"The Grandest Sight I Ever Beheld"

Swallows forage in the swirling air currents of Rainbow Falls in early June on the Missouri River

Two hundred and nine years ago today, a small group of explorers on foot clambered upon a series of five waterfalls in central Montana.

They were the first white guys to see these thundering falls that the local Blackfeet residents had known for generations. Even the Mandan, living weeks downstream in North Dakota, had told the party of explorers about "Minni-Sose-Tanka-Kun-Ya," the great falls. Still, the explorers could hardly believe their eyes, and their chief scribe had a hard time describing the scene in his journal.

"I hurryed down the hill which was about 200 feet high and difficult of access, to gaze on this sublimely grand specticle. ... immediately at the cascade the river is about 300 yds. wide; about ninety or a hundred yards of this next the Lard. bluff is a smoth even sheet of water falling over a precipice of at least eighty feet, the remaining part of about 200 yards on my right formes the grandest sight I ever beheld, the hight of the fall is the same of the other but the irregular and somewhat projecting rocks below receives the water in it's passage down and brakes it into a perfect white foam which assumes a thousand forms in a moment sometimes flying up in jets of sparkling foam to the hight of fifteen or twenty feet and are scarcely formed before large roling bodies of the same beaten and foaming water is thrown over and conceals them."

"I most sincerely regreted that I had not brought a crimee [camera] obscura with me by the assistance of which even I could have hoped to have done better but alas this was also out of my reach; I therefore with the assistance of my pen only indeavoured to traces some of the stronger features of this seen by the assistance of which and my recollection aided by some able pencil I hope still to give to the world some faint idea of an object which at this moment fills me with such pleasure and astonishment, and which of its kind I will venture to ascert is second to but one in the known world."

- Meriwether Lewis
June 13, 1805

The expedition had expected a half-mile portage around the falls. What they found instead was a month-long, 18-mile portage that included incidents with grizzly bears, a wolverine, mountain lion, three ornery bison bulls, lots of rattlesnakes, countless prickly pear and mosquitoes stabbing them, and torrential downpours with large hail. Welcome to summer in Montana...

"Blackfeet Sentries," the Rest of the Story

"Blackfeet Reservation Sentries," by native son and sculpture, Jay Polite Laber

Rusty metal sculptures stand at each of the four modern-day entries to the Blackfeet Reservation, on the rolling plains the east of Glacier's mountains. Warriors mounted on wild steeds stand watch as silent sentries, men and horses all sculpted from wrecked and rusted car parts that were abandoned decades ago.

These are awe-inspiring creations, and they stand on their own merit as fine art. But there's also a seldom-told back-story to these sculptures, a story of survival that was born of destruction 50 years ago this week. A Great Falls newspaper described the events as tragedy unfolded in June, 1964:

"Sunday June 7 dawned bright and clear... Before noon, clouds had packed themselves tightly overhead and a steady rain began to fall. It was a lighter rain than had been falling in the mountains since the previous Friday."

On Monday, June 8th, as the relentless rain continued, dams failed on the Two Medicine and Birch Creeks. Flood waters swept across the Blackfeet Nation in a rising tide of physical destruction that was unknown in recorded history. The 1964 flood affected approximately 30,000 square miles, or nearly 20% of Montana. Later research determined that a flood of this magnitude might occur but once every 5,000 years.

Thirty lives were lost in the flood - all on the Blackfeet reservation. In addition to the dams, the reservation also lost 265 homes, much of its road system, and every single bridge. Plus countless barns, corrals, sheds and livestock.

The Blackfeet were the hardest hit, hands down, but almost all of the news coverage focused on damage that occurred elsewhere, in Kalispell and Great Falls. Just across the mountains, the little Hungry Horse News famously won a Pulitzer Prize for its flood coverage, but the paper's prize-winning stories failed to even mention the Blackfeet for weeks after the flood. Time magazine reported that, "at least 30 were drowned, 100 were missing and over 1,200 were left homeless," by the flood. But even this national magazine failed to mention the reservation. All of their flood photos were from Great Falls, implying that the fatalities also occurred there.

Among the many Blackfeet children whose families lost homes and relatives to the flood, one boy named Jay Polite Laber was forced to relocate to New Hampshire with his family. As a young adult, Laber made his way back to Montana to search for his roots. He began experimenting with sculpture as a student at Salish Kootenai College, in Pablo, and he now teaches in their Fine Arts Department.

Scores of homes, barns and cars were destroyed and abandoned after the 1964 flood. Thirty years later, Laber began collecting rusting parts from flooded cars that had been abandoned along local stream and river banks, debris that he eventually transformed into four sets of mounted warriors. Laber completed the "Blackfeet Reservation Sentries" in 2000.

But there's more to this story.

Holy Family Mission during 1964 flood
(Montana Historical Society archives)

Laber chose all of his materials based on their significance in Blackfeet tribal history, including the stones used for foundations. The sandstone blocks were recycled from the Holy Family Mission, along Two Medicine Creek some 15 miles southeast of Browning.

The mission was a Catholic boarding school that opened in 1890 and operated for 50 years. It was closed by the time of the 1964 flood, but many of the flood victims' bodies were brought to the mission during and immediately after the flood, as it was located on higher ground just out of the reach of flood waters.

The mission was one of many boarding schools built in Indian country as part of the U.S. Federal Indian Policy, a regime of forced assimilation meant to "civilize" the native children and convert them to Christianity. The mission is gone now, replaced by a renovated Catholic church.

Both buildings were the lingering results of an earlier flood - a tidal wave of mostly white settlers that swept across Montana and the west during the late 1700's and early 1800's. But this flood caused more cultural destruction than physical destruction. Montana's native peoples were subjected to relentless waves, sweeping away the ways of their forefathers and changing the survivors forever.

Those of us alive today didn't witness the earlier flood, and very few outsiders understand it's historic depth and significance. But without a long view, it's almost impossible for most of us to really understand why there are so many persistent problems on the reservations.

So at the four corners of one Montana reservation, stoic Blackfeet warriors bear witness as unspoken reminders of what has gone before. Some people say that when the wind washes through the rusted remnants, you can just barely hear two warriors speaking in native Blackfeet tongue. I've heard this myself, late at night, but I couldn't understand.

FURTHER READING:

For better views of the earlier flood, read "My Life as an Indian" for one white man's perspective during the early 1800's. For a view from the Salish perspective, this one from the Bitterroot Valley, read "The Salish People and the Lewis and Clark Expedition."

