Distinctly Montana Magazine

39 w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m When you say "just down the road" in eastern Montana, that means an hour's drive to the next town, which, if you are travel- ing east on Highway 200, might be Circle, named for the circular brand of the historic Mabry Cattle Company. Circle has a history that parallels most Montana towns on the plains: first, the open range cattle industry in the 1880s, then the homesteader boom and bust times of the nineteen teens, then oil extraction of the 1950s and the more recent "Bakken Boom." Circle has settled into comfortable rhythms now, greeting the incoming and outgo- ing traffic arising from the highway and its dozens of gravel road tendrils that bring farm and ranch feeder traffic to town to mingle with oil field workers. Thousands of feet under the highway's sur- face are ancient coal, gas and oil deposits awaiting the right tech- nology to release their treasures—or travails, depending on who you are and where you live. The polarization that divides attitudes toward natural resources is as deeply etched among Montanans along the highway as is the centerline dividing the asphalt itself. The next town may be Jordan, county seat of Garfield County. In such a place you can sit on your back porch and watch your dog run away…for three days. Where, like many proud rural com- munities, you might be greeted with a sign proclaiming "1993 Boys Class C Track Champions." There are more antelope in the county than there are people. Its population density, 0.274 peo- ple per square mile, is the lowest in the state. Suspended just below the expansive Fort Peck Reservoir to the north, the county could easily be characterized as flat and featureless unless you rose above ground level and carefully analyzed the terrain. Back from the highway, there are landforms of unthinkable shapes and colors. "Breaks" does bare description for the countless cou- lees and wooded draws that snake north into the reservoir. Ask any local farmer and rancher what lies beyond the highway, and you'll learn that that seemingly level land contains thousands of sweeps and swoops to render colorful character. And, in winter, blankets of shifting, drifting snow alter the horizons with dizzy- ing contours and stack white stuff on the windward side of isolat- ed buildings like a ski ramp. Motorists driving Highway 200 might not be aware that they are traveling across an ancient seabed with its muddy bottom layers of sediment and mudstone shelves laden with the skeletons of primordial seagoing animals. Or, if geology is your thing, con- TOWNS LIKE THOMPSON FALLS, LINCOLN, LEWISTOWN, WINNETT, FAIRVIEW, JORDAN AND DOZENS OF OTHER NECKLACE COMMUNITIES STRUNG OUT ALONG ITS LENGTH CLING TO THE ROADWAY'S ASPHALT LIKE BARNACLES TO A HULL.

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