Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness Hiking Trails

The Anaconda Pintler Wilderness is named for the Anaconda Mountain Range and Charles Ellsworth Pintler, an early settler to the Big Hole Valley who first came to the area in 1885.¹ 

You might see some people spell Pintler as Pintlar. From our research, the name was incorrectly spelled Pintlar until it was corrected by the Board of Geographic Names in 1978.

Native wildlife includes many of the large mammals indigenous to the Rockies at the time of Euro-American settlement, among them mule deer, elk, moose, mountain goat, bighorn sheep, wolverine, gray wolf, puma, black bear, and the occasional grizzly bear.¹ 

The Anaconda Pintler Wilderness was designated as a wilderness area in 1964, the year the Wilderness Act was signed.

The Meyers Fire burned much of the north-central Anaconda Pintler Wilderness area in 2017. It was started by lightning on July 17, 2017, and burned 62,034 acres.

We were always curious… so here is what we found:

The orange color indicates the presence of limonite (an iron ore) staining and probable sulfide mineralization. There is no historic mining or evidence of mining making it a naturally occurring acidic drainage.¹