Montana's Worst Natural Disaster: The 1964 Flood on the Blackfeet Reservation 

'64 Flood, a documentary film in progress

Information on Jay Polite Laber

Holy Family Mission history

BEHIND THE LENS:

This image is a light painting that I made late at night while waiting for the full moon to set. I placed the moon at the warrior's eyes, waited for a car to sweep past with red taillights, then "painted" the sculpture with a small flashlight during my 30-second exposure. The never-ending wind blurred both flags.

Montana's Mule Deer

Officially at least, the status of Montana's mule deer population is listed as "stable," at roughly 220,000. The numbers are increasing in the central part of our state, stable to slightly decreasing in the west, but 20-32% below the long-term average in the east.

In 2013, Montana hunters harvested 6,803 mule deer does (females), far below the 20-24,000 annual take during 2007-09. They also shot 30,990 mule deer bucks last year (and more than 88,000 white-tailed deer). Still, Montana's muley population is well below the 10-year average of 286,000, and hunters are grumbling.

Two weeks ago, state wildlife managers gnashed their teeth, wrung their hands, and reduced mule deer quotas by eliminating antlerless (female) and "B" (additional male) tags in most of Montana's hunting districts for the next two years. The hipshot blame-game richocets around in letters-to-the-editor and in some hunting blogs, each writer blaming the drop in hunting tags on his own pet peeve - too many predators / hunters / houses, or deep winter snows and dry summer droughts.

They're all correct. Partially, anyway. But many of them the lack hindsight into what started these mule deer population swings in the first place. It all started, inadvertently, after we tried to remove fire from the landscape.

Montana's stable mule deer populations of the early-1800's were hunted to local extirpation in less than 50 years by a flood of well-armed Euro-american settlers. But this cultural sea-change also put into motion a series of events that soon drove mule deer populations to unprecedented high levels by the mid-1960's, only to have them crash again. What's going on here?

Mule deer are primarily browsers, and the availability of shrubby plants determines where they can survive, especially in winter. Big sagebrush is the single most important mule deer browse in the Missouri River Breaks, while bitterbrush and Rocky Mountain juniper are also critical in the Bridger Mountains. These taller shrubs are important, as snow depth and duration also play major roles in limiting mule deer populations. (Montana's herds took a "huge hit" during the harsh winter of 2010-11.) These large deer also need rough, broken terrain where their pogo running style, called "stoting," gives them an advantage over most predators (muleys can leap over obstacles that predators have to run around).

When the first settlers arrived to the Intermountain West (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada) in the late 1700's and early 1800's, mule deer were scarce in some part of Montana and plentiful in others. Their natural range was limited to edge areas where forest and grasslands met, including some lightly-burned forested areas.

During the mid-1800's, hungry miners, ranchers and homesteaders took a heavy toll on populations of mule deer, elk and bighorn sheep. By 1900, the sight of a single one of these animals was considered "most unusual." But the mule deer populations eventually rebounded between the early 1930's and mid-1960's, for many reasons.

A new concept, conservation areas, helped protect mule deer from unregulated hunting, while predator control that began in 1914 also reduced deer mortality to a degree (though predators tend to remove the weakest individuals while hunters try to remove the healthiest ones). After the 1918 transplant of 6 mule deer from Yellowstone Nat. Park to augment the 13 surviving deer at the Nat. Bison Range, 1,829 more mule deer would be moved to various locations around Montana over the next 30 years. Overgrazing by domestic animals (cattle and sheep) in the 1920's greatly reduced grasses and forbs, leading to rangeland plant succession from grass dominance to shrub dominance. Then the livestock numbers fell dramatically across the plains during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930's, reducing livestock competition with native deer.

But overarching all of this, it is generally agreed that a change in fire frequency was the primary reason for the temporary mule deer population explosion during the mid-1900's. As a new culture swept over the existing one, fire was effectively removed from the landscape when Native Americans were forced onto reservations.

Frequent fires at low and mid-elevations kept Montana's plains and mountain valleys thick with grass while preventing encroachment by shrubs and trees. Sagebrush stands are largely dictated by the number of years since the last fire, with a fire interval of 20 years or less short enough to relegate this important mule deer food to isolated patches.

Mule deer herd near Chief Mountain

In central and eastern Montana, extensive grassland fires swept the plains every year until at least 1877. In western Montana, large forest fires only burned during exceptionally dry years (like 1889, when roughly 530 square miles were charred). One study found that 60 out of 145 low-elevation fires, from written accounts during the 1800's, were started by natives for forage enhancement, food gathering, warfare and communication. Grassland fires were also ignited by lightning and fur trappers, while prospectors started numerous fires in the mountains. In western forests, the ponderosa pine / Douglas fir stands in the Bitterroot Valley burned, on average, every 4-20 years. Higher and cooler forests in southeastern Montana burned, on average, every 20-40 years.

Post-1900, the exclusion of fire for 80-100 years led to tremendous expansions of big sagebrush into former grasslands, and bitterbrush expansions into some forests. New, large-scale logging also converted forests to shrubfields, which increased browse for mule deer. Side-by-side comparisons of range photographs that span 100 years or more show marked increases in trees and shrubs.

In the early stages of this plant succession, mule deer populations benefited as shrubs replaced grasses. Later stages of this succession, however, show that conifers are replacing important browse shrubs, and the decline in edge habitat and edible plants has caused mule deer populations to fall.

Nowadays forest fires no longer benefit mule deer as much as they used to, because modern fires are burning far hotter than ever before. After not allowing small fires for the past 100 years, our forests have reached the point where we can't put out every new start by noon the next day - as we used to boast. Fed by the heavy fuel loading, modern forest fires now scorch more underground roots and shoots, and sterilize the soil, which in turn reduces or even prevents the normally vigorous return of grass and shrub stages.

Modern-day wildlife managers are attempting to use hunters to hit an artificial target - an artificially high but stable mule deer population - that's being pushed in all directions by many different forces. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, thinning projects and prescribed fires can help mule deer and other native wildlife by slowly working the land back towards a more natural vegetative state - in Montana and all across the west.

Believe it or not, such work is happening on a small scale. One such conservation / hunting group, the Mule Deer Foundation, is currently working on thinning and burning projects near Miles City and Ashland, to go along with educational and noxious weed projects in various central and eastern Montana locations.

It's one thing to grumble about a problem. It's something else to roll up your sleeves and work at making it better.

Montana Mule Deer Foundation news
Mule Deer Working Group 2013 Status Report

For an eye-opening view from the mule deer's side of the equation, watch the new PBS video, "Touching the Wild." You'll never look at deer hunting the same way again.

Old vs. Ancient - The Blasdel Barn and Comet ISON

Comet ISON (upper left) rises before dawn falls upon the 1909 Blasdel Barn, near Kalispell (click to enlarge)

The old Blasdel Barn was raised in 1909 and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Sunlight has faded its red paint to a memory, and lots of shingles and boards have fallen by the wayside over the years. This grand old barn has stood tall for 104 years, but it's very slowly falling apart.

