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Billings As It Was in 1956 or Earlier
Original Sign Research by
Bill Beasley, Billings
Gazette
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Take a trip through the Billings’
valley area and pretend’ that
you were there before the numerous settlements took over the land. Pretend
that you can envision the scenes and the people of that era, and the turmoil
or joy that they faced. Us a current city map to find the locations noted
below, park your car and become one with the surroundings. Vanish the
buildings, roads, trees and people from your mind, and see’ the events of the time unfold.
Wording on the signs is hopefully reported as originally spelled.
Before embarking on the vision trek, runoff copies of the sites history
from the links provided, and read them as you visit each location. Please do
not rush, but take time to enjoy and become one with nature as it was 70 to
150 years ago. The information links are provided to tickle the imagination,
not define all of the truths. That will be left up to each of you who desire
more from the past, than what is presented herein. Signs, their wording and
their placement will always be a subject of debate. What is okay for one
generation is totally unacceptable for a future generation. As civilization
takes over, the neighbor to the sign will invariably say: Not in my backyard!’ Thus they have
to be torn down and replaced with books. Identifying the sites represented by
the earlier signs is a difficult task; since many of the times the signs were
incorrectly placed or identified an incorrect event mixed with emotion, fact
and memory.
The Kiwanis Club [1] and DAR (Daughters of the
American Revolution) established pamphlets and posted signs and monuments
defining important events that helped establish the history of the area, and
promote tourism. Virtually all signs have long since vanished, only their
words remain, hidden in obscure publications. As the years passed by, the
efforts created by the concerned local citizens seems to have been lost into
the faded memory’ of our
lives. The colorful language used was replaced by modern words with different
meanings. The Chamber of Commerce was founded and later took over the
management of the points of
interest.’ Later efforts added commercialism and soon the links to the
past were entirely erased, signs torn down to make way for expansion, and
sites destroyed to accommodate civic growth. Many of the places noted on this
tour will only be in memory.’
Enjoy the experience. The order for viewing is left to the visitor. The
visitation can take many days for the serious journeyer.
Boot Hill
Cemetery
Located at the corner of
Exposition Drive and Route 318: near Main Street and Black Otter Trail
Boot Hill
Cemetery was deeded to the City of Billings, on 6 December
1926 by ID O’Donnell. O’Donnell had acquired the land 20 years
earlier from the Billings Land & Irrigation Company with the intent of
maintaining the site as an historical monument. The cemetery runs 170 feet
north and south, by 165 feet east and west (.64 acre). There were no
tombstones placed on any of the plots, two monuments were later created, and
a small pile of rocks added many years ago to denote some graves. When a
person was buried, it was local practice to shove a small piece of sandstone
from the nearby bluff, into the ground at either the head or foot of the
grave. No permanent markers were made. A monument dedicating the site was
made possible primarily through the efforts of Mrs. Henry Frith and Mrs. BF
Shuart, and dedicated in 1921. Some wooden markers were placed on some
gravesites during the dedication ceremony to denote grave positions, and
known names from some references, but it is not known if the information was
correct. The dates on these wooden markers are not exactly correct in
all instances. Sandra Collins, as part of the YGF transcription project,
identified the grave plat layout in 1981. The cemetery stopped actively
serving the community approximately five years after Billings was created. There are four rows
of gravesites still visible. About 97 individuals were buried in the plat.
Most are unidentified, including persons who died from diseases, Indians and
military servicemen.
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The Boothill Cemetery Sign
In frontier days the average
party’s demise was plumb abrupt and his interment more or less
informal. The pioneers, being a vigorous breed and tough as tough as whang
leather, were hard to kill with a 45-90 slug, let alone usual maladies.
They regarded pestilence as trivial and lingering illness due to the
ravenging bite of such nefarious critters as microbes and bacilli was
practically unknown. So, when a gent was called he usually left in a cloud
of smoke. Obsequies were sincere but simple. Whatever ιclat they lacked was
largely due to shortage of facilities such as pipe organs and rubber tired
hacks. Because of the occupants’ habit of fading out in their
moccasins this necropolis has long been known as Boothill Cemetery.’
Presented by Billings Chamber of Commerce
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Immell
& Jones Ambush Indian Rock
[Located
at the eastern end of the north rims, where 6th Ave and Highway 10
(Main Street)
join each other, it was the landmark called Indian
Rock.’]
The massacre took place during the bonanza days of the
fur trade in Montana,
and centered near the area where Indian
Rock’ was located. The incident was so severe that it attracted the
attention of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and a US Senate Committee.
At one time the Chamber of Commerce had a sign erected on the Black Otter
Trail near Alkali Creek to identify the ambush. Most people are unaware of
the event and the affect it had on the two nations.
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Immell
& Jones Sign
‘In the narrow gap to the east on May 31, 1823, a party of
trappers, under the leadership of Michael Immell and Robert Jones, was
ambushed by the Blackfeet Indians and robbed of $15,500 worth of furs.
