The historic town of Rocky Point was on the south side of the Missouri River in Fergus County, Montana, in the Missouri Breaks. Rocky Point was located at a natural ford on the Missouri River.
In prehistoric times, American bison trailed down through the breaks to Rocky Point to cross the river. During the Missouri River steamboat era (1860s to 1880s), the buffalo trail system leading to and from the ford caused Rocky Point to become a steamboat landing, which received freight for mining camps in the Judith Mountains (to the south) and in the Little Rocky Mountains (to the north) and also for Fort Maginnis built in 1880. In the 1870s and 1880s, Rocky Point had a store, hotel, two saloons, a feed stable, a blacksmith shop and a ferry. Due to its remote location in the Missouri Breaks, in the 1870s and 1880s Rocky Point became a refuge for outlaws who turned to rustling cattle and horses until rancher-vigilantes took punitive action in 1884.
From 1886 to 1936 it had a post office nearby which was known as Wilder, and so the community of Rocky Point was sometimes also called Wilder. The community at the Rocky Point ford continued through the homesteading years from 1900 to 1918, but faded away when the ferry ceased to function in the 1920s, and it finally disappeared in 1936 when the Army Corps of Engineers condemned and bought up land adjacent to the Missouri River that might possibly be affected by Fort Peck Dam, then being built.
Today some historic but deteriorating structures still remain on the site, which is now on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Being on public lands, the Rocky Point ford area may be approached by "dirt" roads and visited, but the roads become impassable when wet.
Before 1900 – steamboat landing, wood hawk yard, Missouri River crossing point and ferry
Prehistoric crossing point on the Missouri
At Rocky Point the Missouri River flows over a Bearpaw shale reef. This provided a rocky bottom and a low-water ford. This geologic feature made Rocky Point a crossing point on the Missouri for migrating bison since prehistoric times. The migrating herds established trails from the broad grassy plains on the north and south of the river, down through the breaks to the site of Rocky Point.
Steamboat landing – 1860s to the 1880s
With the discovery of gold in the Montana Territory in the early 1860s, the Missouri River became the main thoroughfare by which passengers and freight, particularly bulky freight, was moved by steamboats between the gold fields in the territory and the "states". In Montana the river ran through the Missouri Breaks for hundreds of miles. The breaks are steeply eroded badlands that severely limit access to the Missouri River. Rocky Point naturally became a steamboat landing because of its system of prehistoric buffalo trail system that led from the ford up through the breaks to the plains that lay north and south of the river.
The steamboat era lasted from the mid-1860s until the coming of the railroad in the mid to late 1880s. After 1874, when the Northern Pacific Railroad reached Bismarck, the riverboats usually brought freight from that river port to the terminus port at Fort Benton. Rocky Point's steamboat landing received and sent only the freight and passengers generated by local demand in the surrounding sparsely settled area. Steamboats had to get up to Ft. Benton on the spring rise in the Missouri River flow, caused by the outflow of snowmelt from the mountains. High water was in June, after which the level in the river fell. During low-water periods many larger boats bound for Fort Benton were forced to unload at points lower down on the river. These unloaded cargoes were either freighted overland, picked up by smaller boats or stored until the next high-water season. Some of this interrupted freight traffic during low water seasons on the Missouri brought business to the Rocky Point landing, but in low water the steamboats attempted to reach Cow Island landing, further up the river, because from Cow Island there was a better freight route up Cow Creek to Fort Benton.
Gold discoveries in the Judith Mountains, at Maiden, and in the Little Rocky Mountains increased interest in Rocky Point as a landing point for the mill machinery coming by boat. The mines in the Judith Mountains, to the southwest of Rocky Point, were discovered in 1880. The gold strikes in the Little Rockies (a small outlier mountain range on the eastern Montana plains) was first made as a placer gold strike in 1884, but this placer strike only lasted a few years.
By 1881 Rocky Point was the designated Missouri River steamboat landing point for people and goods coming and going from Fort Maginnis, away.United States War Dept. Annual Report of the Secretary of War, Vol. 1 (1881). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, p. 68, indicating Rocky Point as the Missouri River steamboat landing for Ft. Maginnis, Montana Territory, 63 miles away.
The Northern Pacific Railroad completed its line through the southern portion of Montana in 1883, which severely reduced steamboat traffic to Fort Benton. In 1887 the Great Northern Railroad built through the area just north of the Missouri River breaks, and this finally terminated steamboat traffic on the Missouri.
Wood hawk yards – 1860s to the 1880s
Wood hawk yards developed along the Missouri River to supply fuel to passing steamboats. At these remote locations men known as wood hawks would harvest trees from cottonwood groves along the river and stack the wood in cords along the river banks. Steamboats traveling on the Missouri would stop and buy the cords of wood to burn for fuel.
The flat on the south side of the river near Rocky Point became one of the many wood hawk camps along the river. In 1868 Lohmire and Lee were located there. In 1871 fugitives from an Indian encounter sought refuge at a woodchopper's cabin there.
