Montana's Hi-Line

 

Wherein Moominmama visits an unusual local museum and a "buffalo jump" on the northern road across Montana...

Montana's Hi-Line runs along the Canadian border, far from the bigger cities to the south. Most of this is rolling grassland, and Moominmama found a picturesque and private spot to camp just south of Havre, about halfway across the state.

Havre was originally named Bullhook Bottoms, as it was located below the volcanic Bullhook peaks which have a divot as if a giant bison bull had hooked out a chunk of the rock. 

Moominmama did a short hike of the hills but wasn't sure exactly which divot was the "bullhook."

Back at the turn of the century though, the owner of the Great Northern Railway who was planning a major railroad stop in the community, urged the community to pick a more dignified name, and the French locals opted for Havre. 

Havre, in those early days, was as wild west as it gets. 

In 1904, two local cowboys visiting the saloon got annoyingly inebriated to the point that the owner kicked them out. They plotted revenge and set the building on fire. By the time the fire died out, it had destroyed the entire downtown.

The businesses got creative. Since many of them had full basements, they set up their businesses below ground; floors became ceilings, and before long, they'd created the first underground mall. 

That historical underground has become a very unusual town museum! The nonprofit Havre Beneath the Streets set up the businesses as they might have appeared, including the saloon. But there was also a bordello, a small sausage factory and meat market, a pharmacy, barber shop and dental office.

The close proximity of the businesses, connected by tunnels, led to some unpleasantness -- the meat market was close to the bordello, so shoppers couldn't help but hear some of those goings on, reportedly.

The town also uses the underground to feature other aspects of their history, like a display of vintage dresses or local newspapers announcing world events (Victory! Bloodiest War of Europe is Over, Stern Warning to Japan Made) not all of which were part of the roughly four or five years the business community went underground. 

And this history is all hidden under a small section of a contemporary town that's been entirely rebuilt. The tour was great fun if a bit musty!

Havre also hosts an archeological site where hunters drove buffalo over cliffs to provide their tribes with meat and skins. It was closed when Moominmama stopped by, but a similar site just outside Great Falls to the west provided another opportunity to see an ancient buffalo jump at First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park, pictured here.

Prior to widespread use of horses, tribes would work together, with a few "runners" wearing bison pelts, making noises like a distressed calf mixing with a herd and getting it moving. If they could get the lead bison moving toward the cliff, all the rest of the herd would follow, and the runners would try to create a panic. Other tribe members are believed to have stood near stone cairns, waving and making noise to direct the herd. The grasslands above the cliff don't immediately reveal the presence of the drop-off unless you see how far the landscape lies below. 

Apparently bison are very nearsighted. And once you get them all running, they are hard to stop. Even if one animal stops at the ledge, he's likely to get shoved off by the animals behind him. What the human runners do, though, is drop down onto one of the ledges. They appear to go over the top but then tuck themselves immediately below as the bison fall the full distance.

Per the state park, bison bones once lay 13-feet deep below the cliff. In the 1940s, an enterprising family dug them up and had them ground up for fertilizer for Victory Gardens and farms during World War II. They took out 300,000 cubic yards of bones!

The site has also been excavated by archeologists who found evidence of ancient human tools. Besides the buffalo jump, the state park also promotes its natural prairie because visitors can clearly see the contrast between the grass in the former farmlands below and contrasting diversity of plant life at the base of the cliffs.

And as it turned out, it wasn't just plant life. Moominmama met a prairie rattlesnake on the trail up to the cliff and got rattled at! Good to know my reflexes can still haul me backwards in a jiffy. A careful detour brought me further up the path, but I may have missed some views watching my feet after that.

Still, keeping my eyes on the ground brought me this pretty picture below! While the heat (high 90s and beyond) has limited my hiking, I head next to the Lewis and Clark National Forest, just south of Glacier National Park, where I plan to camp along the Sun River. There I hope to get some of the beauty of the Northern Rockies without the Glacier crowds!