Back on January 10, 2021, we crossed the Continental Divide from east to west. (We were driving through the night on the I-10 to outrun an unusual Texas cold snap, and didn't even notice the passage, between Deming and Lordsburg, New Mexico.) Five months later, on June 23, 2021, we crossed back from west to east, at MacDonald Pass on the US-12, just outside of Helena, Montana.
The U.S. Continental Divide is a part of North, Central, and South America's high places that define whether a river's waters will end up to the east (ultimately, in the Atlantic Ocean) or to the west (ultimately, in the Pacific Ocean). A fun aspect of driving days for us is looking up the details. For example, I did not know that there was more than one continental divide in North America:
In the U.S., the Continental Divide is marked by the Rocky Mountains, whose dramatic Montana peaks we would have in view for three weeks in June, from Glacier National Park to Helena. This mountain range was pushed up during tectonic plate collisions some 70 million years ago, and has been further shaped by glaciers and other erosion since.
The highlight of our time in Montana was our e-bike ride on the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. I had been skeptical, but this park lived up to all the hype. It is just stunningly, awe-inspiringly beautiful. It truly made me thankful that our country has both preserved and protected such a place, and also made it possible for American citizens and visitors to experience it. Mid-June was a splendid time to be there; we hadn't planned it, but for a few weeks in early summer the Going-to-the-Sun Road is still closed to cars (during final snow clearing and road repair) but open to bicycles. We rented an e-bike for our younger daughter from Glacier Guides and Montana Raft, who also shuttled us to Avalanche Creek, where the road closure began and bicycles reigned supreme. While we didn't make it all the way up to the Continental Divide at Logan Pass, we still saw spectacular views:
Our first stop in Montana had been Missoula, a lovely little city of about 75,000 people. Its history includes the Lewis & Clark Expedition passing through the Missoula Valley in 1805; the establishment of the Hellgate Trading Post in the 1860's, with flour and saw mills powered by the Clark Fork River; the building of roads and forts in the 1870's; and most usefully, the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883. Today, it's a lively town of business and tourism, with shops and restaurants worth visiting. It's also the only town we've ever seen with a constructed standing wave in the river for surfing and kayaking practice!
This was a return trip to Missoula for Doug and Alison; Alison's dad was a smokejumper based out of Missoula in the late 1940's, and we took a family trip with Alison's parents and sister around 1990 that included Missoula. The Missoula Smokejumper Base and Visitor Center are still there, although the Visitor Center was closed (but is expected to reopen in 2022).
Missoula isn't the only place in Montana with ties to the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the other Corps of Discovery members traveled throughout this region, tasked by President Thomas Jefferson to search for a water passage from the Missouri River to the Columbia River that would link the eastern states to the western coast. Alas, an easy river passage doesn't exist, and overland travel would remain the norm. Steven E Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage", which Doug was re-reading, took us back in time to that era, just after the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, and four decades before Britain ceded the Oregon Territory (1846) or Mexico the Spanish Territory (1848). It is fascinating to think of the Mississippi River as having been the western boundary of the United States!
Another strong theme in this area is the history and presence of Native Americans. The original tribes, often organized around a kind of collective ownership of a large land area within which a tribe was semi-nomadic, were ill-prepared to deal with the firearms, diseases, and ideologies of individual ownership and manifest destiny brought by the European settlers. How many Native Americans perished in the drive to settle the United States will never be known, but the stories of what they lost - what was taken from them - and the savage atrocities of the wars between the Native Americans and the European newcomers are more evident here, with national parks and town museums alike documenting this history in a way that was new to us. Evidence of the continuing presence of Native Americans can be seen in the names of reservations on Google Maps, the large casino resorts on the highways, and even road signs.
After Glacier National Park, we traveled south to Helena, Montana. Like our campground near Missoula, our campground in Helena also had spectacular views:
Doug e-biked some around Helena, but we didn't take advantage of much touring; an extreme heat dome had migrated from Washington and Oregon, and temperatures were reaching the high 90's each day. Even while remaining more settled, our military post campground provided interesting sights, such as historical military equipment and smokejumpers practicing:
Of course, even on a military post, there were gentler touches, such as nesting boxes that housed tree swallows:
And here's a picture of giant dandelions, because Alison thought they were cool. But also because they ably illustrate that Helena is in the Rocky Mountain Front, where the Rocky Mountains transition into the Great Plains.
As we continued east through Montana to Bozeman, Billings, and Miles City, the landscape was becoming rolling hills. Because the Rocky Mountains scrape almost all of the Pacific Ocean moisture out of the atmosphere, this is a semi-arid landscape. Fortunately, snowmelt in the southwestern corner of the state and rivers throughout Montana irrigate the numerous farms and ranches. Regional restaurants serve delicious locally-sourced food, and I stocked up on Montana wheat bread and Montana steaks!
Our last few days in Montana afforded some other great sights:
From Montana, we continued east into North Dakota, where the Great Plains really made themselves felt. The dry nature of the Plains supports grasses more easily than trees; any trees we saw were a sign of a river or human-provided irrigation.
