40. Sweet Grass County

The Sweet Grass County website can't be beat for introducing this county in south central Montana.  They state:

The county of Sweet Grass (two words) is located in south central Montana. Don’t confuse the town of Sweetgrass with the county of Sweet Grass. The town of Sweetgrass (one word) is located on the Canadian border in Toole County in north central Montana.

Sweet Grass County came into being in 1895. It was formed out of parts of Park, Meager, and Yellowstone Counties. Between 1910 and 1920 parts of Sweet Grass County were taken to form Stillwater, Wheatland and Golden Valley Counties. It has been its present size since 1920. Sweetgrass (Hierochloe odorata) is, of course, a native plant used by indigenous people for centuries in purification rituals.  I'm sure that the folk who named Sweet Grass County were thinking more of attracting settlers by suggesting that this would be good farming country, with plenty of good sweet grass for cattle.

The Sweet Grass County Courthouse

Big Timber, Montana

In keeping with the two word, Chamber of Commerce approved county name, the seat of Sweet Grass County is Big Timber.  Curiously, both Sweetgrass and Big Timber are names of films--the former a semi-documentary about a family of sheepherders in the mountains of south central Montana and the latter a silent film from 1917 set in the northern woodlands.  Whether this means Montana woodlands or not, I do not know.

Big Timber the city got its start with the construction of a saw mill at the confluence of the Boulder and Yellowstone Rivers.  The settlement that grew up around the mill was named Dornix, but the town's location was subject to flooding as not only do two rivers flow together at this location, but Big Timber Creek enters the Yellowstone from the north just a short distance from where the Boulder flows in from the south.  In 1883 the Northern Pacific Railroad reached the area and built a station for the town which was soon renamed Big Timber honoring the large cottonwood trees growing along the stream fronts.   The town was incorporated in 1902 and remains the only incorporated community in the county.

Outside The Sweet Grass County Courthouse

Big Timber, Montana

Sheep have long been an important part of the county's economy.  Do a Google search for Sheep Raising in Sweet Grass County, Montana, and you'll find pages of websites devoted to the topic.  The City of Big Timber reports on its website that sheep raising in the area began in 1880 when Charles McDonnell and Edward Veasey drove 3,000 sheep from California to the area.  Note that this was before Montana became a state, and more importantly, before the Northern Pacific Railroad built its line across Montana.  The site further states that in 1901, Montana's first woolen mill was built in Big Timber, and that at one time, Big Timber shipped more wool than any other community in the United States.  The Langhus Sheep Ranch's website states: "Sheep raising has always been the leading industry in Sweet Grass County (Montana).  By 1895, the wool shipment reached the enormous figure of 4,138,763 pounds."  I have already written about the Annual Running of the Sheep in Reedpoint, just across the county line in neighboring Stillwater County (32).

Antelope in the foreground, Absaroka Mountains in the Background

Aside from ranching, and more recently the mining of palladium and platinum which I wrote about in my Stillwater County post, outdoor recreation is a major draw, as it is throughout Montana.  With the Absaroka Mountains to the south and the Crazy Mountains (aka the Crazy Woman Mountains) to the north, the two divided by the Yellowstone River, and the Boulder River flowing north out of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, there are plenty of reasons to spend vacation time in Sweet Grass County.  My own childhood memories include many trips to the Boulder River where my father loved to fish.  It's no wonder that half the items on the Chamber's list of "10 things you can do" involve fishing, hiking, floating the river, or just getting outdoors.  In fairness, they list some fun things to do indoors as well.

If the shooting sports are of interest, you may wish to visit the C. Sharps Arms Co., Inc., located in Big Timber since 1980.  Shiloh Rifle Manufacturing is also located in Big Timber, and has been building rifles there since 1976.  As the DistinctlyMontana website dedicated to Big Timber puts it, 

"Within shooting distance of each other, C. Sharpe Arms and Shiloh Rifles offer their worldwide clientele the finest quality in custom-made, single shot rifles. According to owner, John Schoffstall, custom rifles from C. Sharpe Arms have been in great demand since he set up shop in 1975. Both C. Sharps and Shiloh sell their product worldwide through both reputation and the Internet."  

