Big Sky Country

The last stop in North Dakota was the tourist trio of the Confluence Interpretative Center, Fort Buford, and Fort Union, right at the western edge of ND -- in fact, the parking lot for Fort Union is in Montana. The Confluence Center has a great overlook of the joining of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. As well as exhibits on Lewis & Clark and local flora, fauna and geology, there is an exhibit on the winter sports with which North Dakotans survive winter. The very first exhibit is a little pink snowsuit sized for a 3 or 4 year old girl. Aww. I learned about curling so I can better appreciate that next winter Olympics. My favorite exhibit at the Center was a tree stump that geologic forces had turned into coal. The staffer at the Center grabbed me and explained all the things to do and, having elicited the information I was traveling west, rapid fire told me all the things to do in eastern Montana, loaded me up with brochures and maps, and told me the Welcome Stop in Bainville had the country's best milkshakes.

Fort Buford was a fairly large military post, and is where Sitting Bull finally surrendered. There is still the Administration building where Sitting Bull laid down his arms, and a replica of a barracks building. Looking at the one blanket on each cot, I asked if that was all they got. The tour guide said, "No, they got two blankets, so it wasn't so bad." I asked if he was from ND, and he was. This New Mexican would need a lot more than two of those military blankets.

Fort Union was established by the American Fur Company. News to me -- a number of the forts were not military forts, but private enterprise trading forts. I guess they needed to be forts as protection against those Indian tribes that weren't happy to trade with the white man. But the reproduction of Fort Union consisted of walls painted white, roofs painted red, windows painted green, and huge fancy weathervanes atop the bastions, giving the place a bit of a Disneyland feel. The house for the Bourgeois -- the head honcho -- was huge and gaily trimmed in a Victorian style: "lavish" says the brochure. Everyone else got cramped little quarters. The salaries were interesting -- clerks who could speak several relevant languages commanded about 5 times as much as a craftsman, non-clerk interpreters about twice as much. Hunters got 4/5th the salary of an interpreter, but also got all the hides and horns of the animals they killed.

Then into Montana. I pulled in at the Welcome Stop at Bainville and said, "I hear you have the best milkshakes in the country." The attendant said, "You must have gone to the Confluence Center", but then said, "Yeah" in a tone of "OK, I'll accept that evaluation". My chocolate shake was very good, but has a serious competitor in Holly's on Kent Island, Maryland. The ham & bean soup was also good -- it had been overcast all day and now had started to rain, so was feeling cool.

In the rain, I drove to Culbertson and spent the night there in a cramped but clean motel room. The local cable channel alternated screens of community event announcements with pictures of flags, bald eagles, and soldiers, with mottos like "One Nation Under God", "Remember their Sacrifice", "America, Love It or Leave It".

Breakfast was at the Wild West Cafe, whose sign had the face of a prospector and classic cartoon vultures and the word "Espresso". I hadn't heard that expresso was big in the Wild West, but it does seem to be big in Big Sky country -- I've seen it advertised at a variety of roadside establishments here.

The highway west went through the southern edge of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, so that there were casinos in each little town. The sky was hazy at the horizon, which I at first thought was left over from the previous day's rain, but then decided must be due to forest fires in the west. As the day progressed, the sky filled with the puffy cumulous clouds spreading far into the distance that give the Big Sky Country its name.

I dropped south from Route 2 to see the Fort Peck Dam and Reservoir. This was a huge Civilian Conservation Corps project in the 1930's. The signs say it is the largest earth-fill dam in the world, although a local told me he thought Russia now has the largest. But it was big -- 3 or 4 miles across. The Interpretative Center at the toe of the dam has dinosaur skeletons, fish tanks, rocks, taxidermied mammals and birds -- a little something for everyone. The Corps of Engineers defensively pointed out that, while the dam had seriously depleted some native species, other fish that were much better fishing had done well.

At a dam overlook, there was a memorial to several workers who had been buried there when a section of the dam gave way. A Corps sign explained that investigations showed the dam had not been properly anchored given the bentonite nature of the soil. It said the dam was now perfectly safe, but didn't explain why/how it was now well anchored. I nevertheless dared to drive the road across the top of the dam, looking at the vast expanse of blue water. The reservoir is 134 miles long! with its width the typical elongated maple-leaf shape.

Then it was back on Route 2, through miles and miles of blue sky and brown/gold land. There is some cultivation of the land, but largely it is now rangeland, and is very flat up to bluffs and then flat on top those. The road crossed the Milk River a number of times. It does indeed look milky -- something to do with glacial deposits.

I had planned to drive to Great Falls, but only got to Havre -- this is a big state! The strongest stations on the radio were from Canada, including a French language station. There also was a station playing all Indian chants all the time. In general, if you don't like Country or Christian music, you are not going to be happy with radio in the north, unless you live close to a university town, in which case they probably play classical in between the NPR news shows.

A general note -- it is pleasing to see that the people who write the signs and brochures for interpretative centers and highway historic sites have struck a much more neutral tone than would have been true a few decades ago. There is much more just-the-facts reporting of what happened, without romanticizing either pioneers or Indians, and without judgments about which culture is better but with respect for both. Like the park ranger at Knife River, everyone explains everything in economic terms; e.g., the Crows and Blackfoot were hostile because the introduction of European goods from the American east upset the advantage they had had in obtaining goods from the British in the north. This trek has made me aware that the worst atrocities committed upon the Plains Indians occurred relatively recently in post-Columbian history -- the wounds are pretty fresh.

Today I visit the Havre Beneath the Streets museum, then go on to Great Falls, and decide whether to go up to Glacier, which has been experiencing a wildfire, or south to Yellowstone. Feel free to send me your opinion or any intelligence you have on how bad the fires are in Glacier.

May your skies be big and blue. Ann