Montana place names: This is cool
Posted By admin on January 27, 2010
Why, for instance, is the Burnt Fork of the Bitterroot called that?
Here’s the answer, thanks to a new Internet offering, mtplacenames.org, from the Montana Historical Society and the Montana State Library.
“Burnt Fork of the Bitterroot River
The name Burnt Fork dates from as early as the 1850s, when Major John Owen filed the first water right in what would become Montana. The upper regions of the creek, in the Sapphire Mountains, had burned in earlier forest fires, hence the creek’s name. Samuel M. Caldwell did some placer mining along the creek in 1852, and other miners worked the area in the 1860s, but it never became an important district. At the creek’s headwaters is Burnt Fork Lake. ”
There are more than 1,200 of these babies in what the Historical Society calls “The Place Names Companion.” It’s the online application based on the book, “Montana Place Names from Alzada to Zortman,” which was recently published by the Montana Historical Society press.
Hmmm … Alzada?
“Alzada began as a telegraph station on the Little Missouri River between Fort Keogh in Montana Territory and Fort Meade in Dakota Territory in 1877. The community that grew there was named Stoneville in 1880 for Lewis M. Stone, the first settler and proprietor of the saloon. Stoneville officially became Alzada on July 16, 1885, to honor local pioneer Laura Alzada Shelden. Elevation: 3,444 ft.”
That elevation is interesting. Alzada’s near the Dakota border, as far east and southeast as you can get on pavement in Montana, what most of us in western Montana think of as the “lowlands.” It’s nearly 250 feet higher than Missoula, way up here in the Rockies.
And Zortman? “Zortman takes its name from Oliver Peter Zortman, who discovered gold in the Little Rocky Mountains in the late 1880s.”
But just as Alzada isn’t the first place name on the alphabetical list (that spot belongs to the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, followed closely by the town of Absarokee), Zortman isn’t the last. The final spot belongs to Zurich, on the Hi-Line between Chinook and Harlem, and one of a number of towns the Great Northern named for European cities. The full account:
“Sometime around 1887, Great Northern Railway officials named one of their main line sidings Zurich, for the city in Switzerland. It took some time before a community developed at the site. In 1907, rancher John Acher established the first post office about 4 miles east of the present townsite, but it was not until 1913 that Charles Grass platted a townsite near the railroad. Grass established a general mercantile there, and by 1915 the population of Zurich stood at 40. Local businesses included a lumberyard, livery, restaurant and pool hall, grain elevator, and blacksmith shop. The community built the tiny Zurich chapel in 1916. It served several denominations, including Methodists, Mormons, Lutherans, and the American Sunday School Union. Elevation: 2,384
Are you totally sure that the name of Alzada was given because Laura Alzada was one of the first settlers or perhaps Alzada was a Laura´s nickname cause it was an ancient name for this lands. I would like your answer because this so important for an investigation I´m doing.
Thanks.
Amable.
All I know is what I read in the book. There certainly could be more behind Laura Alzada Shelden’s name. Here’s something I pulled off visitmt.com:
“The post office was established in 1880 under Stoneville. But since there was another Montana town with a similar name, there was some confusion with the mail, so the town was renamed in honor of Mrs. Alzada Sheldon, wife of a pioneer rancher who had come to the area in 1883. The name was officially changed in 1885 to Alzada.”
Probably you know better than I what “alzada” means in Spanish. The on-line dictionary indicates “raised, lifted” as an adjective and “elevation” as a noun. “Alzada de ceballos” means the height of a horse. It’s also a legal term meaning “appeal.” There doesn’t seem to be any French translation for “Alzada.” This was the part of the country the de la Verendrye brothers reportedly reached years before Lewis and Clark got to Montana.
I’d be interested to know more about your investigation.
On your website how do I find the origin of a particular place–in particular Lost Trail Pass?
Lowell,
I don’t have the particulars off the top of my head, but Lost Trail Pass is a Lewis and Clark thing. They literally did lose the trail coming north from the Salmon River country in Idaho in 1805. It was a miserable road, capped by two inches of snow at the top on Sept. 3.
According to lewis-clark.org — a great online L&C resource, by the way — “We can’t say for sure that they were lost, and they didn’t admit to it in so many words, but Sergeant Gass’s laconic summary gives us a hint: “This was not the creek our guide wished to have come upon.”