It was just outside of Big Timber that I was introduced to black powder shooting by my friend Dave Christensen, a man dedicated to eradicating hunger by reintroducing open pollinated corn to the world.  While not a native of Sweet Grass County, nor even of Montana, Dave has made Big Timber his home for several decades now.  He is a self-described "Mountain Man" and has taught Native American groups how to brain-tan hides as well as other traditional crafts many native people have lost in recent times.

The Crazy Mountains

Today, Sweet Grass County is home to 3,669 people (US Census 2013 estimate).  This figure is considerably lower than the 1920 count (4,926) but up from the 1970 count (2,980).  The county voters are overwhelmingly Republican, and have always been.  President Obama, for example, received only 22% of the county's vote in 2012, and the only Democrat to win the county in a Presidential election was FDR in 1936.  More to the point, in 1916 and 1932, Sweet Grass County was the only county in Montana to vote for the Republican candidate.  While almost 90% of the county's population over the age of 25 has graduated from high school, less than one quarter has a bachelor's degree or higher.  According to City-Data.com, 27% of males and 12% of females are involved in agriculture.  The average size farm is 2,429 acres, and the average income per farm is $46,718.  Compare this with the average expense of $48,745, and once again we see that family farming is a constant struggle.

39. Fallon County

Following the arrival of the Milwaukee Road (The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad) in 1908, an influx of settlers raised the local population to the point that in 1913, they successfully petitioned for a county of their own, separated from Custer County (14) and named for Benjamin O'Fallon, an early Indian Agent and nephew of William Clark.  Over the next few years, the new county lost area in the formation of Wibaux County (52), Prairie County (45), and Carter County (42).  (Note:  Fallon County's website says that Carter County was formed from land taken from Fallon in 1913.  Most other historical records show that Carter County was not created until 1917.)  Almost from the beginning the town of Baker, Fallon County's largest community has been the seat.  When the county was first created, the towns of Baker and Ekalaka (now seat of neighboring Carter County) fought for the honor of being county seat.  Ekalaka won the first vote, but a year later a second election was held and Baker won.  By this time, the citizens from the Ekalaka area had already decided to form their own county, so they didn't fight to keep the Fallon seat in their town.

City-County Administration Building

Baker, Montana

The original Fallon County Courthouse was a three-story white frame building (two stories above ground and a full daylight basement) built in 1915.  In 1975, that building was torn down and the current City-County Administration Building was constructed.  Just around the corner is the original Fallon County Jail, now home of the O'Fallon Historical Museum.  The O'Fallon Historical Society, formed in 1968, is the sponsor of the Museum, and in 1975 the Society published a book O'Fallon Flashbacks, a history of the county to date.  That book is available for sale at the Museum as a fund-raiser for the Society, and it has been digitized as part of the Montana Historical Society's Montana Memory Project.  I haven't (yet) read all 549 pages, but the one question I would dearly love answered is why, if the county was named for a man named O'Fallon, did the O' get dropped?

The Original Fallon County Jail

Now the O'Fallon Museum

Baker, Montana

Today, according to Wikipedia, there are just three communities in Fallon County.  Baker is the only "city," and Plevna, the only "town," but there is also an unincorporated community named Willard some thirteen miles south of Baker on Montana Highway 7, the only north-south highway in the county.  Up until 1995, Willard had a U.S. Post Office, and it still has its own Zip Code (59354), but there's not much else left of the town.  Nonetheless, it has its own chapter in O'Fallon Flashbacks, appropriately titled "Willard--The Birth of a Community."  Turns out the area was settled largely by a group of folk recruited by the Milwaukee Railroad in Minnesota.  The land around Baker, where the railroad ran cross country, was largely what we in Montana call "gumbo," and unsuited for farming.  South of town, however, the gumbo gives way to good arable land, and that's where the Minnesotans settled.  In 1909, one of these settlers, Fred Anderson, decided to apply for a Post Office Permit.  The name "Anderson" had already been taken, so he proposed using his own middle name, and thus was the community of Willard born.  With help from folks in Baker, the people of Willard built a community hall which hosted dances, dinners, and church, the building being used on alternate Sundays by the Lutherans and the Wesleyan Methodists.  The community even boasted its own baseball team, but over time, drought killed the farms, the young people moved away for other opportunities, and the town withered.

