Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1878 — Fall of a Mountain Promontory. [ARTICLE]

Fall of a Mountain Promontory.

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 differentpointsat distances ranging from forty to sixty miles, and is in full view from Helena and the surrounding country. The mountain is distant thirty miles from Helena, and stands like a grim and mighty sentinel at the end of the canyon 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 of Lewis and Clarke. In all photographs of the northern country the two tusks, rising black and grim hundreds of feet above the mountain, are the prominent objects. The main tusk remains, looking lonely and isolated in its grandeur. Recently 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 cliase until they’ reached the Bear Tooth. Here they were astonished by the disappearance of the rmtiirn tn«k. Tbk wnt a pprrmndmilar mass of rock and earth, fully 500 feet high, 300 feet in circumference at its base, and about one hundred and fifty feet at the top. This immense mass had become dislodged, and coming down with the speed of an avalanche had swept through a forest of large timber for a quarter of a mile, entirely leveling it. The countrj’ 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.— Montana Independent.