Big Belt Mountains east of Helena
— — the limestone the river had to cut through.
Not only on a wall.
“The range that closes the eastern wall of the Helena Valley. Limestone shoulders, dark timber, the Missouri threading the Gates of the Mountains at its southern edge. Lewis and Clark came through in July of 1805 and gave the canyon its name. Most days you can stand at the Meriwether picnic area and not see another boat.
Big Belt Mountains east of Helena, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Big Belt Mountains rise immediately east of Helena, Montana, separating the Helena Valley from the Smith River country to the north. The range tops out at Mount Edith, 9,504 feet, and runs roughly seventy miles from the Missouri River north toward the Smith. Most of the upper country sits inside the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. The southern shoulder is cut by the Missouri at the Gates of the Mountains, the limestone canyon Meriwether Lewis named on the evening of July 19, 1805, in his journal.
The cliffs at the Gates rise about 1,200 feet straight out of the river, cut from Madison limestone laid down in a shallow sea more than 300 million years ago. The Belt Supergroup gives the range its name and its weathering pattern: pale grey faces, dark juniper holding the ledges, scree fans spilling toward the water. The Mann Gulch fire of 1949 burned across these slopes north of the canyon and killed thirteen smokejumpers; the regrowth is still uneven seventy-seven years later.
Boat tours leave from the Gates of the Mountains marina, about twenty miles north of Helena off Interstate 15, between Memorial Day and the last weekend of September. The two-hour run carries passengers through the canyon to Meriwether Picnic Area and the Mann Gulch trailhead. The high country to the east is reached by Forest Road 4040 toward Vigilante Campground or by the Refrigerator Canyon trailhead. Snow holds the upper trails into June; the last week of September is usually the cleanest light of the year.