Plevna, thirteen miles west of Baker on U.S. Highway 12, started out as a railroad town.  The Milwaukee Railroad brought in a number of Bulgarian workers who named the community for their hometown, Pleven (Плевен), today the seventh largest city in Bulgaria.  The Montana town is not as distinguished, with a 2013 estimated population of 179 (up from an all time low of 138 recorded in the 2000 Census).  According to the Plevna chapter in O'Fallon Flashbacks, the name comes from a Russian (I'm guessing Slavic) word for churches, and at one time, Plevna had six churches, as well as a store, a bank, and a post office.  The Wikipedia article for the Bulgarian city of the same name gives the etymology of the name as Slavic for either "barn" or "weed," both of which are plentiful in eastern Montana.  

South Sandstone Reservoir

(one of my favorite photographs)

South of Plevna, Montana

Turn south off US 12 at Plevna, and you'll drive across the rolling grasslands so prevalent in eastern Montana.  Just east of the county road lies South Sandstone Reservoir, one of the largest bodies of water in Fallon County, covering 679 acres.  There is a fishing access on the lake, and a small campground.  I spent a nearly sleepless night tenting alongside the reservoir, wondering all the time if my tent was going to blow away, taking me and the tent to Oz, or worse, North Dakota.  Wikipedia maintains that there are six bodies of water that could be classified as "lakes" in Fallon County, but the only other one that I have seen is Baker Lake found, appropriately enough, on the eastern edge of the city of Baker.  Both Baker Lake and South Sandstone Reservoir are popular local recreation sites, but to paraphrase one Fallon County writer, the county is so remote from the rest of the world, that it's usually only locals visiting the various sites in the area.  Personally, I feel this is unfortunate, although as near as I can tell, Benjamin O'Fallon himself never set foot in the county named for him.  There is a lot to see and do in Fallon County, and while the photo above gives credence to the wide spread belief that eastern Montana is flat, the fact is that there are hills, small mountains even, throughout the area.  Seven Up Butte and Bearhorn Butte flank the dirt road that leads from Plevna to Montana Highway 7 near Willard.  At 3,455 and 3,553 feet respectively, they're the 2859th and 2812th highest mountains in all of Montana.  We won't tell where they rank nationally.

Southern Fallon County Landscape

Don't tell me it's flat

38. Glacier County

The area bordering Canada and reaching east from the Continental Divide was originally part of Chouteau County (#19), and became part of Teton County (#31) when western Chouteau County was broken off.  In 1919, the state Legislature took the northern part of Teton County to create Glacier County.  The two main towns in the county were Cut Bank and Browning, and after a bitter fight, Cut Bank was chosen as the Seat.  It's important to note that by the time the Legislature created Glacier County, most of the land base for the county was outside the County's tax-base.  The Blackfeet Reservation, created by treaty in 1855 (before the creation of Montana Territory) and the eastern half of Glacier National Park (created in 1910) take up most of the land area of Glacier County.  Only a narrow strip of land bordering Toole County (#21) lies outside Federal or Tribal jurisdiction, a strip approximately eleven miles wide.  Or to put it another way, nearly 71% of the County's land area is within the Blackfeet Reservation and another 20.6% lies within Glacier National Park.  Not surprisingly, over 60% of the County's population is Native American.  The 2010 U.S. Census counted 13,399 county residents and the 2012 estimate of 13,711 is the highest population count in the County's history.

