Bannack forms the foundation of modern Montana

The town site of Bannack is a dot on the map, a mere speck in a vast sea of rugged mountains and broad valleys carpeted in sagebrush and bunchgrass.

This corner of Montana remains relatively unspoiled, the terrain little changed since Lewis and Clark threaded their way toward the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, just west of Bannack.

Even today, the marks of civilization are dwarfed by the landscape. It’s a 1,507-foot climb from downtown Bannack to the nearby 7,287-foot summit of Bannack Peak. From its top, long views extend 20 miles south to the Tendoy Mountains — named for a chief of the Bannock Indians — and 30 miles to the southwest and the 10,000-foot and higher peaks of the Beaverhead Range and the Continental Divide.

Closer in, 10,565-foot Baldy Mountain of the Rocky Hills forms Badger Pass and carries Highway 278 from the Beaverhead Valley and the Dillon area to the Grasshopper Creek Valley. The Rocky Hills are the mountains that cradle Bannack and concealed the desired gold.

Bannack’s western horizon is framed by the Big Hole Divide, a knobby ridge connecting the West Pioneers to the Beaverhead Range. Here, Highway 278 crosses over Big Hole Pass down into the sprawling Big Hole Valley, legendary for fishing, haystacks, tough winters and mosquitoes. During Bannack’s heyday, the Big Hole — along with the Beaverhead and Grasshopper valleys — was the heart of Montana’s emerging cattle industry.

The rugged terrain, harsh climate and expansive ranching operations have sheltered the region from the more obtrusive inroads of human development. Today’s vistas would not be unfamiliar to the area’s first inhabitants.

Thousands of years before gold brought white men into this country, prehistoric people knew the area around Bannack. A quarry site in a gulch near Horse Prairie Creek has been dated back 12,000 years, and archeologists have found medicine wheels and stone hunting points 8,000 to 10,000 years old.

Sometime near the year 1700, the Shoshone Tribe came into Montana. Horses gave them an advantage over other tribes and allowed the Shoshone to dominate a wide territory, extending from the far western reaches of the Bitterroot and Beaverhead mountains well out onto the high plains east of the northern Rockies.

Then several bands of the Blackfeet Nation drifted to the Montana prairie from Canada. Acquiring horses and guns, they drove the Shoshone off the plains and into the high valleys along the Continental Divide.

Pushed into a smaller range, the Shoshone and their allies, the Bannocks and Sheepeaters, chose to live in the region that would become Idaho, crossing back over the passes of today’s Beaverhead Mountains into the southwest province to hunt. With the exception of well-worn native trails and migratory camps, signs of human presence remained minimal. Soon, though, all this would change.

The first known white men to reconnoiter the upper Beaverhead River were Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. As they struggled up the Beaverhead, which they called Jefferson’s River, they were anxious for signs of the Shoshone. Sacajawea had assured the party her people would be friendly and would trade horses to help them over the high mountain passes of the Rockies.

Camping near the confluence of the Red Rock River and Horse Prairie Creek, the Corps named Horse Prairie Creek Valley “Shoshone Cove” and their campsite “Camp Fortunate” for their luck in finding the Shoshone to trade for horses.

On Aug. 12, 1805, Meriwether Lewis ventured up Horse Prairie Creek and became the first known white person to cross Montana’s Continental Divide when he stepped onto 7,373-foot Lemhi Pass in the Beaverhead Range.

In July 1806, after returning from the Pacific, the Corps of Discovery divided into two groups. Lewis stayed north, returning to the Great Falls of the Missouri. Clark and his men retraced their route through the Bitterroot Valley before crossing into the Big Hole and camping near the headwaters of Divide Creek.

Recognizing the beginnings of a creek he had discovered the year before, he wrote “some butifull Springs … fall into Willards (Grasshopper) Creek … I now take my leave of this butifull extensive vally which I call the hot spring Vally, and behold one less extensive and much more rugid on Willards Creek.”

The tranquility of the landscape the Corps of Discovery left behind in this part of the country had a very short future.

Rick and Susie Graetz teach at the Department of Geography at the University of Montana.