On another scale - one that, I think, puts our human endeavors in their proper place - when this old barn was built, Comet ISON was already 4.6 billion year old, give or take. On its first and only trip through our solar system, ISON is on a slingshot course around our sun. If it survives today's encounter, it will be flung back out into deep space, never to return.

In the next 24 hours, ISON will skim a mere 700,000 miles above the solar surface - a distance that's less than the sun's diameter. An incredible amount of solar radiation is blasting and aging the comet quickly. From a rock/ice core that's just over one mile wide, ISON's ice is being vaporized into a fuzzy "coma" that's about 80,000 miles wide, with a tail of dust and vapor that's 5 million miles long, pushed away from the sun. One astronomer calculated that the sun is blowing away 3 tons of comet material per second.

As ISON passes the sun, it will reach a top speed of 225 miles per second, or more than 1500 times faster than a commercial jet, which would cross the U.S. in 15 seconds at that speed. I'm not quite sure if there's a way to calculate how this compares to the speed of the horse-drawn stage that used to pull into the oversized passage, through the heart of the Blasdel Barn.

Like the days of horse power, this comet encounter will soon pass and never come back 'round. Enjoy it while you can.

                     ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Comes in as a comet (right), departs as a dust cloud (top).
SOHO Image by NASA (click for video)

UPDATE: Well I hope you got to see it in the pre-Thanksgiving, pre-dawn big sky, because Comet ISON is no more. Just prior to its closest approach to the sun ("perihelion") on November 28th, the indescribable heat and solar radiation ripped off the fuzzy coma and long tail, and nuked its nucleus into so many pieces. What emerged from the solar fire was a cloud of dust and small fragments. The glow from this cloud-of-dust-formerly-known-as-ISON is fading rapidly as it heads away from the sun. Unfortunately, instead of turning into the "Comet of the Century" as hoped, ISON's remnants will not even be visible to ground-based telescopes.

Highlights of Comet ISON from NASA Science News.
Text version can be read here.
ISON at perihelion

Waiting for the Sun

Heart-leafed arnica waiting to open its petals

Drip, drip, drip.

It's drippy season in Montana. Our wildflowers have been progressing along okay, but give 'em a couple of hot and sunny days and we'll see fireworks in the forests. Little understory plants, like this heart-leafed arnica, are just waiting for a warm boost to spread out in the sunshine - as are the rest of us.

An old friend, a former fire lookout in Glacier, sends us updates on the Tres Lagunas Fire, down in New Mexico where she's stationed now. More than 8,500 acres already, and she says the streams have run dry.

Meanwhile here in northwestern Montana, we're in the middle of our wettest season. The state averages just over 15" of precipitation each year (years 1895-2012), good for the sixth-driest state in the U.S. But you would never guess that in spring. May, June and July account for almost one-half of our annual precipitation total when you average across the whole state, and more than one-third of Kalispell's annual precipitation.

Kalispell is easily the wettest "city" (if you can call it that), averaging 17.21" of precipitation annually. June tops the charts at 2.3" on average. And on average, all of this rain/snow is spread out over 132 days, but with only 23 thunderstorm days. In other words, gray drizzle dominates 109 wet days.

Drip, drip, drip.

It's interesting that our paucity of spring thunderstorms doesn't preclude tornadoes. During the years 1950-2011, the date with the highest number of reported tornadoes is June 21st. Nineteen were reported on that date in Montana during those years, but the vast majority were over in eastern Montana, with only four of the reports coming from Kalispell. Montana only averages 5.4 tornadoes per year, good for 31st place in the U.S.
 

"Prosperous farmers with women and children stand in abundant wheat field. Molt, Montana. 1927."
(Photographer: Mildred Romundstad Madson)

I also find it interesting that Montana's wettest and driest years were only a few years apart. Since 1895, our wettest year was 1927, when our average precipitation was 21.73". That record was followed four years later when the average precipitation was only 9.97" in our driest year, 1931 - prelude to the Dust Bowl.

That amount was topped in a few hours, 49 years ago, starting on June 7th and ending on the 8th, in 1964. More than 11" of rain fell in just 30 hours in the mountains between Essex and Heart Butte, bleeding off a record snowpack and leading to a "Flood of the Century" event. Twenty miles of Highway 2 washed away. On the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, 265 homes were destroyed and 30 people perished.

That was one for the record books, and remembering it makes this June seem so much more bearable in northwestern Montana. To date, we have accumulated 0.36" of precipitation this month, and 6.97" this year. That means that we can expect roughly 2" more rain in the next 26 days. Oh boy.

Drip, drip, drip...

The Bitterroot Backstory

Rare, white bitterroot flowers

Our native bitterroot plant took a round-about path from a long-time staple of Native American diets to its "discovery" by white explorers, before it arrived as Montana's official state flower. It's an odd little flower and an odd little story, too - a story that was carried through time by some unusual travelling partners.

Native American names for this diminutive plant include, "Spetlum" and "Nakamtcu." Countless generations of native women have headed into the mountains in early spring to dig and collect the roots, after the plants had grown leaves but before blooming. Today, tribal elders still pass along the centuries-old knowledge that spring bitterroots are the most nutritious, and that the roots grow even more bitter after flowering. And though they were not lost, Montana's natives and bitterroots were both "discovered" by a distant nation intent on expansion - the young United States.

The "undiscovered," western bitterroots were blooming in May and June, 1803, when the east coast's President Thomas Jefferson sent his personal secretary, a distant relative named Meriwether Lewis, to learn botany from Benjamin Barton. Lewis would spend the better part of three years learning botany, map-making, mathematics, anatomy, fossils and medicine from the top American scientists of the day. All of this was preparation for a two-year journey we now call, "The Corps of Discovery."

To assist in this journey, Lewis selected his former commander in the U.S. Army, William Clark. Lewis and Clark and crew traveled the northwest from May 1805 until September 1806, collecting plant and animal specimens, meeting with Native Americans, and mapping the uncharted mountains and rivers - while also serving Jefferson's primary goal of pre-empting the French and Spanish by staking a U.S. claim to northwest territory, which lay west of his new "Louisiana Purchase" lands.

