Distance running has a storied history in Missoula, Montana. Take, for example, the “Course des Femmes,” the first documented footrace in the area, which took place nearly 200 years ago. It happened in the 1840s, at the top of Evaro Hill just to the north of here, when a group of Hudson’s Bay Company trappers are said to have staged the all-women’s footrace that featured a competitive field of 40-some athletes vying for a variety of trade-goods as their prize. The race winner, Mrs. Charlie LaMoose, purportedly “ran the last quarter so fast that mounted Indians . . . had to use their quirts to keep pace with her fleet feet.” The “Course Des Femmes” route became so well know that it was used to describe an area near the Flathead Indian Reservation’s southern boundary during the 1855 Hellgate Treaty negotiations and even appeared on an 1866 Northwest Boundary Survey map.

While plenty of footraces took place here in the ensuing decades, the first sanctioned Missoula marathon didn’t come until 1975. In step with a first “running boom” of the 1970s, Missoula played host to the second Governor’s Cup Marathon that sent runners on a direct route from Downtown Missoula to Frenchtown and back. The Governor’s Cup, still a marathon run each year in Helena, originally rotated annually around the state. Brian Sharkey, a race organizer, recalled many years later that the event attracted 30-40 runners and was won by University of Montana professor John Duffield in a time of 2:56:46.

In 2007, with the thunder of the University of Montana ROTC Club’s canon, and in step with the “second running boom,” Run Wild Missoula—an organization once known as the Missoula Track Club—sent 300-some runners on a circuitous route from Frenchtown to Missoula for the inaugural Missoula Marathon. Since that time, the Missoula Marathon has grown to include a weekend of events and was named the “No. 1 Best Overall Marathon” by  Runner’s World Magazine  in 2010, all while carrying on the footrace tradition that took hold here so many years ago.

Credits and Sources:

Dundas, Chad. “Missoula’s Original Marathon is Remembered.”Missoulian, June 20, 2007.

Run Wild Missoula,Missoula Marathon.www.missoulamarathon.org

Stone, Arthur. Following Old Trails. Missoula: Morton John Elrod, 1913.

Photographs courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana, Missoula, Montana.