Hell Gate, Montana

Hell Gate lay at the west end of the Missoula Valley. About 13,000 BCE, the advance of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet created an ice dam on the Clark Fork which created Glacial Lake Missoula. After the Missoula Floods and the final draining of Glacial Lake Missoula about 11,000 BCE, the lake sediment dried and became the fertile Missoula Valley. ==Native American and western settlement==

Members of the Bitterroot Salish (or Flathead) Native American tribe often traveled through the Missoula Valley on their way east to bison hunting grounds. As the Salish passed through the valley's narrow eastern and western mouths, members of the Blackfeet tribe would often attack and kill them. The entire valley was heavily wooded, and ideal for ambush. English-Canadian explorer David Thompson visited the area in 1811, and mapped much of the valley and the surrounding peaks (including Mount Jumbo). Significant numbers of pack mule trains traveled through the valley, eventually leading to the settlement of Hell Gate itself. ==Founding and growth==

The first settlers in the Hell Gate Valley arrived in late December 1856 to begin preparations for a permanent settlement (Hell Gate). Higgins had come through the Hell Gate Valley with Governor Isaac Stevens' railroad scouting party in 1853, and now the two men built a log cabin and turned it into a store. In December 1860, the Territorial Legislature of the Washington Territory (which at that time included much of what is today western Montana) organized a system of county government, and established Missoula County. Hell Gate was named the county seat, and Montana's first county election was held there in 1861. Hell Gate grew quickly. Worden and Higgins built a second store in 1861. Camel pack trains took goods and gold regularly over the Mullan Road to the rapidly growing Inland Empire. In 1863, the discovery of gold at Alder Gulch brought hundreds of settlers to the region, allowing Hell Gate to prosper. Catholic missionaries also built St. Peter's Mission in the town, served as a base for missionary work from the 1860s to 1884 (even surviving Hell Gate's abandonment). In the summer of 1864, Tyler Woodward of the firm of Woodward & Clements built a second store in Hell Gate and P.J. Shockley built a boarding house. When the Montana Territory was organized, Woodward was elected Missoula County commissioner, and was postmaster in Hell Gate. ==Death in Hell Gate==

Hell Gate was the scene of notorious lynchings in 1864. Once in the town's history, the Worden and Higgins store had been robbed. Cyrus Skinner, a member of Henry Plummer's "road agent" gang, and other members of the Plummer gang took up residence in Hell Gate in late 1863 and began a reign of terror against the townspeople. Bolte's saloon had gone out of business in 1862, but Skinner bought the place in 1863 and reopened the bar. A brief trial was held in Worden and Higgins' store, and four members of the Plummer gang were sentenced to death. Skinner and two others were hanged from a pole which was ripped loose from the town corral and put upright. One was hanged in a barn next to the store, another from a tree outside the store. In March 1864, several young Pend d'Oreilles Indian men (led by the chief's son) killed a prospector near the town of Clinton, Montana. The townspeople of Hell Gate, worried that an Indian uprising might begin, sent for help to the town of Alder Gulch. The Pend d'Oreilles tribe, worried about retaliation, forced their chief to turn his son over to the people of Hell Gate. After a very brief trial, the young man was hanged from a pole in the town corral. Additional deaths also occurred in the town. In the autumn of 1864, a settler named Matt Craft shot and killed a young man named Crow after Crow allegedly insulted Craft's wife at the tent the couple lived in. At about the same time, William Cook reopened the town saloon. Two Irishmen, McLaughlin and Doran, got into an argument while playing cards and exchanged gunfire in the saloon. McLaughlin was killed, but Doran escaped uninjured. Doran was arrested, but released. Cook, the saloonkeeper, was also shot and died a few days later. The last death in the town was that of J.P Shockley, who committed suicide in the early spring of 1865. ==Abandonment==

Hell Gate collapsed as a settlement in 1865. The settlement had reached a grand total of 20 residents. From 1887 until his death in 1905, the German-American Shakespearean actor Daniel E. Bandmann operated a ranch near Hell Gate in an area now known as Bandmann Flats. During this time he introduced to Montana McIntosh red apples, Percheron horses, Holstein cattle and several exotic breeds of chickens and pigs. By 1913, little was left of the town (which was now part of a privately owned ranch) except for a few buildings and four burial mounds of the Plummer gang. The site of the ghost town was featured as a stop on a self-guided tour promoted in a guide book to the state of Montana written by the Federal Writers' Project in 1939. ==The Hellgate area==

The Hell Gate has lent its name to several nature and man-made features in the area, including the valley itself, which became known in the 1800s as the Hell Gate Valley. Hell Gate was also the original name of the Clark Fork River, which original settlers believed was formed at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot River at the eastern mouth of the Missoula Valley. Although the river and valley would be renamed, the steep gorge cut by the Clark Fork to the east of the Missoula Valley is still known as Hellgate Canyon. It currently maintains a Hell Gate Station in downtown Missoula. The Missoula County Public School System operates Hellgate High School, one of the oldest and largest high schools in the state of Montana. In addition to the above, the area has also been Hellgate Township and Hellgate Voting Precinct which were used as census districts from 1900-1920. ==References==