On April 29th, 1805, the Corps of Discovery camped near present-day Fort Peck, having entered into what would eventually become Montana Territory the state of Montana. It was four months later, on August 22nd, when Lewis mentioned the bitterroot plant in his journals for the first time. The corps was camping just west of the continental divide separating modern-day Montana and Idaho. Lewis' initial report is credited with giving this plant it's common name:

"another speceis was much mutilated but appeared to be fibrous; the parts were brittle, hard, of the size of a small quill, cilindric and as white as snow throughout, except some small parts of the hard black rind which they had not seperated in the preperation. this the Indians with me informed were always boiled for use. I made the exp[e]rement, found that they became perfectly soft by boiling, but had a very bitter taste, which was naucious to my pallate, and transfered them to the Indians who had eat them heartily." (August 22nd, 1805)

The only other time Lewis mentioned bitterroot plants in his journals was on July 2nd, 1806, during their return trip from the Pacific Ocean. It was on this date that Lewis collected his first bitterroot specimens, in the area known as "Travellers' Rest," near present day Lolo. Lewis didn't elaborate much:

"I found several other uncommon plants specemines of which I preserved." (July 2nd, 1806)

Lewis' plant specimens were sent back to Jefferson at various times, with the first batch arriving in August, 1805 - almost a year prior to Lewis collecting the bitterroot specimens. The president himself dried the plant specimens and sent them on to Barton, the botanist who had trained Lewis.

Can you even imagine a modern president - or any politician at all - having the knowledge and interest to properly prepare pressed plant specimens? Jefferson was a curious and complicated intellectual, and it was his unusual interest in botany that boosted the bitterroot's backstory.

Jefferson expected Benjamin Barton to describe and catalogue Lewis' plant collection. Jefferson's confidence in Barton, however, was misplaced. While Barton was a top botanist, he also had a long history of not completing projects that he started. Though he'd studied at the University of Edinburgh, Barton returned to the U.S. without a university degree. This didn't prevent him from becoming an academic, lecturing in medicine, natural history and botany. Embarrassed by his lack of credentials, Barton purchased a "Doctor of Medicine" degree 10 years before tutoring Lewis.

It so happened that, as Lewis' plant specimins began arriving in 1805, Barton hired a young Frederick Pursh to work as his part-time plant curator. Two years later, in April, Meriwether Lewis personally met with Pursh in Philadelphia to guide him in preparing a catalogue of the expedition's plant collection. Pursh began working on the project that winter.

Pursh's part-time employment provide for his two weaknesses, wonderlust and alcohol. In 1805 and again in 1806, he set out on foot with his dog to collect plants and ended up exploring over 3,000 miles on each trip. While at work, however, Pursh soon grew disenchanted with Barton, who failed to provide him with enough money to live on. Parsh was also worried with the thought that Barton would get all of the credit for his hard work if and when Lewis' catalogue was published. It didn't help matters that Pursh was also fighting a lifelong battle against serious alcoholism.

Pursh soon left his position with Barton for a job in New York, then moved to London in 1811, taking most of Lewis' priceless, American plant collection with him. While living in London, Pursh created rancor in the scientific community by publishing Flora Americae septentrinonalis ("Flowers of North America") in 1813, describing 134 of Lewis' plant specimens including, on page 368, one by the name of "Lewisa rediviva Pursh" - the bitterroot. The book was only a modest success.

A few years later, on July 11th, 1820, Pursh died drunk and destitute in Montreal. He never returned the American plants to Lewis, maintaining the division he had created. After his death, botonists gave him a dubious honor by naming a family of plants after him - the "bitterbrush" (Purschia).

In his book, Pursh identified the bitterroot as both a new genus and a new species. He gave it the genus name, Lewisia, to honor the collector. The species name, redivivia, comes with its own backstory. It translates as, "back to life," in reference to a dried root collected by Lewis that sprouted leaves when Pursh planted it in his Philadelphia garden. The resuscitated plant never bloomed for Pursh. Although he had never seen a bitterroot flower first-hand, Pursh made a pretty accurate drawing of the plant based on Lewis' descriptions.

Pursh's bitterroot drawing

One has to wonder what the alcoholic Pursh would have thought about the next turn of events for Lewis' native, "naucious" bitteroot plants.

During the late 1800's, the Women's Christian Temperance Movement (WCTM) formed in Ohio to create a "sober and pure world." The movement expanded its membership by advocating for each state to designate an emblematic flower. In 1891, delegates to the Montana chapter of the WCTM changed their earlier choice and suggested that the bitterroot should become Montana's official state flower.

The process turned formal In January of 1894, when a Bozeman journalist, Mary Alderson, formed the Montana Floral Emblem Association (now known as, Montana Federation of Garden Clubs). Most major towns formed county and community committees to debate which native flower Montana should choose. The issue turned into one of Montana's first state-wide referendums, ushering in a new direction of progressive politics in the state.

The debate spilled over into the pages of local newspapers. Columns described the candidates, and editorials advocated for this or that flower. An 1894 editorial in the Helena Independent argued that the bitterroot, "has one quality which should be fatal to it as a state emblem. It has no stem...." Without a stem, they decried, the bitterroot couldn't be worn as a boutonniere or made into a bouquet.

To settle the matter, ballots were sent out and voting was concluded on September 1st, 1894. A total of 5,857 votes were cast for more than 32 different flowers. The bitterroot won hands down, with 3,621 votes. Evening primrose came in a distant second (787 votes) and the wild rose landed in third place (668 votes). The bitterroot only grows in western parts of Montana, but it won in 10 of the 15 counties that voted.

And so it came to be that on February 27th, 1895, the Montana state legislature designated the bitterroot as our official state flower, without a single dissenting vote.

Behind the bitterroots: I haven't read it yet, but one of the last of the old-time Rangers in Glacier Nat. Park, Jerry DeSanto, filled an entire book with the backstory on bitterroots. "Bitterroot: Montana State Flower" is now out of print, but you can still finds copies floating around if you look hard enough. Anything written by one of the old-school guys should be an interesting read.


Bitterroot in bloom (c) John Ashley

A Celebrated Snow Job

While Texas and Alaska compete for the tallest tales, Montana softly fluttered its way into the winter-time record books with a larger-than-life tale from 126 years ago today.

On January 28, 1887, the largest snowflakes ever reported were observed at Ft. Keogh, near present day Miles City. According to the report, a freak storm produced snowflakes the size of pancakes, 15" across and 7" thick. A nearby rancher described the mega-flakes as "bigger than milk pans." And in spite of the lack of any photographs or corroborating evidence, this report remains in the Guinness World Records.

U.S. Army Band and Guard Mount wearing buffalo coats at Ft. Keogh,
Montana, during the winter of 1880. (L.A. Huffman photograph)

Snowflakes are aggregations of hundreds of individual ice crystals. Physics doesn't preclude mega-snowflakes, but winds and collisions with other flakes would take heavy tolls on fragile, Frisbee-size flakes. While normal size snowflakes flutter to the ground at an average speed of 66.9" (1.7 m) per second, mega-flakes reportedly fall at twice this speed.

