Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and waited for days outside the hospital for his owner. A nurse at the hospital, Sister
Genevieve, noticed the dog and began to leave scraps of food and drinking water for
him. When his master was loaded onto an eastbound train at the Fort Benton depot
in a casket, Shep began a nearly six-year vigil, meeting every train, waiting for his
master to disembark. Each time a train pulled out of the station, Shep would vanish
into the hills, only to return to greet the next arrival.
After several months, Shep stayed closer to the station, carving a little nook for
himself under the platform. The son of one of the railroad workers made a point of
bringing Shep regular meals, and the depot agent eventually coaxed the wary animal
into the station with a warm bed. Another railroad worker recognized Shep as having
belonged to a sheepherder whose lifeless body was shipped to his family back East.
He explained to Shep's new caretakers that the dog had been waiting at the station
since then. Over the span of a few years, the legend of Shep began to grow, along
with the number of his admirers.
Shep was written up in newspapers around the world, and the Great Northern
Railway had to hire a secretary just to handle the mail—which included everything
from money to dog bones—addressed to Shep from people worldwide.
By 1942, Shep was quite old and deaf. Despite his celebrity, he still greeted every
train in search of his master. On an icy January morning, Shep wandered out to the
tracks and was tragically hit and killed by an inbound train. The whole town mourned
his loss, and hundreds came to pay their respects at his funeral. His concrete grave-
stone still stands sentry high atop a hill next to where the depot once stood.
In 1994, the city fathers presented a beautiful bronze statue of Shep to the people
of Fort Benton. His sweet story was immortalized in a wonderful children's book,
Shep: Our Most Loyal Dog,
by Sneed B. Collard III and Joanna Yardley.
Accommodations
If you could only stay in one place in Montana, the
M
Grand Union Hotel
(1 Grand
Union Sq., 406/622-1882 or 888/838-1882,
www.grandunionhotel.com
,
$120-195) might
be it. The hotel was built in 1882 at the height of Fort Benton's steamboat era and a full
seven years before Montana became a state. After more than 100 years of operation, the
hotel closed its doors in the mid-1980s and continued to decay. Montanans Jim and Cheryl
Gagnon purchased the once-glorious hotel in 1997 and undertook a massive, award-win-
