New name proposed for rock spires near Troy

Some landscape features escape getting names, but that may not be the case much longer for a series of towering cliff-like spires 20 miles south of Troy in Lincoln County.

The Montana State Library is soliciting public comments on a proposal to name them the Bad Medicine Spires because of their proximity to the Bad Medicine Campground on Bull Lake.

The name was proposed by Dr. Rob Neils, a Libby native who now lives in the Spokane area.

In his formal proposal to the Montana State Names Authority, Neils describes “a geological formation of gigantic castle-like pinnacles looking like magnificent stalagmites arranged cliff-like along a fault line where Mount Vernon’s eastern quarter split/slipped away to the east, leaving castle-like towers arranged in a cliff-like line.”

From bottom to top, some of the dozen or so spires approach 1,000 feet.

Neils goes on to point out that the spires are well known to locals for a “seven-fold echo” that is reverberated back to a noise-maker who stands on Montana 56 where the highway borders Bull Lake.

Neils previously proposed naming the spires Castle Cliffs but later withdrew that suggestion after being told that the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes and the U.S. Forest Service indicated they could not endorse the proposal.

The request to name the spires initially was received by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, which determines what names the federal government recognizes for natural landscape features.

The board assigns an individual in each state as a geographic names adviser, whose duties include soliciting opinions from state and local officials on name proposals. Montana’s names advisor is Gerald Daumiller, a geographer with the Montana State Library.

The public is invited to submit comment on the Bad Medicine Spires proposal by calling Daumiller at 444-5358 or emailing him at gdaumiller@mt.gov before March 15.

More information about the proposal is available online at: http://msl.mt.gov/geonames.