The Glacier County Courthouse

Cut Bank, Montana

The County Seat, Cut Bank, traces its history to the coming of the Great Northern Railroad in the 1890s.  It takes its name from Cut Bank Creek, one of the main water courses in the County, a stream which the Native folk called "the river that cuts into the white clay bank," according to the city's web site.  According to that same site, the city was originally located on the west side of the creek, but when it was discovered that the location was on Reservation land, the city fathers up and moved the town across the creek.  Today, the railroad bridge across the creek is one of the notable features of the local architectural landscape.

Rail Bridge across Cut Bank Creek

Based on the pictures above, one could reasonably conclude that Glacier County's topography is part of the Great Plains, flat to gently rolling land that stretches from the Canadian Rockies to the Mississippi River.  But we cannot forget that the County takes its name from Glacier National Park and the County extends west to the Continental Divide where it joins Flathead County (#7).  The western portion of the County is stunningly beautiful with countless vistas of mountains and lakes to capture the viewer's attention.  The Blackfeet called this area the Backbone of the World, and one of the common nicknames for Glacier National Park is the Crown of the Continent,  a phrase first used by George Bird Grinnell in 1901.  

The Siksika (Blackfoot) people are the largest population group in Glacier County.  An Algonquian speaking people, the Siksika are believed to have originated in the area north of the Great Lakes.  (There is considerable controversy over the English name of the tribe. Officially known as the Blackfeet Nation, tribal members point out that in their own language, the term is singular, not plural, and many use Blackfoot instead.  Rather than get into that battle, for the purposes of this essay, I shall use the term Siksika.)  In advance of European settlement, the Siksika moved westward and by the 1700s were living in what is now Saskatchewan.  By the 1800s, they were the dominant tribe in the northern plains, and their home territory reached westward to the Rocky Mountains and south to the Yellowstone River and beyond.  The Blackfeet Treaty of Fort Benton, signed in 1855 when Montana east of the Divide was known as Nebraska Territory, allocated almost two thirds of what is now eastern Montana to the Siksika people.  As has happened repeatedly in US/Native American relations, that reserved land has been taken time and again, and today's Blackfeet Reservation covers less than 1,500,000 acres, with over one third of that owned by non-Native people.  Note that the Blackfeet Reservation, unlike the Flathead Reservation west of the Divide, was never opened to non-Native settlement.  However, between 1907 and 1911, tribal lands were allotted to individual members, and those lands could be sold, and often were sold to non-Native people so that the original owners could have money to live on.  Today, the Tribe has first right of refusal allowing it to buy back reservation land being sold by non-Native land owners.  

Colorful Tipis at a private campground at St Mary's

Eastern edge of Glacier National Park

Unfortunately, these tipis, photographed in 2009 and not at all authentic, no longer exist

In 1896, the Tribe sold the western extent of its much reduced reservation for the sum of $1,500,000 with the intent that the land sold would be used for mineral exploration.  Fortunately, for us, not enough minerals were found to lead to the kind of land rush that has happened elsewhere under similar circumstances, and in 1910 this area was set aside as Glacier National Park.  The Great Northern Railroad built a series of hotels and chalets through the park with the goal of increasing tourism (and not-so-coincidentally rail travel revenues), and the railroad advertised the "Switzerland of America" heavily.  By the early 1930s, it became obvious that a road would need to be built through the mountains of the Park, and in 1932, Going-to-the-Sun Road was completed, connecting Apgar Village near West Glacier to Lake McDonald and St. Mary's on the eastern edge of the park, traversing 6,647 foot Logan Pass on its way across the park.  To this day, Going-to-the-Sun is the only road that crosses the Park, although U.S. Highway 2 connects West Glacier with East Glacier and follows the southern edge of the Park, with less than ten miles of the highway actually within the Park's borders.  In 1932, thanks to the efforts of people on both sides of the U.S./Canadian border, Glacier Park and the adjoining Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta were connected under the name Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.  This was the first international park in the world.  Today there are 170 such parks.  This is also the only place on the 5,525 mile U.S./Canadian border where you can cross the line without showing documentation.  (Note that I have never tried to enter Canada, or re-enter the U.S. by taking the boat trip across Waterton Lake.  Also note that should you try to enter the U.S. this way, you'll have a long hike from Goat Haunt at the southern end of the lake to any road or highway that will get you further into the U.S.)  

