Ennis

Benches Under the Madison Range

Ennis stands in Madison County, Montana, in the Madison Valley, where the Madison Range rises along an active fault on the valley’s east side.² The flat benches that run for miles along the valley are the remains of old channels of the Madison River, and the highest bench is the oldest.²

Beaver Streams and the Ennis Homestead

Beginning in the 1830s, American trappers caught beaver in the streams that empty into the Madison River.² The state highway marker in Ennis says that by the 1840s the Blackfeet and the beaver had all but disappeared from the area.² According to Visit Montana, Ennis began in 1863 as the homestead of William Ennis, and other ranchers, farmers, and businessmen soon settled nearby.¹ The great-grandparents of Richard “Pokey” Armitage, a fourth-generation Armitage from the Madison Valley, homesteaded what became known as the Armitage Flats, south of Cameron, and the family name is still recognized in the Ennis community through the William K. Armitage Gymnasium and Armitage Street.³

The Vigilante Trail

A Montana Department of Transportation marker says that for Ennis a good road was as important as the railroad.⁴ In 1923, businessmen and promoters in Madison, Jefferson, and Silver Bow counties formed the Vigilante Trail Association, and its trail provided a connection between West Yellowstone and Butte.⁴ The route was marked with a round red, white, and blue shield bearing the vigilante symbol 3-7-77.⁴ The 160-mile road ran past Virginia City and Alder Gulch and along the Madison River, which promoters called “the fisherman’s paradise of the West.”⁴ The 1939 Federal Writers’ Project guide listed Ennis at a highway junction, at an altitude of 4,927 feet, with 278 people.⁵ On August 17, 1959, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck the southern end of the Madison Range near Hebgen Lake, and the landslide it set off dammed the Madison River and formed Earthquake Lake.²