One afternoon while staying in Fort Benton, we drove south toward the city of Great Falls to experience the 5 falls on the Missouri River that the Corps of Discovery had to portage around. We started with the location of the sulfur springs where Sacajawea had been sick, and then we found the great falls that the Mandan and Hidatsa had told Lewis and Clark about. But Lewis soon figured out that 4 more falls were still upstream. No wonder the portage had to cover 18+ miles. We always wondered why it was so hard for the expedition to go upstream all the way from St. Louis, but after seeing these falls, especially this first one, which was the last of the falls, we understood.
sulfur spring
Deathly ill for almost a week before arriving at this place, Sacagawea’s health failed to improve despite Clark’s repeated bloodlettings. After Lewis returned from exploring what the falls looked like, Clark left to establish Lower Portage Camp and turned the doctoring over to Lewis, who was better at it.
Lewis wrote on June 16, 1805, “. . . found the Indian woman extreemly ill and much reduced by her indisposition, this gave me some concern when I first came down I found that her pulse were scarcely perceptible.”
An alarmed Captain Lewis remembered having passed the sulfur spring, “the virtues of which I now resolved to try on the Indian woman.” Lewis administered the sulfur tonic and she made a full recovery, thanks in part to hydration from the natural mineral waters.
She received their best doctoring.
After the men set up Lower Portage Camp on the opposite shore, a small party forced the dugout canoes against the rapids along the north shore and crossed to the mouth of Portage (Belt) Creek
He staked a shortcut by taking advantage of the river’s course to the south. Clark planned to reenter the river upstream above the fifth waterfall.
the portage
During June and July 1805, the Corps traveled around the 5 falls of the Missouri. Unable to travel by water, the expedition had to bring the canoes out of the river and pull them up Portage Creek (now named Belt Creek).
They began the chore of the portage by finding cottonwood trees to make wheels (or trucks), upon which the canoes were pulled over the 18-mile portage route that Captain Clark had mapped.
In 12 days the men made four trips back and forth across the windy, cactus-filled prairie. They took the canoes to a location known today as White Bear Island, where they put the canoes back into the river.
This portage was one of the most difficult parts of the journey that the expedition encountered. The expedition was now leaving the prairie and heading toward the mountains.
finding the falls
The falls in the order that Lewis and Clark saw them are the Great Falls, Crooked Falls, Rainbow Falls, Coulter Falls, and Black Eagle Falls.
great falls
On June 13,1805, Captain Lewis confirmed the existence of what had been just a legend to many—the Great Falls of the Missouri River. Earlier that day, Lewis, who suspected the falls were in the area based on what the [Mandan] Indians had told him the previous winter, heard the “agreeable sounds of a fall of water” and saw “the spray (arise) above the plain like a column of smoke.” Finding a vantage spot overlooking the falls, he spent hours in a frustrating attempt to render a sketch that ultimately couldn’t capture the essence of the “grandest sight I ever beheld.”
The Great Falls of the Missouri is located about five miles east of this sign.
On Thursday June 13, 1805, Captain Lewis came upon what he described in his journal as a “. . . sublimely grand spectile . . .” He had arrived at the Great Falls of the Missouri River
After Captain Lewis arrived at the Great Falls, it was now Captain William Clark’s job to measure and map them. Using a sextant and a rod, Clark employed geometry to measure the falls at a height of 97 feet and 1/4 inches.
The explorers were very impressed with the narrowness of the Missouri gorge and the falls.
We can now understand the words Lewis and Clark had to say about this view.
Now let’s look at what we saw.
crooked falls
rainbow falls
When Lewis was standing on the hills overlooking the Rainbow Falls, he said, “I now thought that if a skillful painter had been asked to make a beautifull cascade that he would most probably have p[r]esented the precise immage of this one; nor could I for some time determine on which of those two great cataracts to bestoe the palm on this or that which I had discovered yesterday; [the Great Falls] at length I determined between these two great rivals for glory that this was pleasingly beautifull, while the other was sublimely grand.”
giant springs
After Lewis and Clark saw the first two falls, they came to these giant springs. Clark first documented these springs on June 18, 1805. “We proceeded on up the river a little more than a mile to the largest fountain or spring I ever saw. . . . This water . . . is immensely clear and of a bluish cast.”
Many trappers and fur traders eventually traveled through this area during the Fur Trade Era, which flourished along the Missouri River in the 1800s.
Over 150 million gallons of water flow from Giant Springs everyday and cascade into the Missouri River. The springs occur where cracks in the rocks above the Madison Limestone allow water to leak upward to the land surface. It is similar to a leak in a hose where the water, under pressure, will exit upwards through the overlying opening.
Clark wrote, “. . . the largest fountain or Spring I have ever Saw, and doubt if it is not the largest in America Known, this water boils up from under the rocks near the edge of the river and falls immediately into the river 8 feets and keeps its Colour for a mile which is emencely Clear and of a bluish Cast . . .”
the smallest river runs through it
From the water flowing over the rocks is one of the shortest rivers in the country flowing into the longest river. The Roe River is only 201 feet in length, while the Missouri River stretches 2540 miles, 200 miles longer than the Mississippi River.
Each year one million rainbow trout are raised here.
In the springs area, the Madison Formation is about 400 feet below the surface. It takes less than 50 years for water to flow from the Little Belt Mountains to the Giant Springs area.
black eagle falls
In June 1805, Lewis spotted an eagle’s nest in a cottonwood tree on an island in the river—“a more inaccessable spot I believe she could not have found; for neither man nor beast dare pass those gulphs which separate her little domain from the shores.”
This dam is one of 5 hydroelectric power facilities in the Great Falls area. The first dam built here was a timber-rock-crib dam built in 1890. It was the first hydroelectric dam built in Montana and the first on the Missouri River.
Now we’ve seen what Lewis and Clark saw so many years ago. Let’s go back to the interpretive center and look at what we’ve seen this far on our trip.
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