A common Great Plains riverbank tree is the cottonwood, so named because its pollinated seeds are wrapped in white fluff to float away on the wind or a river to take root in a new spot. We had already experienced this phenomenon in Billings (Yellowstone River) and Miles City (Tongue River):
Our prime goal in North Dakota was to visit the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Theodore, of the New York City Roosevelts, was interested in natural history from a young age (his father helped found the American Museum of Natural History, and he himself captured and preserved his animal finds, especially birds, beginning in childhood). In 1883, at the age of 24, he spent two weeks in the Dakota Territory on a hunting trip. In 1884, his daughter Alice was born; two days later, his wife died of childbirth complications and his mother died of typhoid fever. Four months later, still grief-stricken, he departed the New York political scene to establish the Elkhorn Ranch in the Dakota Territory. Although the terrible winter of 1886/87 wiped out the ranch, Roosevelt continued to travel back and forth between New York and the Dakota Territory/State of North Dakota (1889) for hunting trips for the next 12 years.
Roosevelt also stayed active in politics, and married again, with five more children. He authored several books, and formed the "Rough Riders" in the Spanish-American War in Cuba. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President William McKinley, was elected Governor of New York, and agreed to be nominated as the Vice Presidential candidate for President McKinley's second term, even though the prevailing opinion at the time was that Vice President was a social rather than political role and marked the end of any political career. In Roosevelt's case, President McKinley's assassination only six months after his second inauguration catapulted Roosevelt into the Presidency at the age of 42, the youngest person to become President. President Theodore Roosevelt became known for "busting trusts", supporting the independence of Panama from Colombia and then making a treaty for the Panama Canal, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the treaty of the Russo-Japanese War.
Nowadays, President Theodore Roosevelt is perhaps best known for his conservation work: establishing five national parks (including Crater Lake, Oregon; Wind Cave, South Dakota; and Mesa Verde, Colorado), 18 national monuments, 150 national forests, and 55 federal bird and national game preserves - in total, setting aside over 230 million acres of public land. So it seems fitting that the only national park named after a person is Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
The Park is divided into three separated units: the site of Roosevelt's original Elkhorn Ranch; the North Unit; and the South Unit.
We visited the South Unit on our drive into Dickinson, North Dakota from Miles City, Montana. The craggy Badlands are not mountains but buttes; that is, they aren't lifted up (as the Rocky Mountains were) by tectonic activity, but rather worn down by erosive activity. We had to adjust our vision to see the tops of the buttes as Great Plains, and the gullies as land that had been collapsed by rivers and gravity and wind.
The South Unit also includes marvelous wildlife: prairie dog villages, bison herds, elk, pronghorn, mule deer, white-tailed deer, wild horses, coyotes, turkeys, and golden and bald eagles. We only saw prairie dogs and bison, but even that was exciting!
We had more sun when we visited the North Unit on a later day:
In addition to the National Park, we very much enjoyed our stay in Dickinson, North Dakota. This is a town absolutely worth a visit. It is vibrant and obviously cared about by its citizens and leaders. We enjoyed both a farmers' market and restaurants; we found the people to be friendly and interesting; and the Museum Center is a must-see, whether you're interested in cultural history, historical farm/pioneer equipment, dinosaurs, gemstones, or petrified wood.
The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed not only U.S. citizens but immigrants declaring their intention to become citizens to claim a 160-acre parcel of land (1/4 square mile) on which they pledged to build a permanent residence within five years. (These first homes were usually built of thick, root-bound sod cut from the prairie and stones gathered from intended cropland, i.e., fieldstone.) The North Dakota area, with its farming and ranching opportunities, attracted immigrants with similar experience. The Germans from Russia were a group who had settled sparsely populated areas of Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great (a German princess by birth) beginning in 1763, but who had faced increasing discrimination under later Czars. Other groups who immigrated to North Dakota for the Homestead Act's opportunities included Scandinavians and Eastern Europeans.
In addition to agriculture and ranching, North Dakota has a large energy sector. One of the town's nine working oil well pumps was behind our campground:
The campground owner, who had begun developing the campground some 25 years prior, said that the North Dakota Oil Boom of the early 2000's (based on hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling used on the Bakken Formation) had filled up the large campground with oil workers living in RV's. Even now, North Dakota is the number two state in the U.S. for crude oil production.
North Dakota is a heavily agricultural state:
Besides the obvious information sources of museums, roadside signs, and Wikipedia, we found two other really interesting and helpful sources about Great Plains history. One was the North Dakota Studies website (aimed at fourth graders, it was well-illustrated and engaging and just right for adult casual learners!). The other was a paperback we picked up in a National Park bookstore: "The Prairie Traveler: The Best-Selling Handbook for America's Pioneers", by Randolph B. Marcy, Captain, U.S. Army, first published in 1859. Section headings include 'The different Routes to California and Oregon', 'Repairing broken Wagons', 'Stampedes - How to prevent them', 'Rattlesnake Bites - Cures', 'Jerking Meat', and 'Meeting Indians'. We have been much entertained and enlightened by the advice in this book.
Our final stop in North Dakota was Fargo. Doug did take an e-bike ride to see the "Fargo" movie wood-chipper. But the only picture Alison has from Fargo is of our home parked near the Red River of the North:
From here we continue south to South Dakota and then Indiana, where we'll stop in for a tour of the manufacturing facility where our rig was made!
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