How are town came about (2/5)

This sign describes how our town came to be. Many thousands of years ago, an absolutely enormous glacial lake in this part of the state covered most of the land. This was called Glacial Lake Missoula. I’ve written about this lake before, mostly in conjunction with the National Bison Range because some of the higher elevations in the Range were actually islands at the time in the lake.

The staggering amount of water in the lake was held back by a gigantic ice dam. Where our town sits now was covered with glaciers and the valley didn’t exist, at least not as a valley.

When that ice dam broke, the waters of Lake Missoula were released and they flowed down what is now Clark Fork River, which flows by our town, shaping the land through part of Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. I’ve also shared pictures of the river since it is where I primarily go fishing. It was the flow of all those cubic miles of water, along with the action of the glaciers, that formed Clark Fork Valley.

The sediments that were left on the valley floor were quite fertile and the Native Americans found the valley to be superb for keeping their horses in the wintertime. That fact eventually gave rise to the actual name of our town; Wild Horse Plains. Maps list our town as simply “Plains”, but that isn’t the full name of the town.

In the mid-1800s, settlers moved into the valley and the town was established.  It grew considerably when the railroad came through, much as happened in countless other towns in the US. This is how our town got its start.