St Mary's Lake

Glacier National Park

37. Daniels County

One of the most fascinating tidbits I've found while researching Montana counties is that according to an analytic tool called the Index of Relative Rurality(IRR), Daniels County, Montana, is the most rural county of all 3100 plus counties in the United States.  The county came into being on June 1, 1920, when the Legislature took a portion of northeastern Valley County (#20) and western Sheridan County (#34) to create the new entity which was named for a local rancher, Mansfield Daniels.  The county covers 1,427 square miles, almost all of which is dry land.  As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 1,751 people called Daniels County home.  As is so often the case in eastern Montana, the most recent Census is also the lowest population count in a county that has steadily lost population since it first appeared in the U.S. Census in 1930 when 5,553 people claimed it as their home.  Daniels County lies on the Canadian border, bordering the province of Saskatchewan.  Only Sheridan County (#34) separates Daniels from North Dakota.  Topographically, the land is rolling prairie, and the county has more ghost towns than actual thriving centers.  And if you're still pondering that "most rural county" status, it's based on, among other things: a) population; b) population density; c) extent of urbanized area; and d)  distance from a metropolitan area.  And no, I have no idea what c means.  As for d, Scobey, the Daniels County Seat, is 150 miles from Regina, Saskatchewan, 225 miles from Minot, North Dakota, and over 300 miles from Montana's largest city, Billings.  Let's just say that if you don't want to shop at the local market, you've got a fur piece to drive.

The Daniels County Court House

Scobey, Montana

The Daniels County Court House is pretty much what I expected to find in rural county seats around Montana.  To me, it looks like what an Old West county courthouse should.   In actuality, it's one of a kind, at least in Montana.  And we can't even call it the Old West.   Scobey got its first post office (and its name) in 1901, and the town wasn't incorporated until 1916.  As for its name, remember Mansfield Daniels, the rancher for whom the county is named?  He named the town after a friend of his, Maj. Charles Richardson Anderson Scobey, a cattleman in the Glendive area (Dawson County, #16).  Today over half the residents of Daniels County live in Scobey, where the 2010 U.S. Census counted 1,017 residents. There are two stories concerning the Courthouse building.  The sanitized version claims that it was originally the Commercial Hotel.  I prefer the story Don Spritzer tells in his Roadside History of Montana where he claims the building is the remodeled One-Eyed Mary's House of Pleasure. (p. 27)  I heartily recommend Spritzer's book where you can also read about Scobey's professional baseball team--recruited from the scandal ridden 1919 Chicago White Sox.

I have a personal connection to Scobey, albeit a rather tenuous one.  At the time my father was preparing to graduate from Seminary at Boston University, a District Superintendent from Montana visited the campus to recruit young ministers.  Meeting my dad, the D.S. asked Father's plans and learned that Father intended to return to his home state of West Virginia.  At that, the D.S. asked "Why do you want to go back to West Virginia where there's a Methodist Church on every street corner?  Come out to Montana where we have wide open spaces and need people to fill them."  Somehow that appealed to the gypsy in my father, who then asked "What do you have to offer me?"  The D.S. offered Scobey, but when he described the location and topography of Daniels County, my parents together asked "Don't you have anything else?"  He did, and in 1946, three years before I was born, my parents moved to Stevensville in Ravalli County (#13).  Too bad, Scobey, you could have had me as a Native Son.

The United Methodist Church

Scobey, Montana

Community names in Daniels County do not show much imagination.  As we have seen, both the county itself and its seat are named for people important to the area.  Other communities in the county include Flaxville, named because of the flax that grows there, Four Buttes, so named because of the four hills that rise just outside of town, and Whitetail, named, you guessed it, for the numerous white-tailed deer in the area.  Peerless (originally named Tande for a local resident)  got its current name when the townsfolk moved the town to conform to the Great Northern Railway's tracks and choose the name of their favorite beer, Schlitz-Peerless.  OK, so that showed at least a sense of humor.  Madoc, now a ghost town, got its post office in 1910, but the postal officials called the community Orville.  Local residents didn't take kindly to that name, and eventually chose Madoc as a compromise among the many names suggested.  Lord knows what names were rejected.  As for two other ghost towns, no one today seems to know how either Julian or Navajo got their names, and there's no one alive to tell us.

