114 
GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
Beyond Warm Springs the valley of Clark Fork continues broad and 
flat; in many places near the stream it is swampy, but on the terraces 
Race Track. 
St. Paull, 160 miles. 
on each side there is good farm land. On the left 
(west) from Race Track there are many deep np 
in the side of Flint Creek Mountain, through w 
glaciers, long past, have flowed down from the high 
summits even to the level of the main valley. 
This indicates that 
most if not all of the side ravines were cut before the glaciers were 
developed, and that since their disappearance there has been little 
change in the surface features. 
At Deer Lodge terraces about 200 feet high are well developed on 
both sides of the valley. Apparently these terraces are remnants of 
the floor of the valley at a much earlier epoch, and 
Deer Lodge. 
Elevation 4,530 feet 
Population 2,570. 
St. Paul 1,169 miles 
possibly they may correspond with those observed on 
the east side of the valley near Warm Springs. North 
of Deer Lodge there is a terrace on the left, but the 
one on the right has disappeared and is replaced by 
low hills composed of soft Cretaceous rock. 
been interpreted, consists of the record of 
i infinite number of such oscilla- 
tions, with accompanying changes in the 
outline of the land and water 
A regional subsidence in the Rocky 
Mountains of Montana relative to the 
a would POmity account for the for- 
deep enough to lie below Deakins evel: 
and this will be accepted as at least a rea- 
sonable working hypothesis. According 
this view a rough mountain region, 
probably as mountainous as it is to-day, 
was depressed hundreds or perhaps thou- 
sands of feet, until the streams failed to 
soon filled the valleys until the water rese 
high enough to discharge over the plains 
country. Under such conditions there 
may have been many lakes or there may 
have been one large lake with ramifica- 
tions in the valleys among the moun- 
Into the lakes thus formed the moun- 
1. sand. and gravel, 
i aedt esa er oe i ho uk 
| Missoula, 
| Pacific Railway, and in 
to settle as fine clay while the sand and 
ured in some of the valleys, and probably 
it was originally much thicker. In some 
valleys the lakes were evidently filled, 
and the surface became a swamp in which 
vegetation flourished and finally was con- 
verted into coal or lignite. Such beds 
have been found near Drummond and 
along the line of the Northern 
the vicinity of 
the Glacier National Park, near the Great 
Northern Railway. 
The climate of this region in the lake 
iod, as indicated by the animals and 
plants that lived then 
much like that of central or southern 
Africa at the present time. The lake beds 
have not been searched thoroughly, but it 
is —— at ons, horses, camels 
an oceroses roamed the hills in that 
far-off time, and that the filled basins were 
swamps in which flourished a luxuriant 
vegetation. 
* The broad Deer Lodge Valley extends 
from Durant northwestward to Drum- 
mond, but its continuation beyond Garri- 
son may not be apparent from the train. 
