User:Ltvine/Sandbox/History of Wolf Point

American expansion (1803 - 1864)
With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States gained possession of present day Eastern Montana encompassed by the Missouri and Yellowstone River drainage basins east of the Continental Divide and south of the Northern Divide. Long a proposal of Thomas Jefferson's, an expedition to inspect and exert the sovereignty of the United States was already in the offing at the time of the signing of the purchase treaty. On its upriver journey, the Lewis and Clark expedition first passed through the vicinity of the future location of Wolf Point, camping southeast of the site of the present day city on May 5, 1805. Meriwether Lewis remarked in his journal entry of that day, "The country is as yesterday beatifull in the extreme.—" He went on to record a description of the varied and abundant wildlife of the area including the future namesake of Wolf Point:

Lewis and Clark further record killing a large grizzly bear that same day. The next day, Lewis noted passing the mouth of Lackwater Creek, today known as Wolf Creek which lies just to the west of the city limits. To the Nakhóta people (Assiniboine) this creek was known as Tabéȟʾa Wakpá (Frog Creek), and the Missouri River as Miníšoše (Muddy Water). On the return journey, Lewis's party camped approximately four miles southwest of the site of the future location of Wolf Point on August 6, 1806, in present day McCone County, Montana.

While the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition report no contact with the indigenous people of the area, Assiniboine oral tradition holds, and some current historians assert, that Assiniboine scouts monitored the expedition's movement as it made its way up the Missouri River through Assiniboine territory and intercepted an expedition hunting party near present-day Frazer, Montana. This account is disputed.

Nearly fifty years later, in 1853, the party of Isaac Stevens, newly named governor of Washington Territory, surveyed a possible northern route for a transcontinental railroad through the upper Missouri river valley. Second Lieutenant of Engineers A. J. Donelson noted that the party's seventh camp above Fort Union was a distance of 23.646 mi above Poplar River at "a point on a small creek not far from its entrance into the Missouri." In the same report Doneldson also remarked that the road between Forts Union and Benton "is already marked, as there is an Indian trail from one point to another."

Wolf Point is referenced in James H. Chambers' Fort Sarpy Journal as a waypoint in his search for lost horses in April and May 1856 and Major Edwin A. C. Hatch's diary of the same year. The 1862 overland expedition led by Captain James L. Fisk passed through the vicinity on its way from Fort Abercrombie, Dakota Territory to Fort Benton.

Prior to 1860, transportation on the Missouri River above Fort Union was primarily by keelboat, mackinaw boat, bullboat, or canoe. In 1850, the steamboat El Paso, chartered by the American Fur Company steamed to a point 8 mi above the mouth of the Milk River, the highest point reached to that time by a steamboat on the Missouri. In 1859, the steamboat Chippewa passed Wolf Point enroute to its eventual landing at Fort McKenzie (Fort Brûlé), 12 mi below Fort Benton. The next year, seasonal steamboat traffic opened to Fort Benton with the landing of that vessels Chippewa and Key West. Wolf Point became a fuel stop for passing wood-fired steamboat traffic on the Missouri.

Founding (1864 - 1915)
Research has not documented the first settlement at Wolf Point. In an interview with William Bent in A. J. Noyes' 1917 book In the Land of Chinook, or the Story of Blaine County, Bent reports that Wolf Point was a home station along the route of a short-lived northern pony express run between Fort Abercrombie and Helena, Montana Territory between 1867 and 1868. Bent and a companion rode the leg between Fort Hawley and Wolf Point.

A settlement referred to as Old Town, oriented toward the river and anchored by a trading post licensed to trade with the Assiniboine people, developed with the creation of the Wolf Creek sub-agency in 1875. One reference indicates two trappers lived in a cabin on the site of Old Town in 1873. The sub-agency was established in part to convert the Wadopabina (Wadopana, or Canoe Paddler) Assiniboine band led by Chief Red Stone from a semi-nomadic to an agrarian way of life. A mission day school was also established at the same time to teach Assiniboine children "the rudiments of education". The tribe's subsistence was undermined due to the destruction of the American Bison herds, and restrictions on the access to ammunition and guns in trade for hunting especially after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. These factors served to increase their dependence on government rations, or annuities, though they were frequently insufficient to last through the winters during the 1870s and 1880s. As reported by Chief Red Stone to Lieutenant Colonel J. N. G. Whistler, commander at Fort Buford, more than 100 of Red Stone's band starved to death during the winter of 1883-1884 at the Wolf Point sub-agency.

