During the severe winter of 1900-1901, two husky freight horses, Tex and Terry, working in the rugged wilderness of the Flathead River’s South Fork area, wandered away from their sleigh. After struggling for a month in belly-deep snow, they were found almost starved and so weak that considerable care and feeding were required before they were strong enough to be led back to civilization. Hungry Horse became the name of a mountain, a lake, and a creek near where the incident occurred, and later of the dam and town a short distance downstream.