The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1919-04-25
MONTANA GEOLOGY
IS ACUTE STUDY

is ACUTE STUDY
Butte, Mont, April 19.-Some inter-
esting facts are contained in the re-
port Of the United States geological
survey relative to the formation of the
state.
Residents of northeastern Montana,
as we'll as tourists who pass over that
rather level stretch of country on their
way to the Rocky mountains or to the
Pacific coast, may be surprised to
learn what great changes have taken
place in it in the course of ages of
geological history. The gelogist who
traces the history of this region as
revealed by it's rocks goes back almost
to a day when there was no life on
the earth, then find his way through
a day when fishes were the highest
form of animal life, a day when the
region became dry land, a day when
the sea again rolled over the plains
and brought in new forms of marine
life, a day when it again became dry
land, and was blessed with a warm,
moist climate and covered with i'm
mense forests beneath which the giant
triceratops and other great beasts fed
and fattened, and a still later day
when the three-toed horse coursed
over the plains in deadly fear of the
sa~ber-toothed tiger.
Effective Dry Farming for Wheat.
This region lies north Of the Mis-
souri, river, which from the time of
Lewis and Clark, in 1804-18O6, to the
time when the Northern Pacific rail-
road was completed in 1888, was the
great northern route Of communica-
ton between the east and west. In
those days many steamboats, piled the
muddy waters of the Missouri, but riv-
er traffic practically ceased with the
building of the Northern Pacific rail-
road, and the region was little visited
until the Great Northern railway was
built in 1889. About eight years ago
JIG uClldIlu LUZ ldIlu DlOuSIlC d CluC VI
new life to Montana in the guise Of
"dry land' farmers, who in 1918 had
become we'll enough established to aid
materially in winning the war by pro-
ducing many millions of bushels of
wheat.
This region is a part of the great
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consist of a single plain, but includes
at least three fairly we'll marked sur
faces at different levels, between
which there are more or less irregu-
lar slopes and escarpments. Near the
southwest corner of the region are the
high peaks of the Little Rocky noun
tains, which were formed by an intru-
sion Of ingenious rocks that here
brought to the surface the underlying
strata not elsewhere exposed. From
these and other exposures it is known
that this area is underlain by a great
series Of sedimentary rocks that range
in date of deposition from the pre-
Cambrain, the time when there was
little if any life on the earth, to the
recent, the time of the buffalo, the
Indian and the white man.
The rocks in most Of the region lie
nearly flat, but those in the western
part are warped into a very wide, low
dome, named the Bowdoin dome from
the lake that lies north of the railroad
, between Saco and Malta. Many such
domes contai noil, and a we'll has been
oil. Most of the rocks exposed in and
: around Bowdoin dome are shales that
were deposited on the floor of the sea
during the Cretaceous period, anG
where they crop out they form a gum
DO soil which is hard to cultivate. In
the eastern part of the region the
shale is overlain by rocks that were de-
posted in fresh water, are more or
less sandy, and almost everywhere
contain beds of Ignite, which have
made it possible for the settlers tc
live in a land where there is no 9th
err fuel.
The formations representing the la
ter history of the region are not wide
ly distributed and were deposited on
the surface of the land. For example,
the Flaxville gravel, named from the
town which is built upon it, is a rem
nant of a series of %plateaus around
which the streams have cut the coun-
try down to a lower level. Fragments
of fossils representing the horse, the
camel, the saber-toothed tiger, and
other ANIMALS are found in it and
show the geological age in which it
was laid down.
Erratic granite boulders brought by
the ice from far away Hudson bay
tell of the glacial epoch, during which
the Missouri river was forced south
ward nearly fifty miles by a great
wall of ice, to the place where it cut
it's present valley, leaving it's old val
ley to be occupied by the Milk river,
a much smaller stream.
For Bilious Troubles.