Who thinks the start of the Missouri River starts in Missouri? Well it doesn’t. It starts in Montana, in what was known as old “Gallatin City I & II” of the mid 1800s.

“The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River and such principal stream of it, as, by it’s course & communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean…may offer the most direct & practible water communication across this continent…” from Thomas Jefferson’s instructions to Meriwether Lewis, July 4, 1803.

Here 3 Rivers flow into what is the beginning of the Might Missouri River. The Gallatin river was named and Lewis and Clark named the other 2 the Jefferson River and the Madison River. The Madison River flows into the Jefferson River and then the Gallatin River runs into that as it forms the beginning of the Missouri River.

This was also the site of Colter’s Run. I’ll just put a picture of the story so I don’t have to copy it 🙂

rain and snow falling on 580,000 square miles flow into the Missouri and is done if the best farmland in the world
the Missouri flows into the Mississippi and then eventually into the Gulf of Mexico. if you floated down now it would take ~ 2 1/2 months to make it to the gulf of Mexico…
left: 90 million years ago, montana was a shallow sea bed
middle: 70 million years ago the continental divide was formed and the missouri flowed into Hudson Bay
right: 2 million years ago the ice age firced the river to flow south
why we sea the sea bed up in the rocks above
headwaters of the mighty Missouri with limestone in the background
the place to be, not quite the Claremont…only a 1 room hotel
one of the only 3 buildings left of the once bustling Gallitin City
the business card of the 60+ park employee who told us where to go see the headwaters
yes there was a back to the card