By John Davis
Columnist 

The story of Three Forks, Mont.

 

August 23, 2016



Last week, my wife and I spent three days in Three Forks, Montana, at the Sacajawea Inn. Three Forks is a charming little town and the Inn is a splendid example of arts and crafts architecture. Celia and I, having lived in an arts and crafts house for the last 35 years, are partial to such structures, and we greatly enjoyed this hotel.

But what captivated me about the place was its history. The town got its name because there three large streams come together, the Gallatin, the Madison, and the Jefferson, and they form the Missouri River. Lewis and Clark, upon arriving in this area in the summer of 1805, named the streams in honor of the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of State, James Madison, and the President, Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson stretched the United States Constitution and bought Louisiana (defined as the drainage of the Missouri River) from France in 1803. He then sent Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery on a great expedition to learn what the United States had acquired with this purchase. They all knew that this quest would be a leap into the unknown. No one then knew the extent of the drainage of the Missouri.

Spain, which had previously claimed Louisiana, and sold their claim to France, had offered a large reward in 1783 to any Spanish citizen who discovered the headwaters of the Missouri. No Spaniard ever claimed this reward.

Still, when they began their expedition, Lewis and Clark held some general geographical notions, and believed that the Pacific Ocean lay just beyond a low ridge of hills in the far eastern part of what is now Montana. And this is what they hoped to find when they left the Mandan villages, in the spring of 1805, near what is now Williston, North Dakota, and headed up the Missouri River. But what they found instead, after traveling some 400 or 500 miles into Montana, was mountains, and more mountains.

They still believed, however, that soon the mountains would fade, and they could peer down a small slope to flatter lands and, perhaps even the Pacific Ocean itself. When finally arriving at the place of the confluence of the three streams making up the Missouri River, however, they encountered a valley surrounded on all sides by big mountains. Looking southwest from Three Forks (where the Jefferson River runs, the stream Lewis decided was the best one to follow), you see a big range of mountains, capped by two peaks over 10,000 feet. It was a daunting scene to men who had traveled from an eastern United States not nearly so mountainous, hoping to portage their boats over a divide and into the Pacific Ocean drainage.

And soon the Corps of Discovery found itself in deep forest, highly difficult to traverse, and impossible to portage. That stretch was probably the most difficult one for the expedition, until they finally found a stream running westward and met the Nez Perce tribe.

So, when we arrived in Three Forks, I had to drive out of town, to the southwest, and had to get out of my car and stare at those massive peaks, and wonder whether Meriwether Lewis almost lost heart when he first looked up at them.

But, as you all know, they persevered, and even though the Pacific Coast turned out to be a thousand miles further than they thought it would be, and they still had about 500 rugged miles to go, the men of the expedition made it to the West Coast and spent the winter of 1805-1806 near the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

And during 1806 they returned to Washington, D. C., and told an anxious president and country the amazing things they’d learned.

John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is mostly retired. He is the author of several books.

 
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