More Big (but Smoky) Sky

Havre (pronounced Haver) Underground came about due to a fire in 1900 or so which destroyed the downtown. While rebuilding, the businesses moved down into their basements. A sidewalk was built around them and grates with glass prisms were installed to provide light for this subterranean business district -- a predecessor of the underground malls in Toronto and Montreal. Discovering that it was cool there in the summer and warm out of the elements in the winter, some businesses just stayed down there until about 1930. Havre Underneath the Streets, Inc. now gives tours. Some of what you see is what was originally there, other rooms house replicas of businesses that were never underground, but are historically interesting. One of the original businesses was a bordello. The beds, separated only by a curtain, were rather proximate -- perhaps after all the drinks at the next door saloon, the cowboys didn't care. A sad commentary: the bordello used space that originally was a safe house for the Chinese -- the place they went at night to escape racist violence above. Fun funereal facts dispensed on the tour: folding chairs were first patented by a funeral director, and pickup trucks are so called because they first were used to pick up dead bodies. Near the end of the tour there was a prohibition-era still, and someone said that people were starting to reuse their stills to make ethanol fuel.

Traveling southwest from Havre the land was gold-brown grass to the horizon, except for the purple of the Bears Paw Mountains to the south. The sky was clear but not classic Big Sky blue, due to wildfire smoke. After about 50 some miles of the vast emptiness, a large complex valley opened up -- it was the confluence of the Marias, Teton and Missouri rivers. Each river is flanked by buff bluffs. After dropping into the valley, the road went in between the Missouri and the Teton. This was slow going, due to road work, so there was plenty of time to contemplate the bluffs. They were gullied perpendicular to the river, but then cross cut straight down by the river erosion, so that the bluffs presented a series of triangular faces. After awhile, the main road went back up onto the plain, but I soon turned onto the road to Fort Benton, which dropped down again to the river.

Fort Benton is a little gem of a town. It is at the upstream end of the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. The river there is wide and placid between bluff on the far side and levee on the town side, reflecting the green of the cottonwoods and the ribs of a bridge built in 1888. Fort Benton was the end of the line for steamships coming up the Missouri -- further up was a series of 5 falls that blocked passage (Lewis and Clark's party had a terribly difficult 18 mile portage around them). Goods were offloaded at Fort Benton and carted by oxen teams to the mines and to Canada. This port was Montana's first and for a time most important city. But then land negotiations with the railroad went sour, the railroad bypassed Fort Benton, and the town's fortunes declined. The fortunes are repaid to present day residents, for there is no railroad between Front Street and the river, and there is park and a foot/bike path all along the riverfront. I sat in the park to contemplate the peaceful water and enjoy the temperate air. While there, a small farmers market gathered in the park. There was only one table with vegetables -- others were breads and pies and arts and crafts, but it was a friendly and pleasant community gathering, and my peach pie was excellent. I had meant to drive to Great Falls that day, but decided to spend the night in this sweet spot.

The next day, the road on to Great Falls passed through wheat fields, again brown and gold stretching far into the distance. To the east was the purple silhouette of the Highwood Mountains. In Great Falls, I first went to the C.M. Russell museum complex. Russell lived in Montana in the period of transition from Plains Indians to frontiersmen to "tamed" West, and beautifully documented it in oil, watercolor, pencil and sculpture. The museum complex consists of Russell's log cabin studio, the house of him and Nancy Russell, and a well done modern museum, filled with roomy galleries of the art of Russell, his contemporaries, and modern painters of western themes. One of the delights was the hall of framed letters that Russell had written to friends, with beautiful tiny paintings on the letterhead as part of his communication.

After quiche at the museum cafe, I went to the Great Falls visitor center on an overlook above the city, and from there followed the riverside drive to the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center, below the highest of the 5 great falls (Black Eagle Falls). The falls have been dammed to capture the hydroelectric power -- a couple are under water and the others have only a trickle of water, most of the river flow channeled through the turbines. Below the Interpretative Center is Great Springs -- a pool about 25 feet in diameter with springs welling up right next to the Missouri. Most of the water spills directly into the Missouri, but some also goes down a distinct channel before joining the river. This is Roe River, and, at 201 feet in length, is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest river in the world. On below that is Rainbow Falls. A dam sits on a shelf of red rock that crosses the river in a straight line. A sign on the overlook has a drawing of what the falls would have looked like, and a quote by Meriwether Lewis about it being "one of the most beautiful objects of nature." "Its edges regular and straight as if formed by art, water dashing against the rocky bottom rises into foaming billows and glides away hissing, flashing and sparkling . . . ." Now it is a dry shelf of rock. The multicolored bluff and the full channel downstream are still quite pretty, and the lights are on in Great Falls.

I would have stayed in Great Falls so as to take a bike ride along the river in the morning, but there was no room at the inn -- the state fair is happening. So, having decided to go to Glacier, I drove northwest to Choteau (SHOW-toe). (Names like Choteau and Havre reflect the early French presence here.) To the west is the front range, and the views must be spectacular on a clear day. Right now they are hazy due to the wildfire smoke. I spent a day in Choteau, where not much is happening, making it easy to rest. At one point, I looked out the window and thought that, despite the forecast for sunny, it had clouded over. It was all smoke. On now to see how much of Glacier I can see.