The Madoc School

Madoc, Montana

City-data.com gives us a few interesting "facts" about Daniels County residents. For one, the median age of folk in the county is 50.  For another, 2,425 people belong to either the Roman Catholic or Evangelical Lutheran churches in the county--674 more people that the census counted, and that doesn't include the Methodists or "Others."  I have a personal knowledge of how church records are kept, and my guess would be that a lot of those church members reside in the various cemeteries around the county.  Thirty-six percent of county residents claim to have Norwegian ancestry, and another twenty percent claim to be of German stock.  As we could surmise, agriculture is the largest industry in the county accounting for forty-three percent of the market.  Curiously, Broadcasting and Telecommunications comes in second at eight percent, beating out the traditional second place holder, Construction, which only accounts for seven percent.  Of the farms in Daniels County, their average size is 2,240 acres and they produce $74,733 in products sold annually at a cost of $71,623.  The average age of the farm head is 58.  Wheat is harvested on 258,251 acres which accounts for the tallest building in any given Daniels County town--the grain elevator.

Grain Elevators in Flaxville, Montana

36. Judith Basin County

While traveling through the area in 1805, Captain William Clark saw a northward flowing river, so clean and beautiful, that he named it for his fiancée, calling it the Judith.  The river's source is in the Little Belt Mountains, and its mouth is at its confluence with the Missouri, some 124 miles northeast of the source.  The area drained by the Judith and its tributaries, bounded on three sides by the Highwood, Little Belt, Big Snowy, and Judith mountains, with the Missouri River on the north, bears the name Judith Basin, and on December 10, 1920, the Montana Legislature took land from Cascade (#2) and Fergus (#7) Counties to form Judith Basin County, after what historian Donald Spritzer calls "one of Montana's longest, most expensive, most bitter county division fights." (Roadside History of Montana, p. 289.)  Five communities vied for the title of County Seat, with Hobson and Stanford each putting $25,000 into the fight, but in the end, Stanford became the seat of government for the newly formed county. The county covers 1,870 square miles and as of the 2012 U.S. Census estimate, it held 2,024 residents.  The 1930 U.S. Census was the first to be held after the county's formation, and it counted 5,238 people.  The county's population has declined with every subsequent enumeration.

The Judith Basin County Courthouse

Stanford, Montana

Named in honor of Stanfordville, NY by Calvin and Edward Bower, ranchers who brought 100,000 sheep to the area in 1880,  Stanford today is a small town with less than 400 people counted in the 2010 U.S. Census.  The largest building in town is the county courthouse, and it was this structure that started me on the journey that has led to the current Glory of the West project.  Tax revenues from the iron ore and coal that was mined nearby paid for the courthouse, and this gives Judith Basin County the distinction of being the only Montana county to build their house of government without floating a bond issue.  The town itself got its start in 1875 as a stage station on the route between Billings and Fort Benton. The arrival of the Great Northern Railroad forced the town to relocate two miles, but brought many new settlers to the area.

Next door to the courthouse stands the Judith Basin County Museum.  Open from June through August, the Museum charges no entrance fee, but does accept free-will offerings.  It also has a variety of gifts for sale, not including any of the 2,000 sets of salt and pepper shakers or 5,000 buttons in the museum's collection.  I can only note that that's a salt and pepper shaker set for every man, woman and child in the county.

Hobson is the only other incorporated town in Judith Basin County, but other communities include Benchland, Geyser, Moccasin, Raynesford, Windham and Utica.  There is the wonderfully named ghost town, Ubet, which also started as a stage stop and got its name from the answer folks received when they asked about the possibility of overnight lodging.  "You bet!" was the constant answer.

