Beaver's Head Rock: Native Road Sign

By the time the Corps of Discovery passed through this area, the Valley of the Beaverhead was already common ground for many Indian tribes. Beaver's Head was a well-known landmark to the Shoshone and other Rocky Mountain tribes who traveled through the valley on their way to and from buffalo country. In 1832, fur trapper Warren Angus Ferris wrote of the vicinity of an Indian village at the Beaver's Head, where about one hundred and fifty lodges of Flatheads, Pend d'Oreilles, and others stood. Captain William Clark wrote on August 10, 1805, of passing a remarkable cliff point about one hundred and fifty feet high that the Indians called the Beaver's Head, with an opposing low cliff about three hundred yards away and fifty feet high. Captain Meriwether Lewis wrote on August 8, 1805, that the Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain and said her nation called it the beaver's head because of its resemblance to that animal, and that her people might be found on the river or on the river immediately west of its source. Beaver's Head is a prominent exposure of limestone of the Mississippian Mission Canyon formation rising above the flood plain of the Beaverhead River.

Montana · United States