On the contrary there are scattered over various parts of the State many large towns, two of which, Butte and Helena, have each about 20,000 inhabitants, while only one-fourth of the area of the State is over 5,000 feet in altitude, and at least two-thirds of it is below 4,000 feet.
The mountainous district of the State, which occupies but two-fifths of the total area, is in the southwestern portion; these mountains are in fact but the last remnants of the great rockies breaking down from Wyoming and Idaho and terminating in the broad flat plains of the Saskatchewan River on the north, and of the Missouri River on the north and east.
It is in these great mountain ranges that the Clarke's Fork and Snake Rivers, two of the principal branches of the Columbia, after rising in the western and southern portions of the State join the Columbia on its way to the Pacific Ocean; among these mountains in the northern portion of the State the Saskatchewan River rises and flows thence to the Arctic Ocean; while the great Missouri and one of its principal branches, the Yellowstone River, rise in these mountains and after flowing northward nearly to the British line turn and flow eastward and join the Mississippi on its way to the Atlantic.
The highest mountains in Montana are in Park, Gallatin, Madison and Beaver Head Counties, in which latter the furthermost branches of the Missouri, the Beaver Head and Big Hole Rivers, which form the Jefferson river, have their sources at the summit of the Rocky mountains, and it was here that those intrepid explorers, Lewis and Clarke, first crossed the Continental Divide in 1805 to the headwaters of one of the branches of the Snake river.
In these counties a few of the highest peaks reach an elevation of 11,000 feet, and from here the main range of the Rockies bears off to the north in a long, continuous and rugged ridge of sandstone and porphyry, with extensive beds of limestone north of the headwaters of the Dearborn River, and gradually falling off in elevation, until near the British line the highest peaks are less than 7,000 feet above the sea.
From this same axial point in the southwest corner a main spur or branch of the Rockies, called the Bitter Root Mountains, bears northwesterly and falling away in height, gives out with an elevation of 2,200 feet in northern Missoula County where the Clarke's Fork river leaves the State, cutting across the foot of this range.
East of Madison and Jefferson Counties, and along the southern border of the State, are numerous short mountain ranges, often 10,000 feet and sometimes 11,000 feet in elevation, which have generally a north and south trend and fall off near the middle of the State to a continuous, broad, and nearly level high prairie, or as it is locally called "bench land," which continues to fall slowly in the same direction.
Do not imagine that these great ranges of mountains are wild and uninhabited for such is not the case; they are merely great mountain masses, and between, among and on top of them are other minor ranges of mountains, usually having symmetrical and regularly sloping sides, which are separated by broad, level and very fertile valleys, everywhere inhabited and cultivated by the aid of irrigation, while herds of cattle, horses and sheep graze on the hillsides.
Even among the roughest mountains a man may travel alone on horseback sure of finding shelter and food somewhere in the course of a day's journey, as was done by the author during the past summer, when he rode over 2,000 miles in various parts of the State. In the more rugged places mining camps may be met with when everything else fails.
At present these mountain valleys are the more thickly inhabited portions of the country, both because of the mines and because farming pursuits are more cheaply and conveniently followed owing to the greater abundance of small and easily controlled streams of water, which render irrigation possible even by the poorest settler. Only in the southern portions of Gallatin and Park Counties are the mountains so forbidding as to be uninhabited, and then in limited areas only.