Now, most of your normal size snowflakes (from, oh let's just say Texas or Alaska) are less than 0.5" across. But there are scattered reports from "reliable observers" of extraordinary snowflakes estimated from 2" to 6" wide.

Weather officials in Berlin, January 1915, reported on a storm that produced snowflakes that were 4" across and shaped like round dishes with up-turned lips. And a September 1970 snowstorm in Laramie, Wyoming, reportedly produced 3" mega-flakes. In all likelihood, larger than normal snowflakes probably fall every day in winter, somewhere on Earth, but there just aren't many people out in these storms with rulers and cameras.

The tiny building blocks of snowflakes - those individual ice crystals - are mostly less than 0.25" wide. But ice crystals in nature have been reported up to 0.5" wide, and grown in the lab up to a whopping 1" wide. A crystal's shape is determined by the micro-climate it passes through while forming in the clouds and falling to the ground. No two ice crystals are exactly alike because no two take the exact same path.

Modern-day Montana also made history of sorts, just one year ago today. That report of world-record snowflakes, from 1877, was celebrated with the only Google doodle that (as far as I know) celebrates Montana.

The giant search engine uses its animated artwork to celebrate an eclectic assortment of historical events. On this day last year, Google users watched a giant snowflake settle onto a winter field where a cow grazed peacefully. By clicking on the doodle, millions of people around the globe were directed to one of Montana's little-known - and totally unsubstantiated - moments in history.

Google doodle from January 28, 2012

The ABC's of ICE

Words about ice and snow fill libraries. Here's about one snowball's worth.

ABOUT THE SCIENCE

The compound we call water can change from vapor to ice crystals without first becoming liquid, a process known as, "deposition." (The reverse process, "sublimation," occurs when ice crystals turn to vapor without becoming liquid.)  Snowflakes are composed of ice crystals that form in the clouds, while frost is composed of ice crystals that form on a surface - both via deposition. 

Ice crystals grow in many distinct patterns, from simple, hollow columns to complex, fern-like steller dendrites. Most ice crystals are six-sided. Triangular crystals are the second-most common, and the rare ice crystal can have up to 12 sides.

The formation of snow depends on air temperature in the clouds, not near the ground. But the heaviest snowfalls typically occur when it is relatively warm near the ground (around 15°F) simply because warm air holds more moisture than cold air. While it can be too dry to snow, it cannot be too cold to snow.

Technically speaking, snow is a mineral. Uncompacted fresh snow is 90-95% trapped air. The amount of water in most fresh snow varies between 4% and 10%, which means that 10" of fresh snow would melt down to as little as 0.4" or as much as 1" of liquid water.

The oldest ice discovered to date is approximately 750,000 years old and located in the headquarters building at Glacier National Park. Just kidding. Sort of. Actually, the oldest ice found to date was in Antarctica.

BEFORE NOW, SNOW HISTORY

The ice crystals in snowflakes seem to have captivated our imagination forever. The first written description of tiny six-sided ice crystals was published in a Chinese book, "Disconnection," in the year BC 135.  Some well-known deep-thinkers who were captivated to the point of studying ice crystals included the Bavarian bishop Albertus Magnus (1250), German mathematician Johannes Kepler (1611), French philosopher René  Descartes (1637), English architect Robert Hooke (1665), Japanese painter Shiba Kōkan (1796), and British physicist John Tyndall (1872).

Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley (1865-1931)

In January of 1885, an American farmer by the name of Wilson Bentley was the first person to successfully photograph individual ice crystals, by painstakingly experimenting with and adapting a bellows camera and microscope. He photographed more than 5,000 ice crystals during his lifetime, and published a book-catalogue in 1931 with the clever title, "Snow Crystals."

Starting with Bentley's book-catelogue, Japanese nuclear physicist Ukichiro Nakaya further classified ice crystals and divided them into 41 different types. Nakaya also created the first artificial ice crystal in 1936. His classification was later expanded by two Japanese meteorologists in 1966 to include 80 different types of ice crystals - our current number.

A new kind of crystal made its first appearance in 1878, when the first snowglobe-like object was displayed at the Paris World Fair. Two years later, Austrian Erwin Perzy patented his "Glass Globe With Snow Effect," starting a business that his grandson continues to this day, still working in the same Vienna building where his grandfather had worked. 

COUNTING RECORDS

About 12% of the Earth's land surface is currently covered with permanent snow and ice fields. On a local scale, the most snow ever recorded in a single storm was 15.75' at Mt Shasta Ski Bowl, in California, between 13-19 February 1959. The most snow ever recorded in a 24-hr period was 63" at Georgetown, Colorado, on December 4, 1913.  I have also read that a single snowstorm can drop 40 million tons of snow, but I can't find any verification of that calculation.

Montana runs wide and deep, so there is considerable variation in the annual average snowfall (from NOAA National Climatic Data). The snowiest Montana town is Cooke City with an average of 201 inches, and the least likely town to find a snowman is Glendive, with an average of 20 inches of snow per year. Other towns averages in descending order: West Glacier 117", Bozeman 91", Great Falls 63", Butte 62", Kalispell 56", Billings 55", Helena 38", Missoula 38".

On the related subject of air temperature, the official low record was -128.6°F on July 21, 1983, in Antarctica. But Montana bears the distinction of having the record low temp in the lower 48 states. On January 20, 1954, it was a brisk -69.7°F at Rogers Pass, near Helena. Montana also holds the record for greatest temperature range ever recorded in one 24-hour period. On January 23-24, 1916, the air temperature in Browning fell from 44°F to -56°F, a difference of 100°F.

Finally, the major Inuit ("Eskimo") languages each contain only a dozen or so root words for snow, about the same as English. Usually around this time of year you might hear that "Eskimos" have over 400 names for different kinds of snow. But that is one of those urban legends that just won't melt and go away.

All about snow (National Snow and Ice Data Center)
Snowflakes under an electron microscope (pictures)
Field guide to snowflakes  (book)

Legend of the Golden Turkeys

Montana Department of Agriculture photo, circa 1924

By the mid-1930's, many Americans were beginning to see some relief from the Great Depression. On September 21st, 1935, the town of Helena dedicated a brand new, brick high school. And on October 5th, the Montana Grizzlies defeated the Montana State Bobcats 20-0. It was the Grizzlies' only victory that year, however, finishing dead last in the Pacific Coast Conference.

But on Thanksgiving day, 1935, the good people of Helena were thankful just to be alive after enduring dozens of harrowing earthquakes. Three of the quakes tipped the Richter Scale at 5.9, 6.3 and 6.0 on October 12th, 19th and 31st, and four residents lost their lives. Also, Helena's new brick high school was badly damaged, and the school's west wing collapsed.

