Old Missoula

Clarence K. Streit describes Missoula’s Five Valleys in 1917

The following short biography of Clarence K. Streit appears in the finding aid section – guide to Clarence K. Streit papers – held at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library in Missoula, Mt.

The article following Streit’s biography appeared in a small publication titled ‘Missoula: The City of the Five Vallleys’ written by journalism students at the University of Montana in 1917 – 1918 for the Missoula Chamber of Commerce. This booklet is now available digitally at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, courtesy of the Special Collections website.  Streit’s journalistic abilities were readily apparent with this article.

Clarence K. Streit was born in California, MO, in 1896. At the age of 15 he moved to Missoula, Montana, where he founded the Konah, a high school paper that is now one of the oldest in continuous publication. Streit worked in the summers surveying in Alaska and the Rocky Mountains to finance his education at Montana State University, (now the University of Montana), where he edited the college newspaper, the Kaimin, and served on the debate team.
Streit left Missoula in 1917 and volunteered in the 18 th Railway Engineers for war service. One of the first 50,000 American soldiers to land in Europe, he reached France in August of 1917. In 1918 he joined the Intelligence Service where for a time he served as one of the guards of President Wilson. After his time in the service, Streit returned to Missoula where he won a Rhodes Scholarship which enabled him to study history at Oxford. Once in England, Streit met Jeanne Defrance of Paris, and they married in 1921.
In 1925 he joined the New York Times as a foreign correspondent and in 1929 went to Geneva as a correspondent for the League of Nations, a post he held for nearly ten years. During his time as a journalist, Streit covered such prominent issues as the Sino-Japanese war, the depression and the rise of Nazi dictatorship. His interest in such international issues led Streit to resign his position at the Times in 1939 and publish his first book, Union Now, an appeal for a federal union of the democracies.
After the success of Union Now, which admirers hailed as democracy’s answer to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Clarence and Jeanne Streit continued to commit their lives to the cause of union. In 1940, the couple founded Federal Union, Inc., an educational organization committed to universal world government. Chapters opened in towns all over the nation, including the formation of a Missoula chapter in 1940. Streit served as president of Federal Union as well as editor of Freedom and Union, the organization’s magazine. Streit was one of the founding members of the Atlantic Union Committee that merged with other organizations in 1962 to form the Atlantic Council. His works on behalf of world peace earned Streit a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Clarence Streit died in 1986.

Missoula’s Tributary Country by C. K. Streit

A Land of mountains – that is the impression most people get from the word “Montana.” In their mind comes the picture of snow-covered peaks, rocky hill sides, forested slopes. They forget that as invariably as day follows night so do valleys accompany mountain ranges. Montana, it is true, is a land of mountains – and also of valleys. The mountains provide scenery, minerals, timber and shelter; the valleys supply rich agricultural lands.

Missoula, situated in the heart of the Rockies, is singularly well provided with large and productive valleys. Few places can be found where nature has centered the trade of five of her great home-making regions upon one spot. There is nothing artificial about the location of Missoula. It wasn’t laid out by real estate promoters and started by an advertising campaign. Like Topsy, it just “simply growed.” In all the five valleys there was but one logical place for a city and that was the spot where they all came together. There you will find Missoula today.

The city didn’t come with the railway – the railway came to it. The fact is, it had to come to Missoula. There was no other practicable way for the road which had come through the plains of the south and central portion to get through the mountains to the Pacific coast. Back in the eighties when the Northern Pacific railway was built the directors sent out parties to examine all the passes through the mountains of western Montana. They wanted as straight a route as possible from Butte to the coast. But when the preliminary survey parties sent in their reports they found there was but one way open to the railroad. That was to follow the lead of the Indian tribes, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the Mullan military highway, and swing north down the Hell Gate river and through Hell Gate canyon, at the mouth of which the little town of Missoula had already been established since 1859.

The Northern Pacific followed this route, which time has since justified as the only possible one through this part of the Rockies. Later the Union Pacific and the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific sought to pierce the mountains of western Montana at some other place, but failed. Still later in 1907, when the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul had reached Butte, it could find no way of completing its route to Seattle, except to parallel the Northern Pacific and come through the Hell Gate canyon and Missoula. And thus the city got its second transcontinental railway.

