Activist on the Upper Missouri
Contribution of Emil DonTigny to the Wild and Scenic River
By Richard L. DonTigny
In the 1950s Emil DonTigny was intrigued with the idea of floating the Missouri River from Fort Benton to Fort Peck. After much planning with pre-arranged gas, food and water drops along the way, he and his brother-in-law Cy Morrison, as a companion and fellow explorer, put in at the Levy in Fort Benton in the summer of 1957. After a spectacular 10-day trip, they ran out of gas for their boat in the upper reaches of Fort Peck Lake. They could see the lights of Fort Peck Dam that evening and after a final night of camping in their sleeping bags and tarp, they climbed to the top of the bench after breakfast in hopes of seeing a farmhouse, where they might get some help, or the highway that was north of the lake. As it was some little distance back to their boat and they felt that the highway could not be too far, they set off walking without water or food in hopes of reaching the highway about noon. They hadn't reckoned with the extended arms of the lake and the additional time it took to circumvent them and walked all of that day, occasionally stopping to drink lake water, and into the night until about two a.m. and then rested for a few hours. They reached the highway about noon the next day. The two bedraggled, weary, and unshaven adventurers were finally able to hitch a ride into the town of Fort Peck and, after resting a few hours, hired a man and a boat to return and retrieve their own boat. As the fates would have it, on the return trip to the Fort Peck marina, the motor on the hired boat failed and they ended up towing that boat with their refueled boat, reaching the marina well after dark -- extremely happy to see their ride home waiting for them.
The trip precipitated an intense interest into the history, the geology, the archeology, the flora and the fauna of the river and especially of the area between the Virgelle ferry and the PN ferry. In an attempt to learn all that he could, DonTigny took many local specialists down that section of the river.
To learn more of the geology, he twice floated with Bill Pecora, an expert geologist with the USGS who had been surveying in the Bear Paw mountains, and accompanied with Fr. Kohlman S.J. from St. Paul's mission in Hays MT, on at least one of these trips, who had a special interest in the area around the Little Rockies. Pecora told him that prior to local glaciation from the last ice age, the Missouri River used to flow further north to where the city of Havre is now located and then followed what is now the bed of the Milk River. The glacier dammed the river near the north edge of the Bear Paws, causing a huge lake in what is now known as the Big Sag country. The lake overflowed and cut a new river channel exposing the geological connecting link between the Bear Paw Mountains to the north and the Highwood Mo9untains to the south. The result is a stunning display of oddly eroded high white sandstone cliffs and black lava dikes described by Lewis and Clark as the most strikingly beautiful part of their whole journey.
Drawing heavily from the journals of Lewis and Clark, DonTigny made several float trips to ientify campsights, formations, Indian encampments, buffalo jumps, rivers and streams that had been named by Lewis and Clark as well as sites such as the old Conley post office at the mouth of Eagle Creek, Fort Claggett and Camp Cook near the mouth of the Judith River. Harrison Lane, professor of history at Northern Montana College, accompanied him on at least two trips as did Cy Morrison. Friends Louis Clack and Al Lucke also made several trips with him.
DonTigny floated with Lou Hagener, professor of biology and botany at Northern Montana College, who shared his knowledge of local plans and trees.
By 1962 this area was under consideration for development by three federal agencies. The U.S. Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation had investigated the feasibility of hydroelectric and flood control dams which would have inundated the entire area up to the city of Fort Benton. In addition, this area was considered by the National Park Service for possible preservation as a wilderness waterway. An archeological survey of the Missouri Breaks Region was conducted by the Missouri Basin Project of the Smithsonian Institution as a part of the Inter-Agency Archeological Salvage Program. Field work was carried out under the direction of Oscar L. Mallory in the summer of 1962. Mallory gives special credit to Paul English and members of the M ilk River Archeological Society of Havre, Montana, for their assistance during the project and to Emil DonTigny for taking two days to float with them between Virgelle and the Judith River, which added materially to the success of the field work. (An Archeological Appraisal of the Missouri Breaks Region in Montana by Missouri Basin Projedt, Smithsonian Institution, October, 1963, Oscar L. Mallory, Archeologist.)
As his reputation as the overall authority on the Missouri River Breaks grew and in an effort to prewserve and to prevent the damming of this uniquely beautiful and historically priceless area, DonTigny was regularly asked to guide various groups on float trips through the area. These included representatives from the National Park Serivce, the National Geographic Society, the Montana Institute for the Arts, The Wilderness Society, three different mnovie groups including one from the St. Louis Arch, TV newsmen Chet Huntley and Ted Yates, authors Paul Russell Cutright (Lewis adn Clark: Pioneering Naturalists, 1969) and Ingvard Henry Heide (American Odyssey: The Journey of Lewis and Clark, 1969).
On many of these trips he was accompanied by Nick LaFrantz, outdoorsman, government trapper and all around good cook. He made many trips with family and friends just for the joy of sharing 'his' river. Making over 50 trips until his death in 1969 at the age of 67, he was a singular influence on helping to save the river from damming and having it be declared a wild and scenic river. Thousands have since enjoyed this precious heritage.