On one hand, Helena's 1935 earthquakes damaged or destroyed more than 300 residential and commercial buildings. On the other hand, some of that rubble was used to build one of Montana's little-known legends - the legend of the golden turkeys.

Helena students in coach car classroom, circa 1936

The quakes left Helena without a high school, so the Great Northern Railroad offered up passenger coach cars as classrooms (which were used until early 1938). The railroad played a vital role in early Helena, and many business had sprouted around the railroad district, including one Helena grocery store with a very clever owner. This particular fellow looked especially forward to Thanksgiving because he took great pride in the turkeys that he himself butchered. But Thanksgiving was also auspicious because his turkeys held a secret. The dressed birds sold in his shop never included the gizzards, but that wasn't his only secret.

As the story goes, this grocer's turkeys were delivered by train from a part of Montana that bore the scars of many old placer surface mines. And as the turkeys pecked the ground around the mine tailings, they picked up small bits of golden gravel for grinding up food in their gizzards. Years of turkey gizzards yielded a pile of gold that the secretive grocer kept hidden in a large jar, safely buried in the basement beneath his store.

The first quake to hit Helena destroyed many buildings, including this unfortunate grocer's store, which collapsed in upon itself. The nearly-full jar of "turkey gold" was buried for good, lost under a massive pile of bricks and debris.

As legend has it, to this day all of that turkey gizzard gold is still buried somewhere beneath the Helena railroad district. So perhaps there's one more chance to strike it rich in the "Queen City of the Rockies." But if not, then you can still enjoy your non-golden Thanksgiving turkey while giving thanks for all of your non-monetary riches.

Businesses that were damaged but survived during the 1935 Helena earthquakes

A Kinky Beargrass Mystery

Kinked beargrass leaves

File this one under, "UFO's," or Unexplained Funky Organisms.

On a recent hike into the mountains, we stumbled across this one beargrass plant (Xerophyllum tenax) that has 8-10 cool, kinky basal leaves amongst many dozens of straight leaves. There were many more beargrass plants in the vicinity, but this was the only specimen we saw with anything but straight leaves. I queried four excellent botanist friends, but apparently none have encountered this kinky stuff before.

Our native beargrass is a poisonous, perennial member of the lily family. Local Native American tribes used the tough leaves to weave into baskets, and the valuable leaves were traded to tribes living beyond beargrass habitats. Blackfeet Indians also used beargrass roots to make a lather wash for wounds.

I've never seen it firsthand, but bears are reported to dig up and eat beargrass roots, which may be the origin of its common name. Its Latin name translates into, "dry leaf holding fast."

It's interesting that, while the plants are fairly long-lived, they only produce flowers every 5-10 years. The tall flowering stalks (June - August) actually sprout from off-shoot plants that emerge at the base of the plant and then die off after flowering. It's also interesting that beargrass appears to be declining, possibly because of a reduction in natural and human-ignited fires, which leads to an increase in forest canopy cover and shade.

So many mysteries in the mountains, so little time...

Montana's Last Wild Mustangs

Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range in SE Montana

For more than 200 years, generations of Montana’s last band of wild horses have lived and died along a dry, rocky range in southeastern Montana. Unbeknownst to them, centuries of hard-scrabble living hasn’t always been enough to qualify these horses as “wild” animals or protect them as “native” wildlife. How did our horses get corralled into this modern management and political nether-land?

It’s a long story, a story that -- in many ways -- is interwoven with the fates of 80 million native people already living in the Americas when Europeans arrived.

Horses evolved in North America (NA) about 55 million years ago, and eventually expanded into Europe by crossing the Bering land bridge. About 10,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians crossed the same land bridge and spread east and south into NA and, within 2,000 years, horses were extinct here on their native continent. (The charred bones of native NA horses, camels and mastodons would later turn up in cooking pits excavated by modern paleontologists.)

Horses were missing from NA for 8,000 years, while some bands in Europe were caught and domesticated. Starting with Columbus’ second voyage in 1493, Spanish explorers brought horses back to NA. As these domesticated ponies escaped or were stolen and traded by the Native Americans, bands of free-ranging horses quickly re-established across much of western NA. Back on their native soil, horses would soon find themselves targeted for extinction once again, this time by the corporate ranching industry, which wanted (and still wants) control over all public grass and public lands to fatten up their bred-down cattle.

That’s the short version. Longer versions fill volume after volume, and the story is still being written, as the battle to protect wild horses is still being fought.

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The oldest known ancestor of the modern horse was a 4-toed, 80-pound animal named “eohippus.” At that time, the lands we now call NA and Europe were part of one single supercontinent called “Laurasia.” When Laurasia broke up and continents began drifting apart, 4-toed eohippus grazed in NA and in England simultaneously for a while before the primitive horse ancestor went extinct in Europe.

3-toed horse leg bone fossil from SE Arizona

Primitive horses survived in NA, evolving for speed and gradually changing to 3 toes, then 2, and finally to the single hoof of the modern horse (Equus caballus), about 3 million years ago. Fossil remains from each step of horse evolution are found only in the southwestern United States (US).

In the mountains and deserts of (what would become) Mexico and southwestern US, Spanish explorers needed lots of durable horses to search for their mythical cities of gold – not to mention horses that could survive the seven-month sea crossing while hung in slings. So they set up horse breeding rancheros, first in the West Indies and then in Mexico.

While horses gave Conquistadors and missionaries the ability to penetrate inland, the Spanish inadvertently brought horse culture to Native Americans. And horses in turn gave Indians the ability to drive the Spanish out of their homelands for more than a century.

The Spanish issued decrees forbidding natives to own or ride horses. But in 1621, a governor gave permission for Pueblo Indians to work on horseback for the Spaniards. Soon, Apaches and Navajos (whom the Spanish targeted for slavery) were stealing horses from the Pueblo and then from the Spaniards themselves.

During the Rebellion of 1680, the Pueblo tribes drove the Spaniards out of “New Spain” and back into (what would become) Mexico and Texas. The fleeing Spanish left behind thousands of hardy horses – horse stock that would eventually be traded north, tribe-by-tribe, into California, the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains. Over the years, some of the little Spanish ponies broke for freedom and established large bands of free-ranging horses across much of NA.

The native Indians had to learn horsemanship. But in less than a century, most NA tribes had assimilated horses into their cultures. The span of years between 1640 and 1880 is now referred to as the “Period of Indian Horse Culture.” Nomadic tribes gained power over farming tribes, and the military balance between many tribes was turned upside-down.

Indians generally left the wild horse bands alone, preferring instead to steal trained horses from the rancheros. Comanche Indians were fond of saying that they only allowed the Spaniards to remain in Mexico to provide them with fresh horses.

