I will never know for sure but I think I was present when recreation on the upper Missouri river got its start!
It must have been in the middle to late 1950's and it was generally known that the area between the brand new or about to be built Fred L. Robinson bridge south of Landusky was to tie north and south Montana together in a way that had never been tied together before.
All of a sudden there was a paved road going from Malta to Grass Range and on to Billings. That was big news for recreationalists and historians alike because all of a sudden the heretofore little seen but much known about areas along that part of the Missouri from Fort Peck Lake to Rocky Point, to Kid Curry's hideout, to Thornhill Butte and all the striking scenery from Fort Benton to Jim Kipp Park at the bridge and even east of that.
I think that that bridge brought the famous Kipp family back into the limelight. About that time the Chinook History Group, which was very active, enticed Tavie Kipp, who was Joseph Kipp's wife and the famous Jim Kipp's daughter-in-law, to write about her memories from everything from her life in Glacier Park to their famous homestead at the mouth of Cow Creek. That history group put a sign on the bank high above Cow Island and the Kipp Homestead, honoring Jim Kipp (who is credited as much as anyone for help in establishing Fort Benton) That almost sacred place to this day is called the Jim Kipp Lookout.
Historians soon found, through the writings of Tavie Kipp just how closely related were the Missouri south of the Little Rockies, Fort Benton and what is now the east front of the Rockies and places like Browning, Babb, and the Two Medicine Valley in particular!
The amazing thing about that part of Montana is that it had not changed since Lewis and Clark came though so many years before. Why, folks could even identify campsites from reading the daily diaries of the journey as put together by people like Bernard Devoto. Everyone interested in Montana History had "The Journals of Lewis and Clark" by Devoto and all of a sudden in Montana History classes in Montana's higher education system started teaching about that part of Montana. Mind you there was little known about places wild as could be like Rocky Point but all of a sudden there was a fairly easy way to get to the area and start to document it and talk to very old old timers about the relevance of places like Carroll, Rocky Point, and even Landusky and Zortman and the Power Plant on the Missouri south of the Little Rockies.
I first met Lawrence Duncan at the Lou Lucke Company in Havre where he bought a pair of shoes. He was tall, thin and I don't remember much more about him except that he was wearing a gold nugget ring that must have been an inch by an inch by an inch high. It was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen. After selling Mr. Duncan a pair of shoes, I quickly ran down to Francis Black at Black's Jewelry and wanted a ring just like Lawrence Duncan. Most of my life afterward I have worn a large Black Hills Gold ring. My present one has a wonderful blue Topaz stone in the middle and I love it because all these years later, it reminds me of Landusky, Zortman and Lawrence Duncan.
Lawrence Duncan ran the saloon at Landusky. He employed Rule Horner as his bartender. Rule had been a stage coach driver on the run between Landusky, Zortman and Dodson. What was so interesting about Rule Horner when I knew him was that he often wore five or six pair of pants at once so that the holes in each pair would present him as attired, not half naked with pants full of holes.
One time I went into the saloon at Landusky with Jim Dullenty, a high school friend of mine and a person gaga about outlaws. Jim ordered a Ditch which as most of you know is Montana speak for whisky and water. Rule took one look at this punk kid and threw him out of the bar. As Jim was leaving Rule hollered at Jim, "Next time you come in, remember you can have beer, whisky or whisky and water and nothing else. Jim felt awful but I cheered him up by reminding him that Rule mentioned there would be a next time to come in. It was not one of Rule's total bans at all which he was famous for.
Not long after that Lawrence Duncan moved his bar to the Y where the Harlem road meats the Malta Road on its way to the Fred L. Robinson bridge. That spot and the bar there became known as the DY which stood for Duncan's Junction. Even sadder was that citizens started calling it Duncan's Drunken Junction. Even sadder was the fact that Duncan had left Landusky "dry" in almost more than a hundred years! A fact difficult to tolerate by everyone in those parts!
Yikes, I am going far afield from where I wanted to go. That is what happens when one starts writing history. It leads so many ways. Like, do you know that if you stand on a promontory south on Bull Whacker Road, you can see sometimes at least five mountain ranges and sometimes as many as seven. Nothing there but wild life and scenery, some of the most beautiful in all of Montana and scenery that has not changed since the time of Lewis and Clark!
One other factoid and then I will get back to where I was going when I started this out. The wild life in that newly opened up area was unbelievable. Deer everywhere, huge herds of elk everywhere and as far as fishing goes, opening up that area gave new meaning to the art of paddle fishing!
Enter Emil Dontigny. I knew Emil well as he owned the Havre Theater and the Sunset Drive-in Theater. But his love was the upper Missouri. I don't know how Emil got his love of the upper Missouri but he was bitten hard by the bug. He had found a set of maps showing the river in great detail, where the wrecks of boats were, which way the current ran and even marked some of the places where people figured that Lewis and Clark camped.
I remember like it was yesterday. Late on a weekday afternoon, in the store would amble Emil and his maps. He would station himself on a back counter, light a cigarette and start studying his maps and dreaming. He would look at the maps, Look up with cigarette smoke surrounding his head. He would look up like he was communicating with someone far away or dreaming of the river, then quickly go back from dreaming to again studying the maps.
Emil Dontigny enticed my uncle Al Lucke to go down the river with him. I think they went from Judith to the Fred L. Robinson Bridge and after that great trip; several times they went all the way from Fort Benton to Fort Peck Dam.
Harrison Lane, the great Montana History Professor at Northern Montana College got wind of those trips down the Missouri and went on one himself. Then he decided that Dontigny should be with Lane's Montana History Classes who needed to see that beautiful and so unchanged part of Montana that Lane taught about each year. A friend of Lanes, George Bandy heard about the trips. At that time Bandy was the Athletic Director at Northern. He wanted to be a part of those trips as well and when Bandy moved on, his excitement about those trips was spread far and wide by him. All of Lane's classes talked about those trips again and again and suddenly there was quite a number of people going down the river all summer long.
And that is how one half baked old historian remembers how Emil Dontigny opened up recreational travel in the upper Missouri. I have a headache now from all that thinking. Once more. Yikes!
