Home Ground

Western Montana's Bitterroot Valley

looking south toward the town of Hamilton

Lewis and Clark led the the Corps of Discovery northward through this part of the valley on September 8-9, 1805, camping on the ninth near the mouth of the creek they named Travelers' Rest, a few miles farther north. On July 3, 1806, Clark and his detachment of twenty men, plus Sacagawea and her baby, rode their horses southward up the valley, heading back toward Camp Fortunate. At right are are the Bitterroot Mountains, at left the Sapphires.

he plant commonly called bitterroot is found throughout the Rocky Mountains from British Columbia and Alberta south to California and Colorado, but it is especially abundant in western Montana. At Travelers' Rest, the expedition's camp near the mouth of Lolo Creek, Lewis noted on September 9, 1805, that the ground over which they had traveled for the past few days was "a could white gravley soil" of "indifferent" quality, agriculturally speaking. Although he was often alert to such ecological connections, he did not notice it was precisely that kind of soil which made the valley a prime habitat for the bitterroot. The following spring he might have seen the storied flower and root almost anywhere in this valley, but we know he collected a specimen of it in the vicinity of Travelers' Rest.

By 1889 the valley and its river, bordered by the eastern slopes of a great mountain range, had all three gotten their name in common from the bitterroot plant. In 1889 they became a part of western Montana, the forty-first state in the union.

Out of the scientific floral exhibit displayed at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, Illinois, grew the National Floral Emblem Society of America. State chapters of the society conducted informal balloting, and referred the winners to their respective legislatures for endorsement. In Montana the bitterroot handily won over thirty-one other contenders, and was officially designated the state flower in 1895.

Further Reading

Genevieve F. Allen Murray, "The Bitter Root (Lewisia rediviva) In Science and In History" (Master's thesis, The University of Montana, 1929).

Jerry DeSanto, Bitterroot (Babb, Montana: Lere Press, 1993).

-- 5/2003; rev. 6/2012