Twenty cheery faces met at
8:30 a.m. on the east end of Broadway at the old James Stuart
millsite, the staging area of the Granite County Historical Society’s
field trip on July 5th. The group then car-pooled to Arrow
Point (also known as the Devil’s Eyebrow), a major Native American chalcedony
or “flint” quarry north of Henderson gulch and
west of Highway 1. Flint Creek’s name is based on this quarry. During the short walk up the hill to the site, Katie McDonald, a Philipsburg native and geologist
for the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, provided a map of her field work at
the Eyebrow, and with Ted Antonioli described the area’s geological history and history of Native American usage and the
arrow points and tools made from the flint
quarried there for thousands of years. The location provided
a good view of the routes
formerly used to travel from the Clark’s
Fork (called the Arrowstone River by the early fur trappers and the
Hellgate River by the first surveyors) , to the Rock Creek and Bitterroot Valley. Many thanks
to the Skinner ranch for permission to visit the area on their land.
