TALKING TRAIL

Nestled in the Russell Creek Valley sits Ekalaka, a small town rich in history and home to the Carter County Museum, which offers visitors a portal to 90-million years of history, before the sandstone hills and formations, before indigenous nations called the area home, to the reign of dinosaurs and the stories of the last Ice Age. Carter County Museum holds information and exhibits that encompass a length of time we can barely fathom and has been an asset to not only the state of Montana, but to the region as well.

Founded in 1936 by members of the Carter County Geological Society, the original museum was housed in the high school, but, after nearly forty years, it was bursting at the seams. In 1975, newly retired teacher Marshall Lambert turned his attention to the construction of a new building for the Carter County Museum. The project began with an old garage that held geological significance as it was fashioned from stones collected from deteriorating homesteads, along with petrified wood from local ranches. Lambert acquired a large safe and a vault door from an auction at a neighboring courthouse, ensuring fireproof storage for a wide variety of specimens and materials. As with any large-scale construction projects in the Mountain West region, freezing temperatures and dwindling funds slowed progress, which limited the more interesting fossil activities. The enterprise was truly a community effort and finally completed in 1984.

Some of the finest paleontological discoveries in the United States are displayed in the Carter County Museum, as well as numerous artifacts depicting the lives of Native Americans and the early settlers of Carter County. Visitors come face to face with fully mounted dinosaurs like the duck-billed edmontosaurus and tyrannosaurus rex. The museum is one of fourteen museums on the Montana Dinosaur trail and began hosting the Annual Dino Shindig in 2013, an event that has been recognized as Montana’s Event of the Year. Visitors travel from all over the world to hear lectures from leading paleontologists and partake in an expedition into Hell Creek in which families and amateur fossil enthusiasts can gain real-world experience in the field of paleontology.

A trip to Carter County Museum will take you on a journey through millions and millions of years, an interesting and beautiful in-depth exploration of the history of southeast Montana.