Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
All day long we’ve been driving in Montana, which is cowboy country and mining country. To assist folks in distinguishing these from say the Midwest kind of country which also may have horses and cows, here are some distinguishing marks and features of cowboy country. You know you’re in cowboy country when you see:
• Cattleguards at the freeway entrances. Now, I grew up on a cattle ranch, and just about every rancher had a cattleguard at the main ranch entrance. It’s made of steel or wood beams with gaps in between them so that people or cars can pass over, but cattle can’t.
However, until today I’ve never in my life seen a cattleguard at a freeway entrance … must be cowboy country. However, the best guide to whether it’s cowboy country or not are the want ads … here were some clues from today’s local newspaper:
• The first three sections in the want ad of the local paper are “Horses”, “Livestock”, and “Pets”. Don’t want to waste time going through ads for furniture to get to the good stuff, I guess.
• The largest section in the want ads is “Farm and Ranch Equipment” … followed closely by “Guns”.
• The first two ads in the “Miscellaneous For Sale” section of the local paper are for sausage stuffing machines … definitely cowboy country.
• There are advertisements like “LIFE SIZE Tom Mountain Lion Mounted on a Rock $550”.
• The “Homes For Sale” section of the want ads includes trailers.
• You can be sure that you’re in cowboy country when the “Antiques” section of your newspaper offers you the unparalleled opportunity to buy an “Antique Manure Spreader, Built Early 1900”, for only $800 …
• And the final clue that we’re in cowboy country? The fact that the day after the finals of the FIFA World Soccer Cup, there was no mention of soccer in the paper anywhere … quite refreshing, actually.
How about signs that it’s mining country? Well, big holes in the ground in the middle of cities are kind of a clue … here’s a giant open-pit mine in the city of Butte, Montana, which sprung up on the place called the “Richest Hill In The World” because of the precious metals taken out of it …
The next clue was the name of the biggest bank building in town …
Yeah, that’s mining country.
Then you have the fact that about one bar in three in Butte is an Irish pub … given the number of early miners who were from Ireland, I suppose that’s no surprise.
Finally, I learned that you can tell a mining town from other towns by their preferred choice of anaesthetics …
Today was another day when the emergent phenomena controlled the temperature. It was clear in the morning. Then when it got hot, we got cumulus clouds to reflect much of the solar energy back to outer space. And finally, as the earth heated even more, we got a whole complex of thunderstorms, with cold rain and winds that knocked the temperature right back down again.
We’re in Missoula, Montana tonight. Tomorrow, we roll north to Flathead Lake, and the next day to Whitefish to see David Raitt and the Baja Boogie Band …
My best to all of you, dear friends, and my sincere hope that your lives are as full of antique manure spreaders and Overland Rye Whiskey as is mine,
w.
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Out West I’ve even seen fake cattleguards painted onto the roadway.
There are more Cornishmen down mines than Irish.
In a bar in West Yellowstone, Montana, i saw ”All guns must be checked at the bar”. Sounds like common sense to me.
I’ve heard that you know you’re in cowboy country when your wife is bigger than your pickup…
greymouser70 says:
July 15, 2014 at 8:33 pm
It is unlikely that the massive copper mine in Butte would even make it into the top 10 largest producers in the world.
The clear winner is the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa. Over 50% of all the gold ever mined comes from this one area.
A distant second might be the Sudbury Basin which has over 20 mines, most would be considered world class on their own. The largest, the Frood-Stobie complex has produced over 30 billion equivalent pounds of copper (mostly nickel with copper and platinum-palladium). Creighton mine, located within the same basin is about the size of Butte by dollar value of metal mined. Then there are over 18 more, all within an 80 km basin.
Then there is the massive Norilsk nickel mine in Russia. Over 1 billion tonnes of nickel, copper and precious metals. Easily two Buttes and still in production.
Then the massive Grasberg Deposit, the world’s largest gold mine and third largest copper mine currently in production. The massive concentrator processes 230,000 tonnes per day of material.
The Carlin Trend in Nevada, for example, has produced more than 50 million ounces of gold. The mine at Butte would be about 45 million equivalent gold ounces ($1,300 Au oz and $3.00 Cu lbs).
World class, but barely top 10.
@greymouser70. Bingham Canyon in Utah (Kennecott Mines) produced over 33 billion pounds of copper. Butte could be the second largest copper mine in the USA. Bingham is still in production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingham_Canyon_Mine
In line with the picture of the Metal Bank, there is a small town in the UP of Michigan named Trout Lake that once had a bank named Snow Bank. Nice sense of humor.
Willis, when you are in Missoula, you will want to sample a local brew, Moose Drool beer.
And be very careful about following defensive driving techniques when traveling north from Missoula on Highway 93 towards Flathead Lake.
The unofficial state motto of Montana is “drive free or die.”
In my many trips across Montana, looking out at the prairie grasslands of the majority if the east/north side, I have wondered how many acres it would take to feed a vegetarian. Let’s all thank the cattle for spending the time to convert the nutrient / protein poor grass into rich health meat.
hope the Raitts are a happy generation.
At Rolling Hills Ranch in northeast Arizona, there’s a railroad spur through the ranch that’s killed several head. If the railroad repair crews leave the gate open, some cattle can get in, climb the 15′ embankment, and lick the tracks.
There’s a switch up there that uses the rails as a ground, so there’s a tiny bit of current going through the tracks. Once the cattle “taste” the buzz of electricity in the tracks, the get addicted to it, so if the gate is open, they’re eager to get up onto the tracks.
