The Bitterroot Mountains make up part of the border between Idaho and Montana. The continental divide lays along their spine. They are rugged and remote. Meriwether Lewis called his time in the Bitterroot Mountains the worst part of his entire adventure along the Oregon Trail.
Today they host a large protected wilderness area. The Lochsa, Selway, and Clearwater Rivers flow westward from the Bitterrroots, and join the Snake River at Lewiston, just north of its confluence with the Salmon at the end of North America's deepest canyon--Hell's Canyon. These beautiful mountains raise a formidable barrier. Even with a paved highway, it is often faster to drive several hundred miles out of one's way to get from Lewiston to Missoula--or to Boise.
This book sold out its first printing in the U.S. (a tough feat during the depression) and had two printings in England. The Bitterroot Trail is a respectable pulp western. It's also historical fiction, laying out the multitude of troubles people went through to make a territory and then a state. It's a romping yarn reminding the reader of colorful vernacular of the frontier, carefully cloaked in depression-era Victorianism. It's a real geography lesson too. When you read this story, get out a road atlas and then open it to Washington, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, and try to follow along. Towns mentioned might nowadays be in any one of these states.
As you read this tale of frontiersmen, keep in the mind some of the following history. The story takes place during extremely troubled times, and political borders in the Pacific Northwest were highly fluid. In 1851 the Oregon Territory was rent in two, making one part the state of Oregon; the rest became the Washington Territory. In 1860, gold was discovered along Orofino Creek, a small tributary to the Clearwater River not far from where Lewis and Clark got their dugouts done and their exploration party back into traveling a river. The U.S. Civil War started too, putting enormous pressure on the locals to produce gold for both the Union and the Confederacy. In 1863--the same year as the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg--the Idaho Territory was carved from Washington Territory in the same way Washington Territory had been carved from Oregon's. The following year Montana Territory emerged from the Idaho Territory. In 1876 Crazy Horse defeated Custer in Montana, and Chief Joseph led many of the Nez Perce out of their suddenly tiny reservation along the Clearwater River (an unfortunate but inevitable result of the events of the 1860's). In 1890, Idaho became a state.
The characters in the story don't notice history happening around them, though. Their motivations are more prosaic. Earn a living. Make a home. Find one of those nuggets the size of your thumb. Keep it and stay alive. Out of this ordinary life, extraordinary men like Bob Bainbridge appeared, with a sense of justice matching the revolvers in their hands, and during the 1860's that's when history just happened.
Nowadays the Transcontinental Highway (US 93) runs along part of the old Bitterroot Trail. Sensibly. A good road follows the good passes through the mountains.
Idaho is virtually all mountains. Always has been. Some mountains we made. Some were already here. Some we went around and some we climbed. We are the mountains. We are the heart of this tale. The mountains are Idaho.
Richard D. Johnson January 16, 2007