The bison herds of the northern Great Plains had been nearly killed off by 1884. In the wake of the their near extinction, a trade developed in buffalo bones for their commercial use in producing fertilizer phosphate and bone char for sugar processing. Wolf Point during the mid-1880s became a major transshipment point in this trade under the direction of T.C. Power and Brother Company trading post agent Charles A. Aubrey. Aubrey paid bone collectors by weight, who would collect bones and "bank" them in piles along the river for eventual collection and payment by Aubrey at Wolf Point. From Wolf Point, Aubrey arranged for transport aboard steamboats downriver to Bismarck, North Dakota. Bones were then shipped by rail to St. Louis processing facilities. Aubrey exited the business in 1886 likely due to high shipping costs, but with the coming of the railroad in 1887, the bone harvest along the Upper Missouri and Milk Rivers experienced a revival that lasted until 1892. Sherman T. Cogswell came to the sub-agency in 1885 to become master of the government school, later purchased the trading post, and became known as the founding father of the town.

In 1887, the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway (later the Great Northern Railway) laid track through the upper Missouri River valley to Great Falls via Havre, Montana. The railway established a depot to the north of Old Town and built a section house. The current city was platted adjacent to the Great Northern Railway's tracks in 1910. The town was incorporated after a vote held on July 15, 1915, and an election for mayor and aldermen was held in September of that same year. A census taken prior to the incorporation vote in 1915 reported a population count of 340 persons within the proposed corporate limits of Wolf Point. Five years later at the 1920 census, the population had risen to 2,098, an increase of more than 6 fold.

Toponomy
The origin of the name Wolf Point is uncertain. In In the Land of Chinook, or the Story of Blaine County, the author relays that Wolf Point "received its name from a large number of wolves that had been caught and piled up by Charlie Conklin and two other fellows, but the Indians came and they never got a chance to skin them." Other references tell of a similar genesis for the name, but with varying details concerning the landmark pile of wolf carcasses. Another version of the story attributed to William Bent indicates that wolfers killed such a great quantity of wolves one winter that the carcasses froze before the skins could be removed, the pile becoming so high it became a landmark on the bluff above the river. In her remembrance of time spent as the first instructor at the Fort Peck mission school in 1875 and 1876, missionary Lydia A. Fitch, reports the name Wolf Point came "from a creek of that name emptying into the [Missouri] river," a reference to Wolf Creek.

Homesteading and bust (1915 - 1929)
On June 30, 1914, the Fort Peck Indian Reservation was opened for general settlement for non-Native homesteading. The opening of the reservation, and the naming of Wolf Point as a division point on the Great Northern Railway in 1917 contributed to Wolf Point's rapid early growth.

In 1919, Roosevelt County was created by the state legislature as a partition of Sheridan County. Mondak was selected as the provisional county seat. An election to select a permanent county seat was held in November 1920. The outcome of that election resulted in Poplar receiving the most votes, but not the required majority of all votes cast. Poplar received 1,301 votes; Wolf Point 1,224 votes; Bainville 1,111 votes; while three other towns split the remaining share of votes cast. Poplar and Wolf Point advanced to a runoff election in November 1922. After a contested election, Wolf Point was declared the winner in December 1922 after a canvass board review. Results of several key precincts were at issue. Once the canvassing board declared Wolf Point the winner, a backer of Poplar filed an injunction in district court to keep the county seat from being moved. A trial was held from August to October 1923. A ruling in favor of Wolf Point was issued by the district court judge in February 1924. The ruling lifted the injunction that had been in place since 1922 barring the move of the county seat. With the injunction lifted, Wolf Point backers began moving county records to Wolf Point. Poplar appealed the district court ruling to the Montana Supreme Court which issued a new injunction, agreed to hear the appeal, and ordered the return of county records to Poplar. The Montana Supreme Court issued its decision awarding the county seat on July 11, 1924, ending the legal battle and permanently establishing the county seat at Wolf Point. The news of the ruling reached Wolf Point during the annual Wild Horse Stampede. County offices were moved from Poplar to Wolf Point on July 17, 1924, and would occupy leased space in Wolf Point until the completion of the Roosevelt County Courthouse in 1940.