The people of Judith Basin County continue to have a friendly and warm sense of humor.  On the Sunday after Labor Day, they celebrate What The Hay! on the Montana Bale Trail.  From its beginning in 1990 as a friendly rivalry between two neighboring ranchers, What The Hay! has grown into a major community attraction involving  Hobson, Utica and Windham, as well as the various ranches between the three towns. In 2011, the Travelocity gnome was one of the attendees.

The TravHAYlocity Gnome

On the Montana Bale Trail

Hobson, Montana

This is definitely a rural county, with a long history of animal husbandry and agriculture.  Prior to white settlement, the Judith Basin held hundreds of thousands of bison, and Native American tribes came from all directions to hunt in the area.  The first settlers brought sheep and cattle.  By the 1880s, the Judith Basin roundup saw some 500 cowboys converge on the area to make sure the locally raised cattle made it overland to the nearest rail depot, Casper, Wyoming, over 400 miles away.  One of the cowboys to work these roundups was a youngster from St. Louis, Missouri, a privileged youth whose father gave in to the teenager's desire.  Charles Marion Russell came to Montana in 1880, not yet 16 years old, and in 1882 he ended up in the Judith Basin.  As Spritzer says, "if Montana has a patron saint, it is probably Charlie Russell." (p. 278)  Some of Russell's earliest and most iconic paintings deal with ranch life in the Judith Basin.

Today, agriculture dwarfs all other occupations in the county.  Fifty-seven percent of working males and sixteen percent of working females are farmers, ranchers, or agricultural workers.  Construction work comes in second at eight percent.  According to city-data.com, the average size farm in the county covers 2,626 acres and brings in $102,031 on average per farm.  This sounds fine until we look at the average cost per farm which totals $102,571 per year.  The average age for principal farm operators is 54, which, combined with the continual loss of population does not bode well for the future of farming.

Grain Elevator at Raynesford, Montana

And yet it is a beautiful land.  Bordered on three sides by mountain ranges, some with peaks over 8,000 feet high, the rolling hills of the Judith Basin continue to entrance travelers, as they have from the beginning. Spritzer opens his section on the Central Valleys with a quote from Mrs. Clemence Gurneau Berger, wife of the leader of one of the first group of settlers in the region, a band of métis (people of mixed French Canadian and Native American blood).  It seems fitting to let Mrs. Berger have the last word:

We came in by way of the gap to the famous Judith Basin which was, indeed, a paradise land of plenty, game of all kinds, lots of good water and timber. What more could we want? After finding what we had searched for, our journey ended right here.

The rolling hills and farm land of Judith Basin County

35. Sanders County

William Fisk Sanders was born May 2, 1834 in Leon, New York.  In 1863, when President Lincoln appointed his uncle Sidney Edgerton as Chief Justice of the Territory of Idaho, Sanders and his family moved to the new Idaho Territory as well.  Edgerton advocated for splitting Idaho into two separate territories, and in 1864, Lincoln named him governor of the new Montana Territory.  Edgerton returned to Ohio after a couple of years, but his nephew remained a Montana resident for the rest of his life.  He was a lawyer and prosecutor in the early territorial days, and served in the territorial legislature.  Sanders was the first President of the Montana Historical Society.  When Montana became a state in 1889, Sanders was elected the first Senator from the new state.  He died in 1905, in Helena (Lewis & Clark County, #5), and is buried in Forestvale Cemetery there.  I can find no record of him ever living in the northwestern corner of the state that now bears his name, but six months prior to his death, a portion of Missoula County (#4) was taken to form the new Sanders County.