Three Chiefs Piegan (Blackfeet) in Montana
by Edward S. Curtis (public domain photograph)

By the mid-1700’s, Montana’s Blackfeet, Flathead and Crow tribes had acquired horses. In 1805, when Lewis and Clark reached western Montana and could no longer travel by river, they purchased 30 Indian ponies to help them cross the mountains. Some of these horses bore Spanish brands. On the expedition’s return trip through Montana in 1806, Sergeant Pryor lost 50 horses (possibly to Indians) in the rocky region we now call the Pryor Mountains.

Not long after Lewis and Clark, waves of white settlers began flooding west, and their farming lifestyle conflicted with the nomadic hunting lifestyle of many native Indian cultures. To break and subjugate the native peoples, the US turned to the unofficial policy of decimating the buffalo. Their efforts forced most of the Indians onto reservations, but that wasn’t enough. The government decided to also destroy the Indians’ beloved ponies.

In Montana during the early 1920’s, the US government and some large ranchers shot an estimated 50,000 “Indian Ponies” on the Crow Reservation alone, plunging the Crow nation into poverty. Wagonloads of bleached horse bones were carted off to be ground into calcium.

In the mid-1800’s, there were an estimated 2-7 million free roaming horses the western US. Horses were not considered a “problem” until large numbers of sheep and cattle were introduced. By the turn of the century, the wild horse population had fallen to an estimated 1 million.

In 1963, a committee of distinguished scientists was set up to determine which species would be protected as “native” in US wildlife preserves. Their report recommended protection for those species that were present when the first European explorers arrived. Horses were left off the list, even though they were native to the US and had been reported by explorers in the Great Plains in the 1600’s and in the northwest in the 1800’s.

Wild horses were denied any sort of status or protection in the US because they had descended from domesticated Spanish ponies. They were considered “feral,” and they could be legally harassed or shot, or rounded up and hauled off dead or alive to rendering factories. Once again, wild horses were heading towards extinction on their native continent.

Down in the Pryor Mountains, locals learned of plans by the Bureau of Land management (BLM) to remove all wild horses from the range to make room for more cattle and mule deer. The battle came to a head in 1969, when Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall denied the BLM and designated the range as a wild horse refuge.

Straddling Montana and Wyoming, the “Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range” was born. Genetic testing of horses there proved that they were directly descended from the “Colonial Spanish Horse,” a type of horse that no longer exists in Spain.

In 1971, the BLM estimated that 17,000 wild horses remained. That was the year Congress finally passed the “Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act” to protect the remaining animals. Horse numbers began to recover, and in 1973 the BLM “Adopt-a-Horse” program began in the Pryor Mountains.

Buffalo Girl keeps a close watch over Kitalpha, her foal.
Both are wild and free-living Montana Mustangs.

The fight to protect wild horses continues, in Montana and elsewhere across the west. BLM officials, ranchers, and factory hunters have all been caught killing, removing or otherwise harming wild horses. Punishment has been sparse, if any. BLM management of wild horses is now under the constant and well-deserved scrutiny of horse enthusiasts.

Our wildlife management agencies are still under the thumb of corporate ranchers, and hook-and-bullet good ol’ boys. But the tide is slowly turning, and wild animals are starting to be valued for non-consumptive purposes, although a real “wildlife ethic” is still a ways off. For now, Montana’s last wild horses appear to be relatively safe -- just as long as horse advocates keep a close watch over them.

Wild horse advocates:

Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center, Lovell, WY
The Cloud Foundation, Colorado Springs, CO

Wild horse media:

Probably the best book to read on the subject is Hope Ryden’s, “America’s Last Wild Horses” (1977).

You can watch the Nature special (free online), “Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies,” which tells the story of a Pryor Mountain Stallion.

You can read a fascinating and thoroughly detailed history of “Indian Horse Culture," starting here.

Huckleberry Culture

August 20th, 100 years ago.

A cold front blows hurricane-force winds across more than 2,000 small wildfires that had been quietly burning in the drought-stricken northern Rockies. Wind whips the small fires into one or two massive infernos that levels a handful of towns and 3,000,000 acres of mostly inaccessible forest -- with most of the burn occurring in just six hours. Two days later, the fire is extinguished by a second cold front that brings steady rain.

Eight towns burned to the ground, and 87 people perished. Many survivors left for good, while some returned to rebuild. Parts of 10 national forests were turned to ash. And the five-year-old "National Forest Service" began its policy of fighting every fire.

Late-summer huckleberry 

These two events -- the Great Fire of 1910, and the "no burn" forest policy -- set off a series of boom-and-bust cycles in Montana's centuries-olds huckleberry culture.

There are 35 huckleberry species across North America. In Montana the name refers most often to one of three wild Vaccinium species -- especially V. globulare, the "mountain huckleberry." This species grows in northern Idaho and western Montana, in open areas with just the right balance of sunlight and moisture. These are wild blueberries, only crunchier and more tart, with a more intense flavor. No one has managed to tame, or commercially cultivate the huckleberry, so all of the berries picked and eaten are wild fruits.

BEARS, INDIANS, AND EARLY WHITE SETTLERS

Bears depend on these high-energy fruits (huckleberries make up about 1/3 of their fall diets) to add enough fat to survive the rigors of winter hibernation. And for centuries, wild huckleberries have been a staple food for all of the native tribes between the Pacific coast and western Montana. Early Indians made combs out of salmon backbones and used them to help strip berries from bushes. The berries are then dried and stored like raisins, or mashed into cakes. Early white settlers learned about huckleberries from local Indians, and soon they too were counting on the berries.

In 1615, white settlers in New England first reported native Algonquins collecting and drying huckleberries. Travelling through Pennsylvania in 1743, naturalist John Bartram reported on how the locals dried their huckleberries over a smoky fire. In August of 1805, Capt. Merriwether Lewis reported on his breakfast with huckleberries. And at the time of his death, in 1862, Henry David Thoreau was working on an extensive history of huckleberry picking in the northeast.

In the northwest, native tribes have long understood the connection between fire and huckleberries. Unless maintained by periodic burning, the huckleberry patches slowly shrink as trees advance into the clearings. As one Yakima leader explained, "God told people to burn the forests and the huckleberries would grow." The ashes also stimulate the native grasses, which helped Indians feed their horses.

Huckleberry flowers

Eastern huckleberries are stimulated by nutrients in the ash. Huckleberry plants in the northwest are slower to recover from fire, but they rebound and then expand within a few years, due to an increase in sunlight and a decrease in competition.

