This mountain means home to me, as I’m sure it does to many other Towsendites. It is always beautiful, whether covered in snow or “bald”. It is not the most majestic of mountains, but it has always seemed so to me. The beautiful valley where I was raised has seen some changes, but still retains its charm. The signpost below gives a little of the history of the valley. I was raised without really understanding my roots, but in adulthood have done a little genealogical research and have learned that so many of the family names I grew up with were the very people whose grandparents and great grandparents had settled the valley in the 1860s, my great great grandparents among them. It must have been a very hard life, as Montana is still a challenge: winter is long and cold, summer is short and spring – well, it sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t. Fall is gorgeous when we have “Indian summer”, but when winter comes and the trees lose their leaves the landscape can be bleak.

My great great grandfather, Moses Doggett, came to Montana in the early 1860s. He and his wife, Susan Rose Doggett, arrived via covered wagon. Their child, Charles Brooks Doggett, my grandfather, was a child of four at the time. Moses tried his hand at mining several times, taking $2500.00 out of Last Chance Gulch, the site of one of Montana’s largest gold finds, in only twelve days. Mining was a rough and tumble business, and a family man did not dare leave his wife and children unattended, and Moses deciding ranching was a better proposition for raising a family. He settled near the mining camp of Diamond City, and raised his family in the valley. I have always felt a strong kinship with the women who helped settle the valley – the long, hard days, weeks and years they put in raising families, feeding and clothing them, and the hardships, early deaths and difficulties they endured. “Grandma Doggett”, as Susan Rose Doggett was known, was called upon to raise her son Charles’ family of eight children when his wife died in childbirth at only 36…

Enough family history. I am tied to this valley and always will be, I guess. It is still home.