One Paddle at a Time
Thomas Elpel on Accessing Montana Lands by Water
It would be easy to assume that Tom Elpel’s favorite way to recreate in Montana is to paddle a river. After all, he carved a dugout canoe with the help of Churchill Clark, a direct descendent of William Clark — the Clark in “Lewis and Clark.” And he then proceeded, over the course of five months in 2019, to travel the length of the Missouri River in it, from the river’s headwaters in Three Forks, Montana, all the way to St. Louis, Missouri.
Even before that, in 2001, Tom — an author, builder, educator and conservationist — founded an organization to create the Jefferson River Canoe Trail, which encompasses the full 80-mile length of the southwest Montana waterway, from Twin Bridges to Three Forks. And Tom does enjoy getting out on the water. But for him, traveling on a river is all about connecting to land. And connecting to land and nature is a driving force that has shaped Tom’s life.
Tom grew up in Bozeman. His family embraced Montana’s outdoors, but no one more so than his grandmother, who instilled a love of nature in Tom and sparked his interest in outdoor survival skills.
“She was hugely influential for me in terms of getting me started on wilderness survival skills, learning the edible medicinal plants, and starting my interest in self-sufficiency,” Tom says. “When I was growing up in Bozeman, I built a debris hut, a wilderness survival shelter … well, two of them. I had a wickiup on one side, kind of behind the Museum of the Rockies. I had another one on Sourdough Trail.”
Tom continued to gain as much knowledge as he could about the natural world and how to live responsibly in it, and would put in practice what he learned — like building his own stone and log home in Pony, Montana, where he still resides today. Before too long, he started writing books on botany, foraging, primitive living skills and low-impact home construction among other topics. He eventually started two educational initiatives: Green University, a wilderness survival and primitive living immersion program, and the Outdoor Wilderness Living School, a wilderness survival program for school-aged children. Through these programs and his books, he imparts his passion for coexisting with nature.
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“In this day and age, the most important thing is just to have a physical connection to the planet,” Tom says. “There's really just no substitute for that hands-on connection with the world.”
For Tom, connection to the land is what made the Jefferson River Canoe Trail a critical endeavor. With more development in Montana over the years, he recognized the need to ensure continued access to the riverfront land along the Jefferson, a waterway that Lewis and Clark traveled in 1805 and named after President Thomas Jefferson. (Several of the expedition’s campsites are identified along the canoe trail.)
To regain and maintain access to that land, Tom founded an organization known today as the Jefferson River Chapter, Lewis & Clark Trail Alliance. The group got to work creating the canoe trail, which provides access to fishing access sites, campsites, hiking trails, conservation easements, state parks and BLM and Forest Service land along the length of the Jefferson River.
They started by identifying the public lands along the river, naming them and putting them on a trail map to direct folks traveling the river to places they could camp. Then they moved on to acquiring private lands to create additional boater campsites, concentrating on sites that are destinations in themselves, that prompt people to paddle the Jefferson River to go to these spots along the way.
“I think a lot of people think of [the canoe trail] as being an access to the river. I think of it as being access to the land,” he shares.
“When Lewis and Clark came through this country, the river was the highway. That's how they got to see what was out here. And so I take the same approach, in that the river gives access to interesting places.”
Starting at the Jefferson River’s upstream end, a few of those interesting places include a 30-acre site called Lost Tomahawk, which features great riparian ecology, with cottonwoods, junipers, birch trees and morel mushrooms. “It's so basic to life in Montana to go out and forage for morel mushrooms, and so it's thrilling for me, not just that I can go pick mushrooms, but that I know that other people can do that,” Tom says. Continuing downriver, there’s access to Renova Hot Springs from one of the trail public land sites.
“In this day and age, the most important thing is just to have a physical connection to the planet.”
“Then you get down into the Jefferson River Canyon, Lewis and Clark Caverns area. There's 3,000 acres of hiking there, and of course the cavern tours,” Tom says. “In the London Hills, there's some access to state and federal lands there. And so, these are all sites that really give you a lot of room to roam.”
Thanks to the efforts of the Jefferson River Chapter to piece together the canoe trail, maintain boater campsites along it and provide detailed trip-planning maps and brochures, recreators can travel the Jefferson confidently, whether they’re looking for time on water or, like Tom does, time on land.
“Some people say, ‘How quickly can we do the Jefferson River?’ And, well, you know, if the water's flowing, you can do it in a few days. But when I do it, if I do it in eight days, I feel like I'm rushing, because I really want to visit each of these spots, spend some quality time there, go for hikes, all that.”
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