When chunks of Mt. Jumbo were put on the auction block in the past four years, Missoulians began exploring what they would lose. Then they tried to save it. Jumbo's first white explorer, Canadian David Thompson, surveyed more than 50,000 miles-from Hudson Bay to the mouth of the Columbia. Every August, the Salish month of the Fat Bison, countless generations of Nez Perce, Coeur d'Alene, Shoshone and Salish streamed east through the canyon at the base of Jumbo to hunt buffalo. French fur trappers called the Gate of Hell.
Tepee rings near a spring at the base of the saddle are the buffalo hunters' quiet legacy.
Jumbo's land is like a picture book to the Salish. In earlier days, young Salish warriors raced up to touch the tree for luck in battle. That ponderosa is gone, chopped down by a university prankster in the 1950s. The town of Missoula was born at the base of Jumbo in 1864 as Missoula Mills, milling flour for gold rushers in Bannack and Virginia City. When Mullen built his road from Ft.