Prehistoric and Historic Bozeman

MMMMMMade it to the M
Bozeman, MSU Campus & Gallatin Mountains
Big Mike

Cliff at the buffalo jump
Earthquake Lake with the mountain that slid away in the background.
Spillway cut to lower the water level.

For the last three days we have been at the Sunrise Campground in Bozeman, Montana. I attended college there for one year 44 years ago so we walked around campus and found my old dorm which is still the ugliest building there. Fortunately for new students it has been turned into offices. As a freshman on M day we climbed up and white washed the huge M on the side of the mountain. Nanc and I made the climb and I think I may be in better shape now than I was then. On campus they now have the Museum of the Rockies which has one of the largest collections of dinosaur bones in the world, many of which were found in Montana. Dinosaur hunter Dr. Jack Horner, a MSU professor of paleontology, who was the inspiration for the lead character in Jurassic Park is responsible for unearthing many of the fossils on display. The museum also has a section on the native Indians of Montana. On another day we drove to Madison Buffalo Jump and Earthquake Lake. The buffalo jump is a spot where before they had horses the Indians drove herds of buffalo over a cliff to kill them. They used just about the entire animal and there are no visible remains because they buried what little they did not use to prepare for the next season's kill. We hiked to the cliff but even from there it is hard to imagine what it would have been like to see this event happening. Earthquake Lake was formed on August 17, 1959 when a quake of 7.5 on the Richter scale triggered a landslide of 80 million tons of rock which dammed the Madison River in one minute. At that time it was one of the largest quakes in North America and killed 28 people, including 19 in the campground that was buried and whose bodies were never found. The Army Corps of Engineers cut a spillway to allow a controlled release of water in the lake which is 120 feet deep today. Bozeman is an absolutely beautiful area with snow capped mountains surrounding the entire valley. The weather was great while we were there but last week they had snow. The one winter I was there it went two weeks with the temperature never getting up to zero. It would be a nice place to come back to and spend more time.