Although compelled by mountain barriers to come through Missoula, the railways have not had occasion to regret the route they have had to take. For they found that the reason for the Hell Gate pass lay in the size of the Hell Gate river and the size of the river was due to its numerous large tributary streams. And large streams mean large valleys. The Hell Gate river formed two valleys for them to draw from, the Hell Gate valley above Missoula, and the wide-spreading Frenchtown plains below the city. Then, a few miles to the east of Missoula, the Blackfoot river joined the Hell Gate and made its immense drainage basin tributary to Missoula. South from the city itself for 90 miles lies the rich valley of the Bitter Root river. And a few miles west of Missoula, on the other side of a low pass which the Northern Pacific crosses, the broad expanse of the Flathead valley northward 40 miles from the railway to Flathead lake.

The Bitter Root and Frenchtown valleys were sparely settled when the Northern Pacific came through Missoula, but it was not until the advent of railway transportation that the development of the county really began. In those days when Montana had just been granted statehood, nearly all of western Montana was included in the one county of Missoula. Nothing shows the rapid growth of this region better than the fact that instead of one, five counties now represent it. As the valleys increased in wealth and population they dropped away from the mother county and set up governments of their own. Missoula still remains the richest and most populous of them all, for it contains the center from which they all radiate.

In the Hell Gate valley is included the district along the Hell Gate river from Garrison to Missoula, a distance of 70 miles. The valley varies from a narrow canyon with hardly room for the railways to a width of six or eight miles. At Drummond, 40 miles from Missoula, the Flint creek valley branches off to the south. In it are the rich farm lands and mines of Granite county.

Mining, lumbering and agriculture are the chief industries of Hell Gate valley. Rugged mountain scenery greets the eye on either side, a scenery made more inviting by the fishing and big game hunting which goes with it. With railways and highways the valley is well provided. Both the Northern Pacific and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railways traverse its entire length. Much automobile traffic comes through it now over the National Parks highway and the Yellowstone trail. Numerous small towns are scattered along the valley. Chief among these are Garrison, Drummond, Bonita, Clinton, Gold Creek and Bearmouth.

The Blackfoot valley comes into Missoula from the northeast. Its development began only comparatively recently. The first railway up the valley was built by the Anaconda Copper Mining company in 1911 as a logging road to keep its sawmills at Bonner supplied. Later, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul took the road over and completed it to Potomac. The railway has now been graded to Ovando, a distance of 60 miles from Missoula. The valley extends some 30 miles beyond Ovando. It is the announced intention of the company to complete the road in 1917 on up the valley and over to Great Falls. A fine automobile road goes the length of the valley.

Even before the building of the railway there were some ranches in the valley, but the transportation furnished by the original logging road served to bring in many more homesteaders. With the further development of railways and good roads and the increasing knowledge of its wonderful possibilities as a farming region, the valley is now rapidly becoming settled. Grain ranches, stock farms and large grazing lands and magnificent forests are its chief assets. The beautiful lake regions and the fishing of the Blackfoot valley bring it many summer visitors, an increasing number of whom have established regular camps. Through a recent regulation of the forest service, five-acre tracts on the shores of the lakes may be taken over by individuals for this purpose. Hunters flock to it in the autumn. The towns of the valley, in the order of their distance from Missoula, are Bonner, McNamara’s Landing, Potomac, Sunset, Clearwater, Ovando, Helmville, and Lincoln.

West of Missoula for 30 mile along the Hell Gate river extends the Frenchtown valley. It is an old and established community, its settlement dating from 1860, when Jesuit priests set up a mission at Frenchtown. The valley is naturally practically free from timber. The land is gently rolling. Geologists explain the openness and flatness of the whole region by saying that it was once the bottom of a huge lake.

Like the other valleys around Missoula, the Frenchtown district is well supplied with transportation facilities. Both of Missoula’s transcontinental railways extend through it, the main line of the “Milwaukee,” as the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul is commonly known, and the Coeur d’Alene branch of the Northern Pacific. Through automobile roads, with branch feeders, traverse the valley and are kept in the best condition.

The name “Grass Valley” formerly applied to the Frenchtown country shows the product it is especially adapted to [is]livestock raising. It is no longer news for the people of western Montana to read that Hereford cattle from the Deschamps ranch of this valley have topped the Chicago market. Grain raising, however, is now contributing an important share to the valley’s prosperity. Most of the crops in the valley proper are under irrigation, but dry land farms are now getting good results from their method of cultivating the more gently rolling foothills. Frenchtown, from which the valley takes its name, is the chief town.