The Great Fire of 1910 slowed huckleberry production for a few years. But by the 1920's, it had actually produced thousands of new huckleberry acres in northern Idaho and western Montana. At the same time, the renamed "U.S. Forest Service" made fire prevention its new priority, followed closely by road construction for fire fighting access -- access right into lots of that new huckleberry habitat.

Between 1900-1920, "berry picking vacations" were common for people living in Montana. These trips might last a day or a month. But collecting was limited as most families only picked enough huckleberries for their own needs. Picking and preserving too many berries was hard work.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES OF THE 1920's AND 1930's

"Canning" technologies -- invented by Napoleon to feed his armies, and advanced during the U.S. Civil War -- became popular in the 1920's as families started putting up their home-grown fruits and vegetables. The availability of commercially prepared foods was still a couple of decades off.

Commercial fruit production in Montana of the 1920's was limited to Swan Valley strawberries, Bitterroot Valley apples, and Flathead Valley cherries. Wild huckleberries were different from these domestic crops. They were much more labor intensive, they ripened during a relatively short period of time, and berry production was unreliable and varied greatly from year to year. But the berries were free, and technology would help them become a commodity.

To make huckleberry picking profitable, labor-saving technology had to be developed. The first development consisted of old oil cans with tines soldered to the top -- a new version of the Native American fish bone berry picker. Commercial huckleberry picking and contracting were born, and in 1925 two Noxon loggers began advertising berries for sale in the Butte Miner newspaper. The following year, they sold 4,530 pounds of wild Montana huckleberries.

BOOM & BUST -- THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR II

When the stock market collapsed in October, 1929, it crushed the farming, mining and timber industries that had supported many Montanans. The Great Depression quickly spread world-wide, and jobs were hard to come by during the 1930's. But money earned from the huckleberry season saved many Montanans who couldn't find fulltime work. A number of eastern Montana farmers who went under became western Montana huckleberry pickers. Huckleberry culture was booming in spite of the Depression.

Purple fingers

During the 1930s, it took about 14 hours to pick 5 gallons by hand, and about 30 minutes to pick as many with the modified oil can technology. Depression-era huckleberry prices fluctuated between 50 cents and $1 per gallon. But even the average wholesale price of 22 cents per gallon made for a respectable day's wages -- if you had the right technology.

In 1932, there were 20,000 gallons of wild huckleberries collected on the Flathead National Forest. That same year, more than 50,000 gallons were commercially harvested on just one district of the Cabinet Nat. Forest. At the going rate of 40 cents per gallon, a conservative estimate of 60,000 gallons on the Cabinet gives a huckleberry crop worth $24,000 (in 1932 dollars). Regional forester R.F. Hammatt pondered if, "...our policy of land management should lay stress on the growing of timber or if huckleberries may be the more profitable crop."

Berry pickers flooded Forest Service campgrounds during the season. On the Kootenai Nat. Forest, commercial camps were set up that accommodated more than 400 people on 11 acres. An enclosed strip down the middle segregated white picker tents from hundreds of Indian tipis, but social interactions were still common. This berry boom lasted a dozen years or so, until the U.S. entered World War II.

The Second World War, between 1939 and 1945, prompted the revival of U.S. "Victory Gardens." Almost three-quarters of American families were canning their own food in 1944. But all this canning by amateurs led to many cases of food poisoning, exploding jars and ruined stoves. By the time the war finally ended, canning had earned a bad reputation. Home canning declined as store-bought frozen foods became more widely available after the war.

BUST & BOOM -- THE POST-WAR ECONOMY

Huckleberry pie meets vanilla ice cream

Starting in the late 1940s, the post-war economy brought good-paying jobs in Montana's logging industry, and construction jobs building dams in Hungry Horse and Libby. Native huckleberry picking continued, as it always has, but commercial picking faded away because it couldn't compete with regular wages.

In 1949, the oldest Montana huckleberry business that is still in operation, Eva Gates Homemade Preserves, started quietly with just a few batches cooked up in Grandma Eva's garage. The family business had little competition until the late 1970s.

Montana's population growth began booming in the 1970s, and berry picking slowly became financially viable once again. The Baby Boomers were no longer canning, but they remembered picking and canning from their youth, and so nostalgia was used to market Montana huckleberries to them. Next up, Generation-X had no prior history with huckleberries, so newer products were also marketed as something novel and "wild and pure." A Missoula manufacturer sold 1,600 huckleberry gift boxes in three minutes on the QVC Channel, mostly to Generation-Xers on the east coast who had never even heard of huckleberries.

THE FUTURE?

Nowadays there are more than 100 different huckleberry products, as varied as huckleberry soap and huckleberry beer. In 1996 there were 59,000 pounds of huckleberries processed by Montana manufacturers. Most of the berries (85%) were from northwestern Montana, while the rest came from northern Idaho. Jams, jellies and preserves accounted for 54% of that year's sales of $1,557,503. Seven years later, huckleberry sales had declined somewhat, to just over one million dollars.

Currently, the huckleberry themselves are also in a slow decline. A 6,000 acre huckleberry field set aside in 1932 for Native American use has shrunk by one-third. For the current generation of Montanans, the large berry fields of yesteryear are more likely to be small patches hidden in a thickening forest.

Recent research has shown that undisturbed forests contain the least productive huckleberry patches. The most productive patches are on northern or eastern faces that were either clearcut and burned 8-15 years earlier, or burned over by wildfire 25-60 years ago.

It took scientists almost 100 years to confirm what our native elders knew generations ago.

The policies that prevent wildfires in order to "protect" trees are a vestige of 1910's Great Fire. But these policies harm the more valuable huckleberries. Land managers are slowly starting to return fire to the forest ecosystem, partly in an effort to help the grizzly bear/huckleberry relationship. Meanwhile, climate change scientists are predicting increasing drought and wildfire in the Rocky Mountains.

It's simply not possible to keep putting out all wildfires forever. So maybe the next generation -- several years after some future, massive fire -- will return to enjoy "berry picking vacations" in huge fields of wild Montana huckleberries, fields unlike anything the current generation has seen. One way or another, huckleberry culture will continue.

Behind the berry: Some of the juicy information for this article was hand-picked from the 2006 Forest Service publication, "A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest." It includes lots of great, historical photographs, and it's a fascinating read for anyone who has ever picked a wild Montana huckleberry.

Looking for a Montana cultural experience? Major huckleberry product manufacturers include:
     Eva Gates Homemade Preserves, Bigfork (406) 837-4356
     Huckleberry Patch, Hungry Horse (406) 387-5670
     The Huckleberry People, Missoula (406) 721-6024
     Doug Allard's Trading Post, St. Ignatius (406) 745-2951
     Larchwood Farms, Trout Creek (406) 827-4943
.