Where is the bear's tooth?
Up around 10,000 feet on the Beartooth Highway, you come across a sign pointing out the Bear's tooth. In the panorama of high peaks, it's not as dramatic as in this cropped photo, and it's rather far away, but you do get the sense that it could belong in the mouth of a giant carnivore.Recently, however, I've found some 1930s promotional materials that put the Bear's Tooth in a very different place. In this picture, we see Beartooth Butte, one of the iconic images of the highway and a frequent stopping place. According to this view, the namesake tooth is directly under the middle Northern Pacific logo. Tough to see from this angle, but from other angles it too could qualify as resembling a tooth.
I've been driving the highway for 20 years now, and had never heard of this second tooth. But it does make sense: closer to the highway and easier to see. What has never entirely made sense to me, however, is how the entire Beartooth mountain range could have been named for either of these remote peaks. Before the Beartooth Highway was constructed in the early 1930s, how would anyone have seen such peaks in order to name the range after them?
Anyone with expertise, I'd be delighted to hear from you.
