Sunday Autust 17 through August 18 2025
We left Aspenwood “Resort” (really?) heading east on US 89. Aspenwood proved to be a very windy place- for all three days we were there. Reaching town (Browning) we are greeted by a friggin’ round about. Why? Traffic is so light a stop sign would suffice. We hook up on US 2 once again. We’re traveling the western section of US 2 which extends From Everett WA to St. Ignace MI on Michigan’s Upper Penninsula. The eastern section extends from Rouses Point, New York to Houlton Maine We’ll be traveling this route until we reach Escanaba MI, west of St. Ignace.
Cut Bank (3066 souls) is county seat of Glacier County. The town began wih the arrival of the Great Northern Railway and named for the cliffs on either side of Cut Bank Creek just west of town. .The town experiences bitterly cold winters, sometimes the coldest in the country. Being close to the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains also makes the area subject to occasional Chinook winds that can rapidly increase local temperatures.The big players in the city’s economy are agriculture and the gas and oil industry.
The Northern Plains
Twenty four miles southeast is Shelby (3169 souls), seat of Toole County, Montana. A rail station was established here in 1892 and named after the G.M. of the Montana Central Railway, Peter Shelby. It lies at the junction of the Great Northern Railway and the Great Falls & Canada Railway. In 1923 the town hoted a boxing match between Jac Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons for the undisputed world Heavyweight Boxing Title. The event almost bankrupted the town. The Well Done Foundation, which plugs orphaned and abandoned oil wells opened a visitors center in 2000.
We pass a bunch of agriculture settlements space along US 2 and they were located in a sea of crops. Silos, grain elevators and a few homes are usually built on a knoll. Dunkirk, Devon, Galata, Tiber, Chester, Joplin, Inverness, Rudyard, Hingham,Gildford, Kremlin- all small agricultural settlements surrounded by crops. Burnham is home to the Havre Tire Factory.
We come to our home for two nights, Hansen’s Family Campground. The campground is 8 miles east of Havre (9362 souls). The park has nice wide sites which are plenty long. Lot of grass so the place is nice to walk the dogs- just don’t do it near dusk or sunrise as the skeeters will eat you alive! The fella in the office mentioned recent rains so maybe there was a new hatch of the little devils.
Havre has several unique offerings and that’s why we are here. In 1893, 26 people voted for incorporation and the town became a railroad town. When selecting a name for the town only the original homesteaders were allowed to vote and they selected Havre after Gus Decelles’s parents home town of Le Havre, France. Havre is the eighth largest city in Montana. Havre’s economy is driven by healthcare, retail and education with Montana State University in town, the railroad industry and agriculture, specifically wheat farming.
It is unique in that it has a buffalo jump. It was used by Indians to collect a large amount of buffalo in a short time. This jump is over 2000 years old.The Wahkpa Chu’gn Buffalo Jump is one of the most extensively researched and well preserved buffalo jumps on the Northern Plains. The archeological dig at the bottom of the jump is 20 feet deep. The Buffalo Jump is closed on Mondays. Guess what day it is………..
Haver Beneath the Streets- incredible!
Havre also has a place called “Havre Beneath the Streets”. Small grids of purple squares can be seen in some of the sidewalks downtown. These are skylights for an underground mall built well over one hundred years ago. Throughout history this underground area has been host to a brothel, a Chinese laundry, a saloon, a drugstore and at least three opium dens. Rooms were used for smuggled alcohol during Prohibition. When fire destroyed the town in 1904, legitimate above-ground businesses joined the illicit businesses operating in the underground while the new brick buildings were built on the streets above. The underground area currently operates as a tourist attraction which is……. closed on Monday….. rats!
So we struck out on the two big attractions. I couldn’t have negotiated the long flight of stairs leading down to the jump anyhow but Jil could. And the underground Havre Beneath the Streets would have been interesting. But we scored at Havre’s Walmart by golly! We got everything we needed and didn’t have to fight a big crowd to do so..
So, back to the title of this blog. HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE THE NAME OF THIS CITY?- Havre: 1. Hav-ray- nope- 2. Harve- nope. Its Hav-er. Yep- HAV-ER. Don’t ask me why……………….
We’ll see you next in a place called Fort Peck.
Travel With Jil and Mike 