Distinctly Montana Magazine

88 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 5 article and photos by BRYAN SPELLMAN G E T T O K N O W G E T T O K N O W A C O U N T Y A C O U N T Y J U D I T H B A S I N C O U N T Y J U D I T H B A S I N C O U N T Y J UDITH BASIN COUN- TY, just west of Mon- tana's geographic cen- ter, came into being on December 10th, 1920, when the Montana Legislature split off the western part of Fergus Coun- ty and eastern Cascade County. The county covers 1,871 square miles, almost all of it land based. Just over 2,000 people call Judith Basin Coun- ty home, less than half the population in 1930, the first census that considered the county as a political entity. The county takes its name from the Judith River, itself named by Lieutenant William Clark. The county seat and largest town is Stanford. The county number is 36. The land that is now Judith Basin County was originally Blackfeet country. When Lewis and Clark came through on their way west, Clark named the Judith River for a young girl, Julia "Judith" Hancock, whom he married in 1808. She was16 at the time of her marriage. For the next half century, non-Native vis- itors to the area were mostly traders and trappers. Even Father Ravalli, so important in the history of western Montana, crossed the area on a trip back to St. Louis. The area was commonly used by the Blackfeet, the Sioux and the Crow and a proposed Judith Basin Indian Reservation would have moved the Salish, Kootenai and Pend d'Oreille tribes to cen- tral Montana. In the early 1870s, President Grant issued a series of executive orders that removed the area from the Blackfeet Reser- vation, then created a new Crow Reservation, but Congress failed to act on these "orders." The discovery of gold in the Judith Mountains in the late 1870s led to "white" settlement. Three notable settlers were A.R. Barrows, Jake Hoover, and a cowboy wannabe named Charles Marion Russell. Two "stage" roads crossed the area; the Carroll Trail connect- ed Helena with the Missouri River north of today's Lewistown. Another "road" ran roughly from Billings to Fort Benton. Where the two crossed, former Wisconsin senator A.R. Barrows built a stage station. When told he would need a name, he reputedly replied "You bet!" Today, Ubet is remembered through its ceme- tery and a monument along the highway in nearby Garneill, but in its heyday, a thriving community grew up around Barrow's hostelry. Jake Hoover was a rancher and miner in the Utica area. The story goes that as he was mining for gold, he kept finding blue stones that he set aside in a cigar box. On a whim, he sent the box STANFORD

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