaw Shale. They grew there from minerals dissolved out of the shale. Lewis and Clark's journals consistently misidentified this mineral as "quarts" (quartz)

Geologists map of the Late Cretaceous Rocks here as two formations.

The soft sedimentary rocks of the hills and riverbanks are mud and sand eroded from the young Rocky Mountains. They were transported eastward by rivers and deposited here in the seaway and its coastal plain.

Bearpaw Shale Over 70 million years ago, the Late Cretaceous seaway covered this whole area. Mud that collected offshore in the sea is now soft, gray, thinly layered shale. It erodes to form the gently rolling hills all around you. Bearpaw Shale makes a "gumbo" soil that is very sticky and slippery when wet.

Judith River Formation Before the Bearpaw shale, about 75 million years ago, the sea was just a little east of here. The lighter colored sand and mud and thin black coal layers of this formation record estuaries, deltas, swamps, lagoons and river floodplains. The rocks are famous for dinosaur fossils - over 40 different species so far!

The Geologic Time Scale (not shown to scale)

• Divisions of geologic time were defined in the 19th Century by major changes in the fossil record.

• Most of the boundaries are marked by worldwide extinction events.

• Numerical dates were added in the 20th Century using modern rock-dating techniques.

Mesozoic Era 250 million years ago: Triassic 208 million years ago: Jurassic 144 million years ago: Cretaceous Inland seas advance and retreat across North America, Rocky Mountains formed, Judith River and Bearpaw Shale sediments deposited in the Late Cretaceous

Cenozoic Era 66 million years ago: Tertiary Erosion began, ancestral Missouri River drainage established 2 million years ago: Quaternary Ice Ages, present landscape and river established

Present Day

Erected by Bureau of Land Management and The University of Montana, Western.

The land around Kootenai Falls has been explored and used for thousands of years by the Kootenai or Tunaxa People. The Kootenai tribe made up of seven bands, two in U.S. and five in Canada.

European traders and surveyors were lured to the region in the early 1800s by the land, abundant wildland and adventure. In 1808, during the fur trade period, David Thompson and four other men in a large canoe, put ashore in rains and high winds at the head of the falls Thompson described as “heavy, long falls between 2 steep hills.” Not able to run the falls they portaged or carried their canoes and loads across land which took approximately 15 trips of 1.5 hours each!

Father Pierre DeSmet, a Jesuit Missionary, explored the region between 1842 and 1847. His description of the surrounding area described it as “a smiling and accessible valley.” This positive opinion changed as he moved farther upstream and had to make an eight mile portage around the falls. He mentions making the crossing in a “quadrupedal position,” meaning that he was crawling on his hands and knees!

After the early explorers, the first development in the

Kootenai Valley began with the construction of the Great Northern Railroad. Several potential routes were surveyed to cross the Rocky and Cascade Mountains to the Pacific coast. The northern railroad route was selected and ran along the Kootenai River, from Flathead Lake, on to Spokane, Washington. Production of the ties alone, cut from larch and fir, created a new industry since untreated timber only lasted 5 to 10 years. The railroad line, following the south bank to the Kootenai River, reached Libby in April 1891.

The original highway, along the Kootenai River, was built between 1912 and 1915 and was called the Great Parks National Automobile Highway. It was envisioned, according to the Lincoln County Commissioners Proceedings, to “open a wagon highway between the east and the west, cutting the country through the center.” A Western News article announced the coming of a “magnificent automobile road.” The anticipated one year construction stretched into three, making this the most expensive stretch of highway built in the northwest! The two remaining segments of the old highway can still be accessed as a trail from Highway 2. The new highway was completed in 1934.

The highway and the railroad continue to bring travelers and explorers like you to enjoy the beautiful Kootenai River Valley.

The river is named for the Kootenai tribe that lived and hunted in this part of Montana and adjoining territory in Idaho and Canada. They were settled south of Flathead Lake in 1855 with the Salish on the Flathead Reservation.

They were friendly with neighboring mountain tribes but suffered frequently from the incursions of their bitter enemies the Blackfeet, who came across the Continental Divide from the plains on horse stealing and scalp raising expeditions.

First white men in here were trappers and traders for British fur companies as early as 1809. Placer discoveries were made and mining operations commenced about sixty years later.

The Missouri River is a meandering oasis; a striking contrast to the harsh environment of the surrounding prairie For centuries, American Indians were drawn to this area to hunt game and gather plants. Ancient camps and bison kill sites are evidence of human dependance on the river. As a route of western expansion, the Missouri River had few equals. Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri westward as they searched for a route to the Pacific. For decades after that, the Missouri River served as a gateway to Montana.

Lewis and Clark passed here with their Corps of Discovery on May 24, 1805, during the second year of their adventure, and camped just 2 1/2 miles up river. Members of the expedition sailed and poled, but mostly pulled their boats up river, averaging 13 miles a day agains the formidable current.

On the heels of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, fur traders struggled up river with cumbersome keelboats and began opening the area for settlement. Later, steamboats brought the miners, settlers and adventurers and the supplies necessary to make settlement a reality.

Few names are more prominent in Missouri

River history than James Kipp. Born in Montreal in 1788, he was a fur trader, fort builder and steamboat captain. In 1831, he established Fort Piegan, 128 river miles above here (where the Marias River flows into the Missouri). It was the first American Fur Company trading post on the Missouri west of Fort Union (which was located on the current Montana/North Dakota border). He returned down river the following spring with more than 4,000 beaver pelts and many other smaller furs. He retired in 1859, after 41 years in the fur trade business. This recreation area is named after him.

Until 1860, all river travel west of Fort Union was a difficult and physical task. Most travelers had to literally pull their boats up river against the current. But in 1860, the steamboat Chippewa reached Fort Benton and proved the treacherous Missouri navigable to that point. Over the next 30 years, tons of supplies and thousands of people booked passage into central Montana on the steamer. The boats returned down river with the wealth of the frontier; gold, pelts, buffalo robes and eventually beef and wool.

As well as it served those going east of west, the Missouri River was a major obstacle to north and south travel. Until late in the 1950s, ferries provided the only way of crossing the river between Fort Peck Dam and Fort Benton. The ferries proved quite dependable...except for when the water was too high, too low, or frozen. Then in 1959, the Fred Robinson Bridge, which you can see to you northwest, was dedicated. It was named for Fred Robinson of Malta, a state senator for 40 years and the driving fires behind its construction.

Today, this portion of the Upper Missouri is a national treasure. Up river to Fort Benton, it is a National Wild and Scenic River. Down river to Fort Peck, it forms the heart of the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.

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