Big Hole Valley History
This region has been a bedrock of American West history. It is the heart of Lewis and Clark country. This is also sacred Nez Perce land where Chief Joseph led his tribe along the Trail of Tears. The Battle of the Big Hole was fought here. The Vigilante movement, stage-coach outlaws, the Montana Gold Rush, many key western Ghost Towns, premier fly-fishing streams and some of this nation's most spectacular scenery all stake a claim to this region.The Flathead Indians claimed this wide basin as their summer hunting grounds for many generations, gathering camas bulbs and bitterroot as they harvested abundant buffalo, deer and elk.
On the Corps of Discovery’s first journey through Montana, Meriweather Lewis with Sacagawea explored southern extremities of the Big Hole Basin. Three critically important events happened in this area: 1. Sacagawea was unexpectedly united with her brother, Chief of the Shoshone Indians. This was a fortuitous surprise that enabled the Corps to obtain necessary horses…and probably retain their own skins. 2. The much anticipated origin of the Missouri River was thought to have been discovered here (though later, disputed). 3. The summit of Lemhi Pass was reached. This brought not joy, but great disappointment to Lewis who would find huge foreboding mountains to the west instead of his long anticipated Columbia River passage to the ocean.
On the return trek of their American Expedition, William Clark and his men crossed east over today’s Gibbons Pass and down into the broad Big Hole Basin of Montana. It was July of 1806 and the landscape was surely as spectacular then as it is now. The party made camp next to a meandering river that Lewis had previously named "Wisdom" for one of Thomas Jefferson’s admirable character traits. (Renamed the Big Hole River in 1890.) Indians purloined some of Clark’s horses here, but undaunted the party continued south 18 miles to Jackson. Clark wrote that he saw many buffalo wallows, evidence that the American Bison once roamed this valley.
An unexpected discovery near today’s Jackson, Montana was a “Boiling Spring” where they tested the water temperature by experimentally cooking a dinner of wild game.
But they remained only few days in this area and were gone. Like most who visit this remote and scenic area of Montana, they probably wished they could have lingered.
Throughout the mid 1800s fur traders would trek west across the wide Big Hole Basin, cross over Gibbons Pass and disappear into the Rockies.
Gold was first discovered along the Valley's Ruby Creek in the spring of 1862. That was before the widely publicized Montana gold strike in Bannack later that summer. Abandoned mines and placer workings are still found in creek drainages feeding the Big Hole River.
On August 8 of 1877, an exhausted tribe of Nez Perce Indians, escaping the chase of an Idaho based U.S. Cavalry, camped in a meadow about 13 miles west of today’s Wisdom. No sentries were posted by their Chief Looking Glass.
To read more details of the battle and it’s outcome, see the website for the Big Hole Battlefield National Monument. The infamous battle is annually commemorated during early August and is a major Montana tourist attraction.
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