After a heroic defense, the two leaders and five others were killed.’
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Chief
Black Otter
[Located at the eastern end of the
north rims, where 6th
Ave and Highway 10 (Main Street) join each other, it was
near the landmark called Indian
Rock.’]
The Chippewa steamboat caught fire on June 22, 1861
[2] , on the Missouri River, about ten miles west of Poplar River,
in Montana Territory. [Steamer Big Horn was
left stranded a few years later at about the same place.] The passengers
and crew got safely ashore and cast the steamer adrift before its cargo of
gunpowder caught fire and blew up. [The Chippewa and the Key
West were the first two boats to reach Fort
Benton, its final destination on the
Missouri River, in 1860.] Chief Black
Otter was leading a party of Crow Indians in the area when the steamer
exploded. [Frank L. Worden, co-founder of Missoula
and Hell Gate, was among the surviving
passengers [3] .] They went to the scene and
began to salvage articles from the damaged boat. A Sioux war party took this
opportunity to attack their enemy, the Crows, and during the battle, an arrow
broke Chief Black Otter’s thigh. His brother-in-law came to his rescue,
and was killed. The other members of the Crow party succeeded in driving off
the Sioux, killing a large number of them, but during the battle, Chief Black
Otter also was killed. Before he died he asked that he be buried in the heart
of Crow Country, at a high point on the Yellowstone River (Elk River; e.g.,
E-che-ta-cos-asha), at the top of the high point of the rim rocks on the north
side of the river. His tribal members took his body by Travois to this point where his spirit could see west and east
up and down the river.’ The burial place was not precisely known,
but believed to be in a pine tree’s branches, at the peak of the north
rims (Kelly Mountain), as was the current custom.
The sign was posted near the summit
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Chief Black Otter Sign
Back in the days when Indians
were industriously wafting arrows whiteman-ward instead of playing college football,
Black Otter (Bay-poo-tay Spita-cot) was a Crow war chief. The Crows or
Absarokas, as they called themselves, carried on a brisk and sanguinary
feud with the Sioux. During one of these neighborhood clashes Black Otter’s
medicine failed him and a Sioux arrow broke his hip. The wound subsequently
sent him to join his fathers amidst the lamentations of his kin. The
unfortunate casualty occurred several hundred miles from here. Before Black
Otter departed for the Happy Hunting Grounds he asked his relatives to pack
his body back to the rimrocks where his spirit could ever gaze over the
tribal domains along the Yellowstone.’
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Chief Black Otter Trail, which winds around the north side
of the rimrocks from Boothill
Cemetery to the
airport, was named in his honor. Arthur J. Hart, printer for the Evening
Journal, Billings,
recorded the legend of Chief Black Otter. Hart resided among the Crows for a
portion of his life before becoming a printer. Very little other information
about Chief Black Otter’s life has been located.
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Skeleton Cliff
& Sacrifice Cliff
This Skeleton Cliff burial site is clouded in mystery, and is sometimes
confused or used interchangeably with Sacrifice Cliff. The exact locations
are still uncertain in many people’s mind. However, there are several
references that help describe the locations, but the wording appears to be
rather cryptic, and must be carefully examined. Skeleton Cliff is a modern
name for Place of Skulls, so named by the Crow Indians (c1833) and is the
high point located at the east end of the north rims [4] .
It is also called Kelly
Mountain. Sacrifice
Cliff is on the south side of the Yellowstone
River, across from the
Skeleton Cliff, and is on the north edge of what is now called 4 Dances Natural Area.’ It is
almost opposite of Josephine Park. This was a coined name, origin unknown,
but probably emanated from the early 1880’s by residents of Coulson and
the Crow Indian neighbors, based on a variation of the smallpox epidemic
event stating that 40 warriors died from their sacrifice as they jumped from
the cliff across the river. The event apparently took place about
1833. Sacrifice Cliff was named “Battle Mountain” in 1875 by Col
Forsythe, and is displayed as such on early maps.
The Sacrifice Cliff sign, placed near Boothill Cemetery,
stated:
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Plenty Coups,
the last of the Crow chiefs, was born near the base of this cliff in 1848.
Some years before that, while a large band of Crow Indians was camped in
the valley below, an epidemic of smallpox broke out and practically
decimated the tribe. According to one legend only two braves survived, the
others having fled or died. These two then cast themselves from this cliff,
so as to join their friends and relatives in the Happy Hunting Grounds.
Another version says that after a large number of the tribe had died from
this dreadful disease, the chief medicine man decreed that forty braves
should offer themselves as a sacrifice to appease the anger of the Great
Spirit. These young warriors adorned in their ceremonial finery, mounted
their ponies and forded the river, then blindfolded themselves and their
horses rode to their death from the top of the high bluff across the river.’
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