page_title: Cow Creek (Montana)
section_title: Steamboat landing
hierarchical_section_title: Cow Creek (Montana) / History / Steamboat landing
caption_attribution_description: English: Model of the Steamboat Bertrand, Desoto National Wildlife Refuge.
context_page_description: Cow Creek is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately 35 miles long, in north central Montana in the United States. Cow Creek rises in the southern foothills of the Bear Paw Mountains in western Blaine County and flows east and then south, joining the Missouri approximately 25 air miles northeast of Winifred, Montana—or 22 miles upstream from the Fred Robinson Bridge.
context_section_description: The mouth of Cow Creek became a steamboat landing, known as Cow Island landing, in the later months of the summer and fall when the Missouri river level dropped to a level so that steamboats could not get through a series of rapids above Cow Island, which are Bird Rapids, Cabin Rapids, Dauphine Rapids, and Deadman Rapids.  Being some 126 river miles short of Ft. Benton, steamboats had to offload their cargo at the Cow Island landing for it to be freighted the rest of the way up the Cow Island trail.
  Once gold was discovered in the Montana Territory in 1862, the Missouri River became the most reliable pathway to bring passengers and freight—particularly heavy or bulky freight—to the booming gold fields.  In the era from 1860 the mid-1880s steamboats brought supplies and heavy equipment some 2,600 miles (4,200 km) from ports like St. Louis in "the states" to the upriver terminus port of Ft. Benton in the Montana Territory.
  The final 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of the river was called the "upper Missouri" – this stretch traversed remote unsettled plains, and the last few hundred miles to Ft. Benton passed through the Missouri Breaks.  In May and June the Missouri River has "high water" from mountain snow melt, and steamboats who caught this flood could travel all the way through the breaks to reach the upriver terminus at Ft. Benton. Later, in the summer and fall the water levels dropped, and there was "low water" on the upper Missouri.  When "low water" came, deeper draft steamboats often could not reach Ft. Benton, and they had to drop their cargos downstream in the Missouri Breaks.
  
  Each year during the steamboat era, in the late summer and fall, if there wasn't a full three feet of water depth in the channel, Cow Island and the mouth of Cow Creek became a river port, known as Cow Island landing. The mouth of Cow Cree is 126 river miles below Ft. Benton. Some 24 miles above Cow Island was Dauphine Rapids, which was the worst of the rapids.  It was difficult to run even in high water, but was a deadly barrier to riverboats in low water.  If a steamboat could get through Dauphine Rapids, they then faced Deadman Rapids, some 18 miles further up the river.  In the stretch of river below Deadman and Dauphine Rapids, Cow Island landing was the best place from which freight could be offloaded and then transported overland to Ft. Benton, via the Cow Island Trail.
  To offload cargo at Cow island, the steamboats used a landing point several hundred yards above Cow Creek, in front of the now abandoned buildings of the Kipp homestead (see photo), or down river, several hundreds of yards below Cow Creek.  The steamboats used landing sites where the water of the Missouri was deep up against the north bank, so the river boats could pull in close to the bank to discharge cargo.
caption: Model of Upper Missouri River stern-wheel steamboat Bertrand, which sank on April 1, 1865, after hitting a snag in DeSoto Bend while heading upriver for Fort Benton, Montana Territory
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