Will Cave, Part 3: More stories on the origins of western Montana place names - The Missoulian
About this series This is the third of a series of articles by Will Cave for the Sunday Missoulian on western Montana nomenclature. This article takes up Lolo (he follows the ancient way and spells it "Lo Lo"), Lolo Hot Springs, Mount Jumbo, Mount Sentinel, Squaw Peak, Pattee Canyon, Deer Creek, Grant Creek, Big Rock Creek, with its romance of Quigley, and Miller Creek. We call it Ch-paa-qn (say "Ch-paw-kwin") these days, but it took an act of the Montana Legislature not that long ago to change the name of the landmark mountain west of Missoula from the unseemly Squaw Peak. In the third of a four-part Sunday series in 1922 on the place names of Western Montana, Cave (1863-1954) also gave his take on where the name Lolo came from, hinted of a "lost" lead mine up Deer Creek, and reminisced about the June day in 1880 he... Daily Missoulian, Sunday morning, May 28, 1922. WILL CAVE TELLS MORE STORIES OF ORIGINS OF MONTANA NAMES. Kettle Falls of the Columbia River prevent the salmon from ascending the Kootenai and Clarks Fork tributaries, therefore no salmon appear in the waters on the eastern slope of the Bitter Root or Coeur d'Alene mountains, but the streams on the... The Indians traveling over the Lo Lo trail naturally appreciated the fact that while it was a simple matter to provide themselves with this edible variety of fish on the western side of the summit, it was impossible so to do on the eastern side. Source: missoulian.com
