Steel bison marks way to state park

Visitors at Madison Buffalo Jump State Park near Three Forks will now be greeted by a life-sized, three-dimensional steel bison, thanks to the work of a Kalispell company.

Flathead Concrete Products has created an $11,000 sign featuring a steel bison that stands 8 feet tall on its concrete base, which measures 5 feet by 9 feet. Behind the bison is a concrete sign with steel lettering spelling out the name of the park.

The entire structure is 20 feet long and weighs 20,000 pounds, said Roy Robinson, who is in charge of sales and delivery at Flathead Concrete.

"We don't expect someone to drag it away," said Dan Stinson, interpretive supervisor with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, which commissioned the sign. "And if they did, they can have it."

The real goal of having such a large sign isn't to ensure it stays put, though. It's to give visitors a sense of scale.

"Bison were big animals," he said. "That's a life-sized cutout."

It's not the first time Flathead Concrete has worked for the state. The firm has made signs for Ulm Pishkun State Park (a buffalo jump near Great Falls) and Makoshika State Park near Glendive, an area with many dinosaur remains.

"It's nice to find an outfit like that that's willing to try something different once in awhile," Stinson said.

For the newest sign, Stinson sent a prototype he'd adapted from a Shorty Shope design. Shope was a western artist who, among other projects, designed highway signs across the state.

Flathead Concrete did all the work, Robinson said, and worked on it this winter during down time. It took about two and a half months to complete.

The sign was placed in the park Thursday, replacing the laminated wooden sign that has served the park for 30 years.

The old sign likely will end up in the landfill, said Ray Heagney, the park's manager.

"It's pretty well deteriorated," he said. "We've tried to patch it, and it's just weathered. It's hung in there for years, but it's time for it to go."

The new sign is made of weathering steel, which will turn brown as it ages and rusts.

As weathering steel corrodes, it forms a dense barrier that protects it from the elements and prevents further corrosion, which means the new sign will last a long time.

This steel is becoming popular with the highway department for bridges and with other groups interested in building for durability, Stinson said. It costs at least twice as much as regular steel, he added, and is what most of the money spent on the project went toward.

"It shouldn't have to have any maintenance," Stinson said. "That country down there is pretty rough on signs."

It also will look good, Heagney said.

"It will add a dramatic touch to the park," he said. "It'll catch a lot of people's eyes."

For thousands of years, American Indians harvested bison at what is now Madison Buffalo Jump State Park.

From the air, the area is shaped like an hourglass. At the top is what used to be the staging area, where the young men of the tribes would herd the bison and move them toward the lower part of the hourglass - the jump itself.

The young men led the bison down a drive lane, marked by two narrowing rows of rock cairns that funneled the herd toward the cliff. Hunters hid behind bushes along the lane and spooked the bison to get them to move more quickly.

When the young men reached the precipice, they jumped and landed safely on a shelf not far below the top of the cliff.

The bison in front tried to stop when they reached the edge, but the speed and crushing weight of the herd behind them forced them over.

The young men on the shelf tucked themselves in close to the wall and watched as bison after bison plummeted off the cliff.

Any animal that survived the fall was finished off by rocks or clubs from hunters waiting below.

Anywhere from 100 to 200 bison might have died in each jump, Heagney said. Bone fragments from those kills are still scattered at the base of the cliff.

"Over a period of 6,000 to 10,000 years, quite a few bison went over that cliff," he said.

Bison were a primary source of food for the Plains Indians, but they also were necessary for clothing, tipis and utensils. Even the tongues were used as hairbrushes, Heagney said.

Madison Buffalo Jump was probably used by the Shoshone, Crow and Salish tribes until the 1700s, when the use of horses allowed for easier and more selective bison hunting.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.