Buffalo hide hunters – late 1870s to 1883
After 1876, military campaigns against Indian tribes reduced the danger from roving and hostile bands of Indians on the Eastern Montana plains. Buffalo hides had a market because they were used for belting for industrial machines. As the threat from Indian bands decreased, commercial market hunters for buffalo, sometimes called "hide hunters", began to roam over the Eastern Montana prairie and kill buffalo in large numbers, taking only the hide. Commercial hunters in the vicinity of Rocky Point brought their hides down to the steamboat landing, where a middleman—usually a local merchant—bought the hides and then shipped them east by steamboat. By 1883 there were so few buffalo left that the day of the commercial market hunter came to an end.
Missouri River crossing point for cattle herds
As cattle replaced buffalo on the plains of eastern Montana, the ford at Rocky Point became a crossing point for large cattle herds. A large rancher trailing a herd to the ford at Rocky Point during a drought had this experience:At last we were nearing the Missouri River, intending to cross at Rocky Point. The wind was from the north and cattle smelled the water and broke for it. No power on earth could stop the poor thirsty beasts; bellowing and lowing they ran pell-mell for the water, with the cowboys in hot pursuit. There was a point of quicksand in the river just above the ford and before the men could prevent it the cattle had plunged into it and were miring down. A small steamboat tied at the landing used their donkey engine to help drag out some of them, but we lost seventy head in spite of our best efforts. After this mishap we crossed the herd without further trouble and from here on there was more water and better grass.
Ferry
The trail system down to the ford at Rocky Point made it a natural point to have a ferry. As long as Rocky Point was used as a Missouri River crossing point in the breaks, the ferry continued, from the 1880s to the late 1920s.
By 1885 John Tyler was the ferryman. Stock detective Charles Siringo journeyed from Lewistown, Montana, to the Little Rocky Mountains, and described his crossing of the Missouri River at Rocky Point:I arrived in Rocky Point on the south bank of the Big Muddy river three hours after dark. Here I found old man Tyler and his son running the ferry and keeping a small Indian trading store.
In 1907 Elmer Turner bought the ferry at Rocky Point from Tyler, and he ran the Ferry until 1927, when he dismantled it and used the lumber in buildings at Rocky Point.
Gumbo mud in the Missouri Breaks
When the clay dirt of the Missouri Breaks becomes wet, it first becomes slick then it becomes sticky and clumps up around any surface that comes in contact with it. The sticky nature of the mud is because the clay has a high bentonite content. The Missouri Breaks are notorious for this sticky "gumbo mud".
Travelers to Rocky Point in wet weather encountered this mud. It was exhausting to travel through. Charley Siringo, the famous stock detective, rode horseback to Rocky Point on his favorite mare, intending to cross the Missouri River, on his way from Lewistown to Landusky in the Little Rocky Mountains. After Siringo had started into the Missouri Breaks (which he refers to as the "Bad Lands"), he encountered the "sticky mud" of the Missouri Breaks: ... the sticky mud of the 'Bad Lands' was something fearful. It would stick to the mare's feet till the poor animal could hardly gallop. I had seen many kinds of sticky mud in my life, but nothing to equal this." When Siringo dismounted,I found I couldn't get my foot in the stirrup, owing to the mud that was stuck fast to it. Here my early cowboy training in the art of fancy swearing came in play, as it seemed to relieve my mind, while the mud was being scraped off my foot with a knife. When he finally got to Rocky Point, Siringo's mare was exhausted.My mare had only traveled 30 miles, but she had carried about 75 pounds of mud across the "Bad Lands", hence she was almost played out on arriving at Rocky Point. I had often heard of the "Bad lands" and wanted to visit them, but now that desire had vanished.
Settlement in Montana Territory
In the Missouri Breaks a ferry and a place to cross stock over the Missouri River were rare, and a community grew up at Rocky Point. Rocky Point became a meeting place and center of trade for miners, woodhawks, trappers, buffalo hunters, whiskey traders, ranchers and cowboys. Rocky Point served legitimate local businessmen and ranchers, but also became a place where thieves and outlaws lived.
In 1880, C. A. Broadwater, Helena merchant and entrepreneur, moved his warehouse upriver from Carroll landing to the vicinity of Rocky Point. He erected buildings and named the settlement "Wilder" after Amherst H. Wilder, his business associate from St. Paul, Minnesota. Broadwater received shipments being forwarded to Fort Maginnis. He requested military aid, and a detachment of 19 men was sent to Wilder in order to guard government freight until it was shipped to Fort Maginnis.
In 1885, Rocky Point had grown to one store, one hotel, one feed stable, two saloons, a blacksmith shop and the ferry run by Jimmy Taylor. The store was run by R. A. Richie, and a warehouse was run by M. F. Marsh, who also ran his bar and hotel.