The Sanders County Courthouse

Thompson Falls, Montana

David Thompson, explorer and agent for the Hudson Bay Company, did spend a considerable amount of time in what we now call Sanders County.  Thompson, who has been called "the greatest land geographer who ever lived," was born in London in 1770.  At the age of fourteen, he entered an apprenticeship with the Hudson Bay Company, and left England for British North America.  In 1807, in a British response to the Corps of Discovery (Lewis and Clark), Thompson was sent into the Rocky Mountains and beyond to find a new route to the Pacific.  Along the way he established the first trading posts west of the Rockies, including Saleesh House near the site of the Sanders County seat, which bears his name, Thompson Falls.  In addition, his name can be found in the Thompson River, the Little Thompson River, Thompson Pass, all in Sanders County, and the Thompson Lakes chain in neighboring Lincoln County (#56).  The native people of the area called Thompson Star-Looker, or Koo-Koo-Sint, now the name of a popular fishing access site on the Flathead River, approximately fifty miles upstream from Saleesh House and still in Sanders County.  The name also has been applied to a Bighorn Sheep viewing site in Sanders County.  ParksCanada has published a pamphlet titled The Koo-Koo-Sint Trail on Thompson's importance to the Pacific Northwest which is available as a pdf file.

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis)

Along Montana Highway 200 

Koo-Koo-Sint Sheep Viewing Area

Today, some 11,000 people call Sanders County home (according to the 2010 U.S. Census), a population spread mostly through a narrow river valley that stretches some 115 miles along Montana Highway 200 from the Idaho state line just west of the town of Heron, Montana, to a few miles west of the town of Ravalli where 200 joins U.S. 93.  Wikipedia's entry on Sanders County lists eleven cities, towns and census-designated places in the county, and eight of those can be found on or adjacent to Highway 200.  The Northern Pacific Railroad (now the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe) came through the valley in the 1880s and brought thousands of workers to the area.  The discovery of gold in the mountains south of the river (and across the state line in Idaho) brought thousands more, and two boomtown communities, Belknap west of Thompson Falls, and Weeksville, west of Plains, flourished at least temporarily.  Today they are known mostly for a community store (Belknap) and a topographical feature (Weeksville Creek).  The towns themselves are long gone.

The 1855 Treaty of Hellgate set aside a portion of Missoula County (#4) to form the Flathead Indian Reservation.  With the formation of Sanders County, the western end of the reservation became part of the new county.  Today the towns of Dixon and Hot Springs, and the communities of Old Agency, Niarada and Lonepine all remain part of both Sanders County and the Reservation. Hot Springs' Homesteaders' Days celebration each June honors the legacy of both the native people and the white homesteaders who came to the area following the opening of the Reservation in 1910.

The Clark Fork River at Thompson Falls

Hot Springs is so named because of the various springs that provide soothing warm (and yes, hot) water to various pools and plunges around the area.  One of the best known is at the Symes Hotel, right in the middle of town.  The Symes provides more than relaxing baths, however.  Each weekend the Hot Springs Artists' Society presents live concerts on stage at the Symes.  Quinn's Hot Springs Resort, approximately 30 miles south near the Sanders County town of Paradise, is home to the Montana Baroque Festival, a presentation of the Sanders County Arts Council. 

The Flathead River

Near the community of Perma

Flathead Indian Reservation

The county's topography lends itself more to recreation than agriculture.  According to city-data.com, the average sized farm in Sanders County is just 745 acres with an annual value of agricultural products sold per farm of $30,342.  The mountains that cover most of the county provides miles upon miles of hiking trails, mountains to climb, streams to fish, and rivers to canoe.  Montana's largest river (by volume) is the Clark Fork of the Columbia.  It enters Sanders County from the south and flows in a generally northwestern direction till it crosses into Idaho five miles west of the town of Heron.  Three dams block the flow of the Clark Fork River as it carries its water out of Montana:  Cabinet Gorge at the Montana/Idaho state line; Noxon Rapids just upstream from the town of Noxon; and Thompson Falls within walking distance of the county court house. All three dams allow reservoirs to fill behind them, creating lake-like features that are popular for fishing and boating.  One of the Clark Forks main tributaries is the Flathead River which enters the county from the north and flows almost due west to its confluence with the Clark Fork near the town of Paradise.  Note that if you want to use the Flathead upstream of the Koo-Koo-Sint fishing access, you will need a tribal recreation permit unless you are an enrolled member of the Salish-Kootenai Tribes.  It is worth mentioning that the ice dam that held Glacial Lake Missoula in place was near Cabinet Gorge on the state line at the western end of Sanders County.