Ivan Doig Memorial Highway

A 21-mile stretch of US 89 flanking Dupuyer, Montana,  was designated in 2016 as the "Ivan Doig Memorial Highway." Acclaimed author Doig (1939-2015) wrote 17 books, many of which expressed the essence of  "US 89 Country" in that dramatic zone where the Great Plains meet the stunning Rocky Mountain Front. 

Ivan Doig was born along US 89 in White Sulfur Springs, Montana, before spending formative years of his early life in Dupuyer and vicinity.  He has been called "One of the great American voices, full of grace, abounding in humanity, easeful in narration, hypnotic in pace, grand in range," by Australian writer Thomas Keneally.

The two blue push pins on the map above show the extent of the "Ivan Doig Memorial Highway. The Dupuyer Community Club and the Montana Department of Transportation have worked together to establish the memorial on U.S. Highway 89. The designation stretches from the intersection of U.S. 89 with Montana Highway 219 near Pendroy, where the Doig family lived on the Jensen place, to the intersection with Montana Highway 44 near Valier, where Doig graduated high school in 1957. Click here for the interactive Google Map: https://goo.gl/uaDhKJ

On Ivan Doig's birthday June 27th, 2016, about 50 area residents and visitors gathered in Dupuyer to dedicate the designation of the Ivan Doig Memorial Highway on US 89.  Inspired by the success of the 2016 event, local organizers invited the public to another birthday party on June 27th, 2017, to dedicate the a sheepherder's monument to Ivan Doig.  More than 100 people attended in 2017 including nine members of Doig's Valier High School Class of 1957 - their 60th class year reunion.

Since 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of This House of Sky, Dupuyer organizers are planning another birthday party in 2018 to commemorate that milestone.

Readers of Doig’s National Book Award nominee, “This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind,” will recall his description, “The western skyline before us was filled high with a steel-blue army of mountains, drawn in battalions of peaks and reefs and gorges and crags as far along the entire rim of the earth as could be seen.” Drivers will travel this landscape at Dupuyer as they ride on the designated Ivan Doig Memorial stretch of U.S. Highway 89.

For an account of the dedication see: https://goo.gl/NmToVw
For a Mick McClary video of a portion of the dedication see: https://youtu.be/StXpEhba8Ng

The effort to create a monument began in 2015 and was sponsored by the Dupuyer Community Club as well as other generous donors. Built by Virgil Peterson (center in photo) the masonry represents a sheepherder’s monument, a rock cairn built by a sheepherder in the quiet, often lonely, days of tending sheep.  Sheep were taken to far away pastures for summer grazing, often watched over and moved by a single person throughout the season, living in a small sheepwagon.

“But a sheepwagon always existed alone, remote as a drifting brig on the grass ocean. It was built for one man to bide through the narrow months in, and that single life only: in the mountain dawn or dusk, yellowed light from the kerosene lamp at a herder's wagon showed like one frail star fallen into the timber,” taken from Ivan Doig’s book “From This House Of Sky."

The Dupuyer Community Club committee of Rita Christiaens, Vicki Beck, Ali Newkirk and Mary Tonkovich is dedicated to perpetuating and celebrating The Life & Times & Work of Ivan Doig.  The Dupuyer Cache (shown above) is owned and operated by Ali Newkirk.  Mary is in charge of the book section, a part-time worker, full time supporter.  The business has now become a "must see" for US 89 Heritage Tourists passing through Ivan Doig Country along The Rocky Mountain Front.

Here are a couple of other links regarding Ivan Doig:

https://www.ivandoig.com/memoriam.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Doig