Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1878 — Fall of a Mountain. [ARTICLE]

Fall of a Mountain.

[llclenu (.Montana) Independent. Nearly every resident of Montana has either seen or heard of the famous Bear Tooth Mountain, the most prominent landmark in northern Montana. It is visible from different points at distances ranging from forty to s sixty miles, aud is in full view from Helena and the surrounding country. The mountain is distant about thirty miles from Helena, and stands like a grim aud mighty sentinel at the end of the canon known as the gate of the Mountains, through which flows the Missouri river. The Bear Tooth was fully described as a wonderful landmark of the early explorers, Lewis and Clark. In all photographs of the northern country the two tusks rising black and grim hundreds of feet above tho mountain, are the prominent objects. The main tusk remains, looking lonely and isolated in its grandeur. Lust Monday week a party of hunters, who were chasing game several miles north of the Bear Tooth, observed a rumbling sound and a quaking of the earth, and supposing it was an earthquake, and not noticing a repetition of it, they soon forgot the occurrence, and continued their chase until ;hey reached the Boar Tooth Here they were astonished by the appearance of the eastern tusk. This was a perpendicular mass of rock and earth, fully 500 feet high, 300 feet in circumference at its rase, about 150 feet at the top. This immense mass had become dislodged, and coming down with the speed of an avalanche hail swept through a forest of large timber for a quarter of a mile, entirely leveling it. The country around is now covered with a great mass of broken trees and tons upon tons of rocks, many of them as large as an ordinary house. A wonderful feat in engine building was recently accomplished at the Michigan Central Railroad shops at Jackson. Two gangs of fourteen men each began at seven o’clock upon two separate locomotives, the parts of which had been previously laid to hand, and “set up” the two machines, each employing thousands of pieces, and Started them out of the yard under steam, in exaetly two hours aud fifty-flve minutes.