115 STAT. 2584 PROCLAMATION 7398-^AN. 17, 2001 lope Creek, and the Judith River. The area has remained largely unchanged in the nearly 200 years since Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled through it on their epic journey. In 1976, the Congress designated the Missouri River segment and corridor in this area a National Wild and Scenic River (Public Law 94-486, 90 Stat. 2327). The monument also encompasses segments of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, the Nez Perce National Historic Trail, and the Cow Creek Island Area of Critical Environmental Concern. Lewis and Clark first encountered the Breaks country of the monument on their westward leg. In his journal, Clark described the abundant wildlife of the area, including mule deer, elk, and antelope, and on April 29, 1805, the Lewis and Clark expedition recorded the first big horn sheep observation by non-Indians in North America. Lewis' description of the magnificent White Cliffs area on the western side of the monument is especially vivid, and not just for his sometimes colorful spellings: "The hills and river Clifts which we passed today exhibit a most romantic appearance.... The bluffs of the river rise to hight of from 2 to 300 feet and in most places nearly perpendicular; they are formed of remarkable white sandstone which is sufficiently soft to give way readily to the impression of water... "The water in the course of time... has trickled down the soft sand clifts and woarn it into a thousand grotesque figures, which with the help of a little immagination and an oblique view, at a distance are made to represent eligant ranges of lofty freestone buildings, having their parapets well stocked with statuary; collumns of various sculptures both grooved and plain, are also seen supporting long galleries in fi-ont of these buildings; in other places on a much nearer approach and with the help of less immagination we see the remains or ruins of eligant buildings; some collumns standing and almost entire with their pedestals and capitals; others retaining their pedestals but deprived by time or accident of their capitals, some lying prostrate an broken other]s in the form of vast pyramids of conic structure bearing a serees of other pyramids on their tops... As we passed on it seemed as if those seens of visionary inchantment would never have and [an] end; for here it is too that nature presents to the view of the traveler vast ranges of walls of tolerable workmanship, so perfect indeed are those walls that I should have thought that nature had attempted here to rival the human art of masonry..." The monument is covered with sedimentary rocks deposited in shallow seas that covered central and eastern Montana during the Cretaceous period. Glaciers, volcanic activity, and erosion have since folded, faulted, uplifted, and sculpted the landscape to the majestic form it takes today. The area remains remote and nearly as undeveloped as it was in 1805. Many of the biological objects described in Lewis' and Clark's journals continue to make the monument their home. The monument boasts the most viable elk herd in Montana and one of the premier big horn sheep herds in the continental United States. It contains essential winter range for sage grouse as well as habitat for prairie dogs. Lewis sent Jef- ferson a prairie dog specimen which was, as Lewis noted at the time, "new to science." Abundant plant life along the River and across the Breaks country supports this wildlife. The lower reach of the Judith
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