The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1934-01-19
MONTANA IN ITS
PREHISTORIC AGE
ARTHUR j. COLLIER OF UNITED
STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
TRACES SOIL
Home Of Strange Animals; Northeast
ern Part of State Was Once q Glac-
Ter; Ocean Rolled, Over 1t a Couple of
Times Also; Home Of Great Ancient
Mammals.

Residents Of northeastern Montana
who pass over that level stretch Of
country on their way to the Rocky
mountains or to the Pacific may be
surprised to learn what great changes
have taken place in this section In
the curse of ages of geologic history
and development.
Biologists who trace the history Of
this region as revealed by its rocks, can
go back almost to the time when there
was no life on the earth, then on
through an age when the fishes were
the highest form of animal life, an age
which followed 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, was blessed
with a warm, moist climate and covered
with immense forests, in which the
fed and fattened, and still a later day
when the three-toed horse coursed over
the plains in deadly fear Of the saber-
toothed tiger.
This region lies north of the Mis-
souri, river, which from the time Of
Lewis and Clark, in 1894-18O6, to the
time when the Northern Pacific railroad
was completed, in 1883, was the great
northern route Of communication be-
tween east and west. In those days
many steamboats, piled regularly on the
muddy waters of the Missouri, but river
traffic practically ceased with the build
ing Of the Northern Pacific, and the
region was little visited until the Great
Northern railway was built in 1888.
About eight years ago the demand for
land brought a tide of new life to Mon
tana in the guise of dry land" farmers,
who in 1918 had become well enough
established to aid materially in winning
the war by producing many millions OF
bushels of wheat.
This region is a part of the Great
Plains Of North America. It does not
consist of a single plain but includes at
least three fairly well marked surfaces
at different levels, which are remnants
of plains, between which there are more
or less irregular slopes and escarpments.
Near the southwest corner of the region
are the high peaks of the Little Rocky
mountains, which were formed by an
intrusion of igneous rocks that here
brought to the surface the underlying
strata, not elsewhere exposed. From
these and other exposures 1t Is known
that this area is underlain by a great
series of sedimentary rocks that range
in date of deposit from the pre-Cam-
brian, 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 nan
The formations representing the later
history of the region are not widely
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 remnant of
a series of plateaus around which the
streams have cut the country down to q
lower level. Fragments of fossils repre-
senting the horse, the camel, the saber-
toothed tiger, and other animals are
found in it and show the geologic In
which it was laid down.
Erratic granite boulders brought by
the ice from the far-away Hudson Bay
tell of the glacial epoch, during which
the Missouri river was forced south
ward nearly so miles by a great field OF
ice, to a place where it cut its present
channel, leaving its old valley to be &C.
cupied by Milk river, q much smaller
stream.
A paper describing this region, en-
titled, Geology of Northeastern Mon
tana," by Arthur J.. Collier, was pub
lished a few years ago by the United
States geological survey as Professional
Paper bob, and may be had on appli-
cation to the director of the survey at
Washington. The paper Is in large
part strictly technical.