Montana’s Historical Highway Markers, 3rd

by Jon Axline and Glenda Clay Bradshaw

• ISBN13: 9780917298172
• ISBN10: 0917298179
• Format: Trade Paper
• Publisher: Montana Historical Society Press

Summary

Montana's colourful history is recounted on the over two hundred roadside markers dot that roadsides across the state. These signs provide a fascinating introduction to Montana history for tourists and Montanans alike. The third edition of Montana's Historical Highway Markers, revised, newly illustrated with historic photographs, and significantly expanded, shares the text to these markers with easy-to-follow maps to guide you to the signs' locations. Over 100 historical photos and new entries on Lewis & Clark and geological features supplement this new edition. Buffalo jumps, gold strikes, mining disasters, and famous battles all get their due in these roadside signs, as do dinosaurs, epidemics, irrigation projects, railroads, wagon roads, and wilderness areas. In short, the story of Montana's people is offered up in lively prose for the enjoyment of every Montanan and tourist alike.

Author Biography

Jon Axline is the Montana Department of Transportation historian and the author of Conveniences Sorely Needed: Montana’s Historic Highway Bridges, 1860-1956.  

Excerpts

6.     Camp Disappointment

        U.S. 2, MP 233, east of Browning

The monument on the hill above was erected by the Great Northern Railway in 1925 to commemorate the farthest point north reached by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–06. Captain Meriwether Lewis, with three of his best men, left the main party at the Missouri River and embarked on a side trip to explore the headwaters of the Marias River. He hoped to be able to report to President Jefferson that the headwaters arose north of the 49th parallel, thus extending the boundaries of the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase.

The party camped on the Cut Bank River July 22–25, 1806, in a “beautifull and extensive bottom.” Deep in the territory of the dreaded Blackfeet, the men were uneasy. Lewis wrote, “gam[e] of every discription is extreemly wild which induces me to believe that the indians are now, or have been lately in this neighbourhood.” Lewis could see from here that the river arose to the west rather than to the north, as he had hoped. Disheartened by this discovery, by the cold, rainy weather, and by the shortage of game, Lewis named this farthest point north Camp Disappointment, the actual site of which is four miles directly north of this monument.

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Excerpted from Montana's Historical Highway Markers
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