Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
allels the river, echoing the Yellowstone's onetime importance as a means of transporta-
tion and shipping. This area was once home to the country's last great bison herd, but the
slaughter of these animals in the early 1880s nearly wiped out the species, ending a long
and important chapter in U.S. history. The hides of the animals were shipped out, first by
steamboat and eventually by rail when the Northern Pacific came through in 1881; by 1883
the bison were gone.
Small, colorful towns dot the region and have origins that date back to the Indian Wars
and before.
Terry,
named for Gen. Alfred E. Terry, emerged from a dugout that offered food
and lodging to soldiers fighting the Sioux. The town later became known for one of its es-
teemed residents, pioneering photographer Evelyn Cameron, a wealthy Englishwoman who
ranched in the area with her husband and captured the often gritty life of local homestead-
ers. A museum in town honors her art and legacy. And the town's Kempton Hotel is the
oldest continually operating hotel in the state.
The history of
Glendive
dates back even further. Lewis and Clark camped near the
present-day town site in 1806 on their way back from Oregon, and they reportedly shot
a huge white grizzly bear four times without killing it. An Irish nobleman hunting bison,
bears, and ungulates in the region gave the name Glendive to a small tributary of the Yel-
lowstone River. The town itself sprouted up with the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway
in 1880.
Just this side of the North Dakota border,
Wibaux
is named for French cattle king Pierre
Wibaux, who left the family textile empire in Roubaix, France, for the wilds of Montana in
1883. Over time, he amassed a herd of 65,000 cattle. In 1884, with money from his father,
Wibaux commissioned the construction of St. Peter's Catholic Church by Norman French
immigrants, using stunning local fieldstone and lava rock. It is an exquisitely unexpected
piece of noble architecture that still stands today. The tiny town is better known today for
its Beaver Creek Brewery.
Farther north, towns such as
Sidney
and
Fairview
survive thanks to a robust sugar beet
industry, and across the region, local people's lives are tied to the land through agriculture,
ranching, and more recently, energy production. The influx of workers eager to make a for-
tune in North Dakota's Bakken Oil Field have brought money and more service jobs to the
area, but are also responsible for sky-high rents, pressure on local infrastructure, and unfor-
tunately, crime, including the tragic murder of a Sidney schoolteacher in 2012.
With intact badlands, grasslands, and wetlands, this part of the state is a birder's para-
dise. The region is home to a number of national wildlife refuges, wildlife management
areas, and tracts of public land, all of which provide marvelous habitat for an enormous
