Montana Trivia & Tidbits - Page 19

Looking for Montana trivia? Try our list Montana little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

A heavyweight boxing title was decided in Shelby (pop. 3,216) in a 1923 bout between heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and challenger Tommy Gibbons. The town, then with a population of about 1,000, had to build a 40,000-seat arena. Dempsey won, but Gibbons was the first fighter in almost five years to finish a regular match with Dempsey without being knocked out.

first appeared: 12/9/2001

Havre (pop. 9,621) is named for a French city. When it was established in 1890, the town, along the Great Northern Railroad, was named Bull Hook Siding. But the railroad’s president thought the name was too undignified. Local officials renamed it Le Havre after the city in France, and it was soon referred to simply as Havre.

first appeared: 12/2/2001

The three great rivers of North America begin on Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park. Pacific Creek flows west into the Columbia River and on to the Pacific Ocean, while Atlantic Creek flows east to the Marias Fork of the Missouri-Mississippi rivers and into the Atlantic Ocean, and Hudson Creek is the headwaters for the Saskatchewan River, which flows to Hudson Bay.

first appeared: 11/25/2001

Helena (pop. 25,780) was selected as Montana’s capital over the copper-mining town of Anaconda by a narrow margin in statewide election in 1894.

first appeared: 11/18/2001

Malta (pop. 2,120) was named for a Mediterranean island—but not because they shared any characteristics. Malta was created in 1887 as a rail siding—a short section of track connected by switches to the main track—for the Great Northern Railroad. The practice of the time was for railroad employees to pick siding names by spinning a globe, jabbing a finger at it, and assigning the name from the globe to the siding.

first appeared: 11/18/2001

Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge near Lima (pop. 242) played a crucial part in the recovery of the trumpeter swan, once thought to be extinct. Biologists found a group of about 66 swans at Red Rock Lakes in 1933. The U.S. Department of the Interior created the wildlife refuge in 1935, and today more than 500 trumpeters are in the area.

first appeared: 11/11/2001

The Libby Dam near Libby (pop. 2,626), built in 1972, created a 90-mile reservoir that stretches from northern Montana into Canada. The reservoir was to benefit three nations—the United States, Canada, and the Kootenai Indian Nation—so its name combines elements from the names of all three nations: “Lake Koocanusa.”

first appeared: 11/4/2001

Giant Springs near Great Falls is one of the largest known freshwater springs in the world, with a flow estimated at 338 million gallons of water a day.

first appeared: 11/4/2001

Hundreds gather every weekend at Bearcreek Downs near Red Lodge (pop. 2,177) to cheer on their favorite pigs in the area’s answer to horse racing. The races were the idea of Bob and Lynn DeArmond, who since the 1980s have managed the events where competitors with names such as “Oscar Mayer,” “Hot Links” and “Jimmy Dean” run around a track to bring home the bacon.

first appeared: 10/28/2001

The American Computer Museum in Bozeman (pop. 27,509) traces the history of computing back to its earliest forms—including the counting of pebbles and the use of the abacus. Other items on display include artifacts from early telephones and telegraphs, the first analog computer (created in 1949), and the computer used for navigation on Apollo moon shots.

first appeared: 10/21/2001

Giant cedar trees rivaling California’s redwoods can be found at the Ross Creek Cedar Grove near Troy (pop. 957). The area inside the Kootenai National Forest contains 500-year-old western red cedars, some of which are more than 8 feet in diameter and 175 feet tall.

first appeared: 10/14/2001

Copper baron Marcus Daly built a stable fit for a king for his racehorse, Tammany. The brick stable—nicknamed Tammany Castle—has cork floors and stalls of oak wainscoting and plaster. Daly built the stable on his Bitterroot Stock Farm near Hamilton (pop. 3,705) after Tammany defeated New Jersey's finest thoroughbred, Lamplighter, in 1893.

first appeared: 10/14/2001

Manuel Lisa erected the first structure in Montana built by non-Indians. Fort Raymond, named after Lisa’s son, was built in 1807 as a trading post on the Yellowstone River near what is now Custer (pop. 145).

first appeared: 10/7/2001

Railroad workers who cleared the densely forested land for what would become Whitefish (pop. 5,032) had their own nickname for the community—Stumptown. Workers spent several years clearing trees from the site—and for a time after the town was founded in 1893, stumps could be seen in the middle of streets.

first appeared: 9/30/2001

The model for the buffalo-head nickel is at the Museum of the Upper Missouri in Fort Benton (pop. 1,594). The buffalo was shot in 1886, stuffed, and displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It was used as the model for greenbacks, postage stamps, and the buffalo nickel. In 1970, Fort Benton raised $400,000 to restore and return the stuffed buffalo home.

first appeared: 9/23/2001

The gold rush town of Bannack became Montana’s first capital in 1864, the year Montana became a territory. By 1865, gold strikes elsewhere had all but emptied the town of about 3,000, and the territorial capital moved to Virginia City (pop. 130). Today, Bannack is a ghost town and state park.

first appeared: 9/23/2001

Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, near Whitehall (pop. 1,044), features one of the largest limestone caverns in the Northwest. Some passages stretch 3,000 feet and reach a depth of 300 feet.

first appeared: 9/16/2001

Montana’s first real estate transaction occurred when John Owen bought the St. Mary’s Mission in 1850 and turned it into the Fort Owen trading post near Stevensville (pop. 1,553). Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet had built the mission in 1841.

first appeared: 9/9/2001

Chinook (pop. 1,386) is named after the warm winds that come off of the mountains and melt the snow on Montana’s high plains. When it was founded in the early 1900s, the town was originally named Dawes after an Eastern politician.

first appeared: 9/9/2001

The only known written evidence left by the Lewis and Clark Expedition along the route of the historic journey from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean is the name of William Clark, chiseled into a sandstone butte near Pompeys Pillar (pop. 60). Clark wrote his name in the sandstone July 25, 1806.

first appeared: 9/2/2001

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