Cow Island, Montana

The breaks are so difficult to access that this stretch of the Missouri River is still one of the most remote and untouched areas of Montana.

The ice sheet backed water up into a large lake that filled a basin where Great Falls is now located.

As the lake waters rushed out, they carved a new river channel for the Missouri along the edge of the existing continental ice sheet.

This new channel was cut into soft Cretaceous age sedimentary rock, and tributaries then eroded down to the Missouri from each side.

The tributaries were quickly carved by water erosion into the same soft Cretaceous age layers on both sides of the new river channel, thus creating the steeply eroded badlands known as the Missouri Breaks.

It was used by migratory buffalo herds and by bands of native people who foraged and hunted on the Montana prairies north and south of the Missouri River.

South from Cow Island a steep but relatively short four mile trail led through the breaks to the central Montana grasslands.

During this approximately 20-year period, freight was transported to the Montana gold fields by Missouri River steamboat.

On some years when there was not a severe decline in the levels of the Missouri in the late summer, steamboats did not have to offload at Cow Island.

Cow Island landing's twenty-year run as a transhipment point on a busy artery of commerce was over.

[2] The tons of freight dropped off by steamboats at Cow Island Landing were carried up this trail in large covered wagons, sometimes hitched in tandem and pulled by 6 to 12 span of oxen or mules.

The span of oxen are having to swing wide to bring the wagons along the track in the extreme foreground of the painting.

This last 15 mile segment of the old trail down Cow Creek to the Missouri is unused today, although faint traces of the original route can be seen on the ground.

On this stretch of the old Cow Island Trail the creek crossings have washed out and today this part of the original route is difficult if not impossible to traverse by vehicle.

At the Cow Island landing a small detachment of soldiers were guarding government and private goods offloaded from steamboats and awaiting overland passage to Fort Benton.

The Nez Perce crossed the Missouri in the area of the Cow Island Ford in an orderly and organized manner.

While the army unit was thus pinned down behind their shallow entrenchments, the Nez Perce broke into the freight storage area under cover of night and took what they wanted.

On the same day, they ransacked and then burned a freight wagon train they overtook on the Cow Creek trail.

Thinking they had now outdistanced their pursuers, they made a fateful decision to stop to rest, which they did a few days later, when east of the Bear Paw mountains.

In the ensuing five-day Battle of Bear Paw (September 30 to October 5, 1877) the Nez Perce were surrounded and decimated leading to Chief Joseph's famous surrender speech to Generals Howard and Miles.

Railroads spelled the end of steamboat traffic on the Missouri, and Cow Island ceased to be a transhipment point on a route of commerce.

The Cow Creek area of the Missouri Breaks is currently being evaluated for Prairie Wilderness status.