Madison Buffalo Jump State Park

The Madison Buffalo Jump State Park is a historic hunting area with a high level of Madison plateau and steep cliffs, which have taken advantage of several Indian tribes over 2000 years to the bison hunt. It is located 30 km west of Bozeman in Gallatin County of the U.S. state of Montana and is accessible via I-90 exit Logan. The 258 -acre State Park located at an altitude of 4482 ft on the edge of the valley of the Madison River, which joins 10 Km north at Three Forks in the Missouri Headwaters State Park with the Jefferson River and the Gallatin River to the Missouri River. The infrastructure of the Madison Buffalo Jump State Park include a visitor pavilion with information boards, picnic areas and hiking trails.

Over the centuries the hunting ground of different strains was used, including the Shoshone, Nez Perce, Bannock, Salish, Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Cree, Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Dakota, Lakota and Hidatsa. When Bison hunting at a Buffalo Jump, a bison herd was driven targeted on a high surface in the direction of a steep cliff and crashed through the panic at the Stampede in depth. The animals that are not the same were killed in the meter deep fall, were weakened by their injuries and could be killed by the waiting hunters. At the Madison Buffalo Jump was chased over a period of 500 years before our era to the 18th century. On the one hand were now through the use of horses other hunting strategies possible, on the other hand, large stocks have been decimated by white settlers. The Indian tribes, the recovered almost all parts of the hunted bison, so that the traditional livelihood was largely withdrawn.

Since the end of the hunt, there were no major changes in this landscape, so there are still many bison bones and the stone circles were found for the tipis of a former Indian village. On the plateau are still the boulders that have marked the corridor for bison hunting and behind which could hide additional drivers.