Montana's DAR Markers . . . Honoring Where History Was Made

Copper Mining Company, installed in an eight-foot monument of
native rock masonry by Hugh Gray of Dillon.
Governor Cooney’s remarks that day included the following:
The trips that once took weeks and months are now made in hours.
The toll road of the olden days has vanished with the oxcart and the
covered wagon, the stage coach and the mule teams. Cities and towns
and villages have sprung up and the points once separated by
impassable barriers are brought into neighborly close connection with
each other with the bands of steel and the modern railroad trains,
bus lines, automobile caravans and trucks. We can stand today on
these hilltops where once our pioneer fathers and mothers crouched
and gazed with fear and trepidation for dangers to be avoided ...
Now we look calmly down on peaceful valleys and calmly scan the
horizon as long trains pass … the cars loaded with copper, lead,
zinc, wheat, rye, apples, cherries, sheep, cattle, wool and the products
of our dairies are whisked away to meet the needs of the East. This
marker today stands as a mute evidence of the passing of the old and
the welcoming of the new.
Fifty-six years later, after a state highway route changed its
placement at the foot of Rattlesnake Cliffs, local historic preservationist
and DAR State Regent Mrs. Elfreda (J. Fred) Woodside ensured that
the original DAR bronze tablet was refurbished and moved east to a
beautifully-crafted rock wall built to protect it at its current state
highway campground location.
The monument was rededicated on September 7, 1991. Honorary
State Regent Woodside, four days from her 94 th birthday, attended the
ceremony.
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