Cow Creek (Montana) - Cow Creek As An Ancient Corridor of Travel -- Cow Island Ford

Cow Creek As An Ancient Corridor of Travel -- Cow Island Ford

Cow Creek flows from the southern foothills of the Bear Paw Mountains to the Missouri through a unique and remote area known as the Missouri Breaks. The breaks are extensive and steeply eroded badlands. They are so rough that they are a barrier to travel by animals or man. They extend along the Missouri River for over 200 miles (320 km). In this long stretch of river the Missouri Breaks extend back from the river on either side, for many miles. As the Missouri flows through this 200 mile stretch, the breaks limit access to the river from the wide undulating grasslands north and south of the river.

Cow Creek provides one of the few access routes down to the Missouri River through the Missouri Breaks. As Cow Creek flows through the breaks it passes between high canyon like walls, but the stream meanders back and forth over a canyon floor that is relatively level and from 100 to 600 yards (91–550 m) in width.

The canyon bottom along Cow Creek creates a corridor of travel from the northern Montana plains down to the river through the breaks. Sediments seasonally washed out from the mouth of Cow Creek into the Missouri River formed Cow Island, just downriver from the creek mouth. Cow Island divides the Missouri into two channels, which makes crossing the broad Missouri easier at this point. On the south side of the river opposite the Cow Island, a steep but relatively short four mile climb out of the breaks gains the wide plains of Central Montana south of the river.

This combination of geographic features made Cow Creek and the ford at Cow Island an ancient highway of travel. For thousands of years, Cow Creek and the Cow Island ford was used by migrating buffalo herds and other migrating animals, and by nomadic Native Americans bent on going between the plains north of the Missouri River Breaks and the plains lying south of the Missouri Breaks.