Mission Mountain Reflections

The view of the Mission Mountains near Ronan, Montana is one of my favorites, especially in the fall. The west side of the Missions lies mainly within the Flathead Indian Reservation, while the east side is largely public land administered by the U.S. Forest Service. The U.S.’s first designated tribal wilderness (over 90,000 acres) was created by the reservation’s Kootenai and Salish tribes in 1975, helping protect a landscape that has remained largely untrammeled since the time Kootenai ancestors first arrived here over 11,000 years ago.