Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument
Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is a protected area of the type of a National Monument in the U.S. state of Montana. The area extends along the upper reaches of the Missouri River and is called after the break -called steep banks of sandstone and shales. The barely -developed protection area was established in his last days in office of President Bill Clinton in early 2001 and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Description
The high country of Montana consists of rolling hills that is passed with a dry short- grass prairie. Geologically it consists of sediments that have deposited the rivers of the Rocky Mountains in the form of alluvial fans in a vast inland sea. These were summarized in later geologic eras into sandstone, shale and siltstone. Find the remains of volcanic vents that protrude about 60 m above the surrounding terrain in two places in the area.
In this landscape, the Missouri River has been excavated and exposed the stratification of rocks on its steep banks. The reserve stretches along the river about in west-east direction to around 240 km with an average width of about 5 km.
In the area live 230 bird and 60 mammal species, so it is one of the most species-rich of the United States and preserves the original state of the Great Plains.
Paved roads there are only at the endpoints of the National Monuments, in the west of U.S. Highway 87, in the east 191 is the bridge of U.S. Highway the border. Unpaved dirt roads rich in various places in the area and during the summer months allow two ferries to cross the river.
The monument was before the protected status the largest undeveloped area in Federal ownership in the 48 contiguous states, which were not subject to special dedication. In the east it overlaps slightly with the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, the river itself was designated as Wild and Scenic River since 1976.
History
The natives of the Breaks were the Indian tribes of the Blackfoot, Assiniboin, Gros Ventre, Absarokee ( Crow also called ), Cree and Anishinabe (also Ojibwa or Chippewa ). They, too, had immigrated in significant numbers until the advent of the horse in the region that was previously unbesiedelbar because of the great distances and the low density of food sources. Ethnic French trappers and fur traders were the first white men who explored the Missouri River in the 18th century. The Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805 through today's reserve and the participants made the first scientific records and descriptions of the region. Here they discovered the first Pronghorn, a white man got to the face.
The great American fur companies Missouri Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and especially the American Fur Company use the area extensively in the first third of the 19th century, until in the 1830s saw the collapse of Beaver stocks. Subsequently, the region was settled loosely after the homestead law. In the 1840s and 50s were held several major negotiations between representatives of the U.S. government and the Indians on the Missouri River. 1877 Nez Perce crossed the on their flight from persecution of the river in present-day reserve and were about 60 km north of the Missouri provided by the Army just before the Canadian border and had to give up (see: campaign against the Nez Perce).
From 1897 the painter Charles M. Russell lived in Great Falls and created many of his large-scale landscape painting with prairie motifs in today's monument or its immediate vicinity.
Log cabin of a settler
Citadel Rock, a sandstone rock
Canoes on the river
Upper Missouri River Breaks today
In Montana, hunting, angling, canoeing and other tourist activities in 2003 have for the first time surpassed agriculture as an economic sector. The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is an excellent hunting ground for elk, bighorn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer and pronghorn antelope, birds of the prairie as sage grouse, several prairie chicken species, partridge and pheasant and some waterfowl.
The hunt and the existing use of contracts for the grazing of land in federal ownership by private farmers remain permanently even after the protected status. Due to the size of the area and the currently low intensity of the intervention, the use conflicts to be limited.
Since the end of 2006 in Fort Benton on the western edge of the monument a new visitor center in operation.