Helena

Helena, Montana may be the richest city in the world since much of downtown sits on gold. We often hear about buildings needing a good foundation and Helena has the best with foundations of gold. Recently a foundation was being dug for a new large business building and a gold nugget was unearthed of sufficient size to pay for the entire building. The Methodists decided to build a new church and found the earth to contain large amounts of gold so they sold it by buckets and finally a gold mining company brought in trucks to haul the earth away. The Methodists ended up with enough money to build a large elaborate church.

Last Chance Gulch (Main Street) once flowed with gold and placer (panning for gold) miners built shacks along the gulch going through town. The miners panned for gold during the day and by night spent their findings in the many saloons and brothels that lined the street. There was no concern of spending all their money because the next day they scooped out more gold. After years of placer mining the pans were replaced with picks and mechanical machines to search for the mother lode. Today no stream flows through Last Chance Gulch and the ground has been raised several feet as can be witnessed by old buildings sitting one floor under ground. To find gold today one needs to rip up a street or tear down a building and search the ground. There is still lots of gold under Helena.

We took an interesting narrated trolley tour to learn the history of Helena, see old buildings and houses and learn about the gold district. The Montana State Capitol was constructed from 1899 until 1902 at a cost of $540,000 including furnishings. Many well known artists of the day decorated the magnificent building with paintings, murals and sculptures. In 1909-1912 the Capitol was enlarged to accommodate the growing executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Recently the building underwent a multi-million dollar restoration project to return the building to its original glory. This year a three-million dollar project is underway to restore the front steps. We got a personalized tour of the Capitol and stood only a few feet from Governor Judy Martz at her office. We asked to meet her but as always, she had a meeting and could not see us.

The Cathedral of St. Helena was constructed in 1908-1913 at a cost of $645,590.44, costing more than the State Capitol. The Cathedral is of geometric Gothic style and follows the general lines of the nineteenth century Votive Church of the Scared Heart in Vienna, Austria. The crowning jewel of the Cathedral are the 59 stained glass windows with medieval art work. The contract for making the windows was awarded to the world renowned firm of F.X. Zettler of Munich, Bavaria and his "Royal Bavarian Art Institute for Pictorial Paintings on Glass." A set of 37 windows consecutively tells the story of Christianity from Adam and Eve to the church in the early twentieth century. Clear panels installed on the exterior of the windows protect them from damage from hail and vandals. We wish we could have made pictures of the beautiful and unique stained glass windows but our small camera was not up to the task. You will have to go to Helena and see the windows yourself.

Gates to the Rocky Mountains

On July 5, 1805, north of present-day Helena, Meriwether Lewis was leading his expedition on the Missouri River toiling to move upstream. Suddenly there loomed before them towering rock formations unlike any they had seen. From both sides of the river limestone cliffs rose to a spectacular height of 1200 feet. Rock embankments made towing from shore impossible and the deep channel forced the men to row rather than pole their boats. They rowed for miles and exhausted finally found a level place to spend the night. Lewis wrote in his journal "In many places the rocks seem ready to tumble on us. At each bend in the waterway, great stone walls seem to block passage, only to open like gentle giant gates as the expedition drew near. I shall call this place Gates to the Rocky Mountains." We took a guided boat tour on the river through mountains and scenery that has not changed since Lewis' voyage nearly 200 years ago.

Three Forks

We decided to spend a five day 4th of July weekend at Missouri Headwaters State Park near Three Forks, Montana. The park is located on the grounds where three rivers converge to form the Missouri River and Lewis and Clark were the first recorded white men to reach the headwaters. After exploring the rivers they named the largest one Jefferson River in honor of President Thomas Jefferson, the second largest river Madison River in honor of James Madison, future president, and the smallest stream Gallatin River in honor of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury. To this day no one knows why Lewis didn't let the largest western river continue to be the Missouri River. From the Missouri's headwaters to its confluence with the Mississippi River at St. Louis the Missouri River meanders 2,341 miles and eventually dumps into the Gulf of Mexico. The Missouri drains 580,000 square miles, more than any other river in the United States. It begins with swift clear flow and picks up sediment and carries away millions of tons of farmland annually. At the present rate of flow if you floated from Three Forks to the Gulf of Mexico the trip would take 2 1/2 months. (Of course you would have to jump off your inner-tube and run around several dams.)

The weather in Three Forks was cold, windy and rainy. The campground host told us the area gets 15 inches of rain annually and the last three years it did not rain in July. We had heavy rains all five days. We attended a Methodist Church in town and later church people came to the campground to visit us. We have found very nice and friendly people on the entire trip. We seldom write about attending church but we usually try to find a Methodist Church in a small community for Sunday services. The most interesting was a very small church on a Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Baab, Montana.

Bozeman

The Museum of the Rockies on the campus of Montana State University in Bozeman is a very interesting museum. Permanent exhibits include geology, archaeology, paleontology, Native Americans and history of the area. There are three halls for traveling exhibits and one was about Lewis and Clark. We also saw a movie on Lewis and Clark in the Taylor Planetarium. Many dinosaur bones are on display and we talked to a volunteer worker working on one the size of a hand. She had worked on the bone, chipping away dirt and stone, for eight months, but admitted she only worked two days a week. That lady worked 630 hours on one bone the size of my hand. Thank goodness for volunteers but I would find the job boring. We read every sign and looked at every display in the museum while others hastily walked by. It is nice to be retired and able to get an education in our old ages.

Yellowstone National Park

Before going to West Yellowstone, Montana and Yellowstone National Park we checked the weather forecast - temperatures 20-25 degrees below normal with rain and high winds. The weather report was right on target. Our first days there the low temperatures were 32-34 degrees with highs of 58-60 degrees with daily rains and high winds. But bad weather did not stop us from enjoying the beauty of our best national park.

Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, was our first national park and has been protected since then so little has changed. It contains 2.2 million acres of steaming geysers, hot pools, crystalline lakes, thundering waterfalls, forest, canyons and panoramic vistas, wildflowers and a remarkable diversity of mammals, birds and fish. The park's lowest elevation is 5,282 feet and the highest is 11,358 feet. There are 290 waterfalls with drops of more than 15 feet. There is so much to see in the park it is impossible to see everything in one trip. The inner part of the park is laid out like a figure 8 with a 70 mile north loop and a 96 mile south loop. A big disappointment this year was the western part of the north loop was closed for road work so part of the park could not be seen and there were many miles of backtracking. Our biggest highlight was Norm's son Troy, his wife Sandy and their boys Luke and Logan (ages 7 & 5) were tent camping in the park and we got to be with them three days. They live in Minnesota so we only see them twice a year and had not seen them since Christmas. It was fun watching the boys study geysers, hot pools and elk. Their highlights were watching Old Faithful erupt and getting lost in steam emitted from hot pools. OK, we know everybody has smart grandchildren but we think ours are the smartest. (It's OK if you think yours are the smartest too.) Logan at age 5 explained to us how gasoline is poured into a generator which runs an engine and produces electricity that is supplied to a RV by an electric cord. Then he said, "generators are too loud to run in a campground." Smart kid.

We have enjoyed Montana so much we added twelve days to our Lewis and Clark Trail schedule so we can explore old gold mining towns and do some fishing. Check back in a couple of weeks.