The remark of a pioneer of Montana that “the Bitter Root was settled by General Price’s left wing” shows that it is one of the few long-established communities in the state. But the date of its settlement goes even back of the Civil war. It was in 1841 that Father DeSmet came into the valley and established St. Mary’s Mission, near the present city of Stevensville. Since then the sunny climate of the Bitter Root and the fertility of its soil has led to its becoming one of the most populous valleys of the state.

The Northern Pacific early recognized the richness of the Bitter Root and one of its first branch “feeders” was built 60 miles up the valley to Darby. Some of the best lands lie beyond the railway terminal, the valley extending 30 miles farther south to the Ross’ Hole country. As good a highway as any motor enthusiast could wish goes the length of the Bitter Root. The beauty of the high, ragged ridge of the Bitter Root range, with its occasional Lolo or St. Mary’s reaching above the other peaks, brings much travel to both the highway and the railway. The Northern Pacific, in fact, for years ran an open observation train – the “Sun Cure Special” – over its Bitter Root branch. But the visitor need not live on scenery alone. The hundred and one streams which pour down from the mountains snow fields will furnish him with all the trout fishing he can desire.

The valley extends directly south from Missoula. The low lands are gently rolling and practically all of them are under cultivation. Great irrigation projects, as the big ditch of the Bitter Root Valley Irrigation company and that of the Marcus Daly estate, besides numerous smaller systems, furnish the water necessary for the crops. But, as in the Frenchtown valley, the dry land farmers have shown that the cultivation of the foothills can be made to pay even without irrigation ditches.

Horticulture is an important industry in the valley. The McIntosh Red apple and the Bing cherry have made the name of the Bitter Root known throughout the country. Other fruits of the temperate zone also thrive in the valley. The dairying business is another important pursuit of the ranchers. Grain and stock raising come in for their share of attention – in fact, the Bitter Root is a land of diversified farming. The lumber industry is not as important as it once was, but still adds much to the wealth of the district.

Thriving towns line the railway from Missoula up the valley. Hamilton, a city of 3,000 population, the county seat of Ravalli county, is the metropolis of the Bitter Root. It is 50 miles south of Missoula. Victor, Stevensville, Florence, Corvallis, Darby, LoLo and Carlton serve other portions of the valley. Education is one of the hobbies of the Bitter Root people. In addition to an excellent grade school system, the people maintain high schools at Hamilton, Victor, and Stevensville.

The Flathead valley, northwest from Missoula, was one of the latest of the five valleys to develop, but when it started, it did it with a rush and has kept up the pace since. Formerly the valley was held as a reservation for the Flathead Indians. In 1910 it was thrown open and its rolling open prairies were soon transformed into fields of wheat and oats.

The Flathead includes the Jocko valley and that of the Flathead river from Polson, on Flathead Lake, down to Perma. In addition there are the side valleys of the Little Bitter Root, the Moeise and Camas Prairie. In the lofty Mission mountains and in Flathead lake the valley has its scenery, which as is almost invariably the case in Montana, is accompanied by good fishing and hunting.

This is the only one of the five Missoula valleys which is not well equipped with railway transportation. But this condition is passing, for even now the Northern Pacific is building a branch road from Dixon through the valley to Polson, there to connect with the steamers of the lake and thus with the Great Northern and Kalispell. The main line of the Northern Pacific at present runs through the Jocko valley.

The lack of railways had had a beneficial effect upon the highways of the valley. “Good Roads” has long been the slogan of the Flathead country. Several automobile stage lines now carry the traffic from the Northern Pacific at Ravalli through the valley to Polson. The entire region is covered with a network of highways.

Grain and stock are the chief sources of wealth on the Flathead. Both irrigated and dry farming are followed. The United States reclamation service has placed much of the valley under water from its lateral ditches.

The towns of the Jocko valley are St. Ignatius, the seat of one of the historic Jesuit missions, Arlee, and Ravalli. Dixon and Perma are the towns on the railway in the Flathead valley proper. Ronan, a city of 600, is situated on the automobile roads in about the center of the valley. Polson serves the needs of the ranchers in the northern part of the valley and around the southern portion of Flathead lake.