Martinsdale, Montana, United States
With nice weather persisting, I was looking for a non-hiking
day trip after two consecutive days on the trail. Consulting my list of local
travel interests, I decided on a drive to Meagher County. That would be the county
to the north and northeast of Bozeman’s Gallatin that quite far off the beaten
tourist path. I should mention people
insist Meagher is pronounced like “marrrrr” rather than meager. If I recall
correctly, I passed through the area once before on a summer road trip in 1998
but didn’t stop and see anything there. So what’s there to see and do? Well, like virtually anywhere in the western
part of the state, there is some good hiking in the multiple mountain ranges,
but the two main sights are the Bair Ranch Museum and White Sulphur Springs. With
less than 2,000 people in the county and a population density around 1 per
square mile, it’s a quite empty place even by Montana standards.
Montana is so enormous that even what doesn’t look very far
on the map ends up being a very long drive, in this case somewhat over 200
miles round trip.
And there isn’t exactly much of a choice of roads to
take. I drove out of Bozeman through
Bridger Canyon, the scenic valley between the main Bridger Range and the lower
Bangtail Range and the east into the Shields Valley around Wilsall. Although called a valley, it’s more like a
broad sagebrush covered plain between distant mountain ranges. From there I
took a very scenic road east toward Martinsdale through what looks like the
town of Lennep. Both have seen better days and a now largely abandoned. Supposedly there are several Hutterite
colonies in Meagher County, but I didn’t see any sign of them, the Hutterites
being an Anabaptist group similar to the Amish but who differ from them in
living communally.
Although I’ve traveled quite a bit previously in Montana, a
sight I never heard of until recently is the Bair Ranch Museum located in the
middle of nowhere on open plains about 30 miles east of White Sulphur Springs. Anyway,
it’s the ranch house of Charles Bair, one of Montana’s most prominent sheep
ranchers during the early part of the century that continued to be the home of
his two daughters into the latter part of the century.
They became significant collectors of Western-themed
art, Native American artifacts, and European paintings and furnishings for their
house, most of the original art now on display in an adjacent museum with reproductions
hanging in their original locations in the ranch house. The ranch house
interior is by guided tour with a docent, and as seems to often be the case in
Montana, I was the only one on the tour.
Named after the smelly local hot spring, the county seat of White
Sulphur Springs sounds like it would be a pleasant resort town. The reality unfortunately
is a very isolated declining community with numerous boarded up buildings along
the main street. On early afternoon the
bars and the brewery weren’t open yet and all the restaurants with the
exception of a Broasted Chicken joint were either closed because it was Monday
or closed because they only open in the evening. I ended up having to settle for some gas
station food.
The town’s main site is a grand stone house of one of its
early prominent entrepreneurs simply called The Castle.
It is now also the
county historical museum and mostly houses donated artifacts rather than
original furnishings. Again, I was the
only one on the guided tour of the home, and for some unclear reason they don’t
allow photographs inside.
Hot springs are great to soak in when it’s cold outside but
not quite as enticing on warm days like this one. “Where is the resort?”, I
asked at the museum. Well, the resort is
a very dated-looking 1950s motel at a bend in the main street at one end of
town with rooms that surround two outdoor pools with a third smaller indoor
pool. Compared to some of the big hot
springs in Colorado like Ouray and Glenwood, this is all very rustic. But the water is very hot with outdoor pools
at 98* and 102* and indoor one at a very hot 105*. You don’t stay in that last one for very long
until you feel like you’re being boiled.
Soaking in warm water can make you sleepy. I had to pull over and stop
for a nap on the drive home.
2025-05-22