Yellowstone History
Yellowstone and Montana have a rich history written by the first French-Canadian explorers, trappers and Jesuits that came into this country. Of course the oral history of the native Americans goes back to the ice age and beyond. A fascinating oral history was told by an elderly Shoshone woman to a dentist in Billings, Montana in The Sheepeaters: Keepers of the Past below.
Regardless of the medium, the human stories are many and varied. John Colter was a hunter for the Lewis & Clark expedition and told his gripping tales to others who wrote it down in their journals. You can learn about his adventures in The Life and Legend of John Colter below.
Butte, Montana was known as the “richest hill on earth” and the copper mined there was key to the industrial revolution, the robber barons and modern communications. Check out the story of Butte’s mining history in A Mile High and a Mile Deep. So many stories, and a few are told below.
The drama, the thrill of life and death, the imagination of a generation all wrapped up in the masterful storytelling of Ken Sinay and illustrated by classic western painters of early nineteenth century life… including Alfred Jacob Miller, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Charlie Russell and Albert Bierstadt.
Butte, Montana – A Mile High and a Mile Deep… This was the legacy of the infamous robber barons who built America on copper. Butte has a rich history of life, death, culture and money… Known as the richest hill on earth, the Butte area has a fascinating geology described by Butte School of Mines geologist Dick Berg. The video tells of the harsh working conditions, and the melting pot of cultures coexisting to create one of the richest cities in America in the nineteenth century. This video was originally designed for display at the Butte Mineral Museum.
The Sheepeater Indians, an offshoot of the Shoshone tribe, lived in small bands in the mountains in and around the Yellowstone Plateau. The film explores references in the literature as well as archaeological evidence of the Sheepeaters. The Sheepeaters lingered as one of the last hunter-gatherer cultures while plains indians like the Blackfeet and Sioux had acquired horses. The Sheepeaters were sought after for their fine tanned sheep hides and exquisite bows made from Rocky Mountain sheep horns.
In July of 1967 in far eastern Lindsay Montana, dryland farmer Joe Walker was running his combine along a Dawson County road when he spied some white, chalky material weathering out of the borrow pit. Upon closer examination, he was stunned by its size and thought that it looked like pieces of a fossilized elephant tusk.
News of the find made its way to Montana State University in Bozeman, and young PhD candidate Les Davis was hired to direct the Lindsay Mammoth recovery project. Over 30 hot days in July and August, Davis and six students painstakingly uncovered the massive mammoth grave.
When a hotel was slated to go up on an old parking lot just off Main Street in Bozeman, Montana, The Extreme History Project and Montana State University teamed up to excavate the plot of land that once housed Bozeman’s Red Light District in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Extreme History Project is currently housed in one of the main historic brothel buildings and the parking lot is right next door. Urban (or historical) archaeology is a main focus of the Extreme History Project and they approached the landowner to see if he would allow them to conduct an excavation before construction began. He was happy to allow them to see what they could find to shed light on some of Bozeman’s early history.
In 1994, a team from the Center for Great Lakes Studies was contracted to explore the thermal features on the bottom of Yellowstone Lake. Using a remote Operated Vehicle (ROV), they discovered never-before-seen thermal features in Yellowstone Lake including a thermal tube garden made of glass and underwater geysers.
A History Tour of Sunset Hills Cemetery, Bozeman, Montana led by Crystal Alegria, Extreme History Project.
This video describes the discovery of the Egg Mountain dinosaur excavation site in north-central Montana by Jack Horner. It is descriptive of the “duck-billed” Maiasaur dinosaur which, it is thought, cared for her young as birds do today.
Dinosaur Hunters describes the excitement of being a “dinosaur hunter” like Museum of the Rockies Curator Jack Horner. Much of the video was shot at the famous Egg Mountain site where the Maiasaur “duck-billed” dinosaur was first excavated.