LaHood Park

The man the park is named for came a long way to sell gasoline. Shadan LaHood was a Lebanese immigrant who reached the United States in 1899 and settled in Butte, where he married Fannie Zinnie. In 1909 the couple opened a general store at Jefferson Island, across the river, on what became the Yellowstone Trail auto route, and LaHood boosted the road and served its tourists. When the state's new highway of 1928 bypassed Jefferson Island, he bought land on the new route and started over with the hotel and auto camp the panel describes.

What the plaque says

LaHood Park In August 1840, Pierre Jean De Smet, a Catholic missionary of Belgian birth, camped near the mouth of the Boulder River with the Salish Indians and celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Father De Smet left the Indians soon after to go to St. Louis. He returned the following year and established the original St. Mary's Mission in the Bitter Root Valley, hereditary home of the Salish. Fearless and zealous, his many experiences during the pioneer days have been chronicled and form a most interesting chapter in the frontier annals of Montana. Nearly ninety years later, in 1928, Shadan "Dan" LaHood built a hotel, gas station, and auto camp here to take advantage of tourist traffic on the newly opened highway through the Jefferson River Canyon. Five years after building the hotel, he added several motel units and a roadside cafe to his operation. A tireless supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal relief programs, LaHood donated the land adjacent to the hotel for a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the 1930s. The boys based at the CCC camp improved access to and within Lewis and Clark Caverns, making it one of Montana's premier attractions. LaHood's hotel burned to the ground in 2001.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Missouri Headwaters State Park — 21 mi
  Where the expedition named three rivers, and where the trappers who came back after it learned whose country it was.
• Madison Buffalo Jump State Park — 22 mi
  A limestone cliff where people drove bison over the edge for two thousand years, until horses made it unnecessary.

More markers nearby

• Lewis and Clark Expedition — steps away
• A New World: Tertiary Mammals — 12 mi
• Thunder Horses — 18 mi
• The Great Divide Trophy — 20 mi