X/X Spring, Carter County, Montana 57724
While in recuperation I was reading through and mapping out a trip diary. I noticed this location with a curious name a bit off the beaten path which I travelled a couple of years ago.
My google fu has been sadly lacking. Would any of the Doper Montana locals know whether this a freshwater spring, or brackish or hot water. Permanent or periodic?
Is there any “development” around it or largely untouched?
Kind regards
PT
I don’t know it but it’s right in the middle of Custer National Forest. It’s not developed, though it’s surrounded on all sides by ranches or farms a couple miles in any direction. My spring map layer doesn’t even show this one, but there are thousands of springs in the west. They range from hot spring type things that draw visitors to mud puddles to dry beds. They’re springs because it’s some form of water coming out of the ground. Basically I wouldn’t make a special trip for this, but if it’s something that gets you to check out the area sure.
Thank you for that.
It was primarily the name that intrigued me.
But should I ever get back stateside then Custer State Park is top of my “To Revisit” list.
I think we should consider that this could be an artifact in the map creation, and is not a real thing.
It doesn’t seem to be an integral part of the map like “Ward Spring Number 1” to the northwest. Rather it looks like someone just tagged that particular spot.
Translated to English:
X /X Spring is a spring in the United States . [ 1 ] X/X Spring is located in Carter County , Montana , in the central part of the country, 2,300 km west of Washington , D.C. X/X Spring is located at an elevation of 1,139 meters above sea level. [
Side note: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the language Cebuano. Interesting that, for a spring in the middle of Montana, that’s the only language I could find anything about it in. It makes me wonder if X/X is it’s real name or some type of placeholder.
It’s one of the ethnic regional languages of The Philippines.
There has got to be a story why a Cebuano speaker felt the need to document an obscure (and almost certainly non-Notable) water spring in their language, which has less than 20 million total speakers.
Note Custer State Park is a state-run park in South Dakota, Custer National Forest is a federally-run NF that’s in Montana and SD (non-contiguous sections, though a tiny portion of the same section goes into SD with larger parts fully in SD. The two are about 140 miles apart as the crow flies. Just saw your location, make sure you rent a vehicle with good clearance and watch the weather. Might as well make a trip of it and hit both, and Black Hills NF too. Wind Cave National Park, Black Hills is a bit farther too.
When you see short names/letters separated by a slash or &ersand, I always assume the etymology is a ranch name and/or their cattle brand design. I cannot find one of that name in the area, may be defunct (or the brand), but for example a ranch to the west is owned by J&M Cattle.
Just don’t visit there when X=0. Literally anything could happen.
It looks to me like something that could be a livestock brand. Perhaps a ranch with grazing rights in that area used/uses a X/X brand. Found this site for searching brands:
But the OCR matches too many things to X/X to know without a long search.
Gave up too early. This page shows three X/X brands:
I’ll let you look up what organizations were using X-X-005, X-X-006 and X-X-025