While the early 1910s were marked by reliable, adequate precipitation which enabled large numbers of homesteaders to establish themselves on land claims made under the Enlarged Homestead Act, the end of the 1910s were marked by successive drought years. These dry years caused an increase in the number of farm failures which took their toll on commerce in Wolf Point and other Eastern Montana communities. Between 1919 and 1925, approximately 11,000 farms, 20 percent of all Montana's farms were vacated, twenty thousand mortgages were foreclosed and half of Montana's farmers lost their land. Bank failures skyrocketed in the early 1920s. In his annual report for the period ending in June 1924, the State Examiner and Superintendent of Banks, wrote:

Between June 30, 1920, and June 30, 1924, 110 banks in Montana, thirty-eight percent of all banks, failed. In 1917, Wolf Point had four banks. By 1924 only one bank remained in business; the others had either merged or closed their doors. The Great Northern Railway cut back its operational presence in Wolf Point in March 1926. Coupled with the exodus of homesteaders in the wake of the homesteading bubble, Wolf Point's population fell during the decade of the twenties, and would not recover until the 1940s.

Wolf Point Wild Horse Stampede
A contest of horsemanship and celebration of indigenous culture dating back to 1903, and known as the Ride'em Sioux Celebration was the forerunner of the modern Wolf Point Wild Horse Stampede, the oldest rodeo in Montana. In 1921, with the prospect of a good harvest season, the town commercial club sponsored a permanent committee to make arrangements for the newly renamed Wolf Point Stampede. The first annual stampede was held to coincide with the Palmer Brothers' Wild Animal Circus, the last weekend in July, 1921. That first stampede also coincided with the arrival of a Theodore Roosevelt International Highway touring group. Between 1921 and 1932, the grounds for the stampede were located at a ball field west of sixth avenue and south of the present location of the high school. In 1933, the commercial club purchased 40 acre 0.5 mi east of the city where that year's and all subsequent exhibitions of the annual Wolf Point Stampede have been held.

Highways and Bridges
The decade of the 1920s saw a rapid increase in automobile use and the expansion of the road and highway network. Early work on connecting the communities along the Missouri River by road, including Wolf Point, began in 1919 with the passage of a county bond measure for construction of an east-west through highway.

Until 1915, the only means of crossing the Missouri River was by ferry boat during the ice-free season or by crossing the ice when the river was ice-bound. Efforts to build a permanent all-weather connection between Wolf Point and the increasing homestead population south of the Missouri River began with the construction of a pontoon bridge in the fall of 1915. However, it was prone to damage from debris and ice flows and was damaged and repaired several times between 1915 and the spring of 1917 when the idea was abandoned after the south approach washed away.

A renewed effort to build a bridge at Wolf Point came after the drowning deaths of two Wolf Point High School students, James and Rolla Cusker, in February 1926. Then county commissioner, William L. "Bill" Young, championed an effort to persuade state policymakers to endorse and fund a north-south all-weather highway route, including a bridge over the Missouri River. Surveying began for the Wolf Point Bridge in January 1928. The structure was opened to the public on July 9, 1930, before a large crowd.

The Great Depression (1929 - 1941)
Though rain returned for a brief period beginning in 1925 returning Montana agriculture to prosperity, that ended with the drought of the Dust Bowl years and the depressed markets brought on by the market crash of 1929. All Eastern Montana counties were federally designated drought counties in both 1934 and 1936 by the New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA). The drought intensity in Roosevelt county for the period 1930 - 1936 was categorized by the WPA as severe. The price for wheat fell from a high of US$2.45 per bushel in 1920 to US$0.49 in 1932

Construction of the Roosevelt County Courthouse was completed in 1940, and was financed by a mix of local taxes and federal funds provided through the WPA. Other WPA projects of the late 1930s and early 1940s included the main hangar at Wolf Point's Airport, and the divisional headquarters of the Montana Highway Department.