It was described to me as, “If there’s a contest between a cow and a train, the train generally wins.”
Second that recommendation on Moose Drool beer, also one of my favorites when I visit Montana. Had to put up with all types of kidding from the Coors Lite drinkers in my group.
johnmarshall @ur momisugly July 16, 2014 at 3:30 am
My folks owned a country bar in Northern Wisconsin. We allowed folks to bring their guns in so they wouldn’t risk one being stolen. During hunting season, we’d have quite an arsenal leaning in the corner by the door.
I remember taking my rifle to school for hunter’s safety classes (storing it in my locker – and on the bus to and from school). Now-a-days, that would be discouraged.
How can you tell the difference between a Male and Female in Cowboy country:
The Male has two rings in his blue jeans back pockets and the Female only has one. (Copenhagen chew)
When discussing how hard it rained it is always referenced to a cow peeing on a flat rock.
Love Eastern Oregon! It’s so quite it’s defining, no blue pollution from lights so the night sky touches the ground.
Have friends up that way, several others have visited in the last couple years.
Lolo Peak. Rattlesnake National Park. Glacier. Kalispell. Smokejumper school. Athletic medicine clinic. Paper-making plant (phew!, though that may have been closed). Bees. Cherries. The people at the Missoulian offices (Lee publishing) see the big M every day.
And Calgary Stampede (room-mate/Control Data system analyst colleague back in the day and a friend of a friend now live there).
Cattle-guards are all over the place, if you know to look: Florida (e.g. a block or two from the National High Magnetic Field Lab which is on part of what used to be the university’s dairy farm), Missouri, Ohio… just not so many right at the inter-state high-way. I seem to recall 1 or 2 over-passes or special exits in MT or the Dakotas, just so some farmer/rancher could continue to get from one part of his land to another when they built the road through it. (I once read that Missouri produces more cattle than Texas or Montana due to the water supply, richer soil or some such.)
The miners had their choice of bars in Butte. The red light district was pretty famous as well The Metals Bank in Butte is now a brew pub…You can eat and drink in the old bank vault. How’s that for recycling? And around the corner is a distillery.
Steve from Rockwood says:
Perhaps I should have emphasized the word was. At the turn of the century (1900), Butte was “the Richest Hill on Earth”. All of this mineral wealth came out of a district that was approximately 2mi X 4mi in size. Keep in mind that Bingham Canyon began large scale mining in 1906. Butte at that point had already been in production for over 20 years.
Alan Robertson says:
July 15, 2014 at 6:53 pm
“Antique Manure Spreader, for only $800 …”
___________________
Don’t sell yerself short, gotta be worth more than that.
jajaja
————————————————-
Yeah, and you’re not that old either.
cn
Right on with that opinion. If you are going to all the trouble of driving to Missoula, Montana, for the experience of living life in a more intense and pleasurable way, then why on earth would you put up with a much inferior beer such as Coors Lite when you got there? (Or any Coors product, for that matter, when you can have Moose Drool instead?)
Chuck Nolan says:
July 16, 2014 at 9:49 am
The problem is finding enough antique manure to spread, that stuff is hard to come by.
w.
<blockquoteWillis Eschenbach says:
July 16, 2014 at 10:06 am
Chuck Nolan says:
July 16, 2014 at 9:49 am
“Antique Manure Spreader, for only $800 …”
The problem is finding enough antique manure to spread, that stuff is hard to come by.
w.
Coprolite should be anitque enough, but you’d have to put it through a pulverizer to make it spreadable. And granted, still somewhat rare.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 15, 2014 at 9:33 pm
Truthseeker says:
July 15, 2014 at 6:21 pm
Why have a cattle guard at a freeway entrance when there is no fencing to stop the cattle from walking on the road anyway? Cattle guards are kind of pointless if they are not part of a fence.
“Indeed there are fences, both at the entrances and all along the sides of the freeways.
w.”
The fence needs to be attached at the point where the cattle guard is located or the cows walk around the cattle guard and walk up the road. The picture does not show such a fence. Probably why the comment.
If you ride with me, you have to raise your feet when you drive over a cattle guard.
I don’t like to disagree but the following; ‘You can be sure that you’re in cowboy country when the “Antiques” section of your newspaper offers you the unparalleled opportunity to buy an “Antique Manure Spreader, Built Early 1900″, for only $800 …’ is not necessarily a clear cut indication one is in cowboy country. One can find antique manure spreaders all over Washington D.C.
Whoops; you’re right, I’m wrong. I forgot the price. Antique manure spreaders in Washington go for hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
Have a good trip.
Willis writes:
You can be sure that you’re in cowboy country when the “Antiques” section of your newspaper offers you the unparalleled opportunity to buy an “Antique Manure Spreader, Built Early 1900″, for only $800 …
Heck, I can buy a subscription to the NY Times for less than that.
Little known fact: The lowest elevation in Montana is where the Kootenai River crosses the Montana-Idaho border – in far northwest Montana. Nearly everyone would bet the lowest elevation was somewhere in eastern Montana.
Also, stand atop Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park and answer nature’s call – it could theoretically flow into three oceans – Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic.
Willis, don’t know where you are headed after Whitefish, but consider Highway 12 over Lolo Pass into Idaho and down the Lochsa River Scenic Highway which roughly follows Lewis and Clark’s route west. One of America’s most beautiful drives. Don’t forget to stop and look UP to see mountain goats high up in the canyon.