The Lewis Overthrust Fault and Marias Pass

The bronze on this summit is Stevens's, and the man who came most of the way with him goes unnamed here. Accounts call him Coonsah, a Flathead by most tellings, recruited near the agency after, one writer says, no Blackfeet would take the job. He stayed behind, at a spot one account calls False Summit, while Stevens went on alone. Sources put the night on the pass at December 10 or December 11, 1889, and the Great Northern later polished the trek into legend. The panel itself grants that the Salish, Kootenai and Blackfeet knew the pass well.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Running Eagle Falls — 12 mi
  A double waterfall in Two Medicine named for Pitamakan, the Blackfeet woman who led war parties.
• Museum of the Plains Indian — 22 mi
  A federal museum on the Blackfeet Reservation whose walls were painted by a Blackfeet muralist in its first year.
• Sun Point — 27 mi
  Where the railroad's busiest chalets stood until the road they had waited for made them obsolete.

More markers nearby

• The Blackfeet Nation — 22 mi