The Big Director gets on his chair with the camera attached to the hydraulic crane and yells, “Back to one!”, meaning everyone is at their starting position.  For me, it’s sitting in front of my keno machine, ready to repeatedly push a button.  “Masks off!” the Big Director yells.

With over 4,000 miles of groomed trails, Montana is a true snowmobilers' paradise. Every winter these trails deliver sledders to the sweeping mountain-meadow playgrounds, deep untouched backcountry, rugged ridgelines, and frozen alpine lakes they seek their thrills from.

The blast is unthinkable, impossible to understand in human terms. Still, there are some who are far enough away that they have a moment to try. They can see a flash that overtakes the horizon, and then for a moment, they see a black streak rising into space. The scale of it is enormous beyond reckoning.

Encompassing an area roughly 30 by 15 miles in size, the Crazies are Montana’s most impressive island range. With 23 summits that exceed 10,000 feet in elevation, the highest of which is Crazy Peak (11,214 feet), the Crazies also are Montana’s third-highest mountain range.

So Hogan didn't exactly hijack the train with his band of pirates. He did the next best thing, meeting with the mayor and county commissioners and asking them to help him enlist the support of the Northern Pacific, which was itself bankrupt and in receivership.

On August 7th, 1914, the Montana Legislature created Mineral County, taking the western end of Missoula County and placing the seat at Superior.

The great American writer Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, proved he knew horses nearly as well as whales when he said, "No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses." That comprehension shows itself in remarkable ways—horses will sidle up close, nuzzle you, even lovingly nip at you.

But those first Cornish miners brought with them a delicacy that many Montanans still treasure, a simple hand-pie that continues to nourish and fuel hard-working folks today. 

But while the Cold War never escalated beyond proxy wars and nuclear proliferation, it did change Montana, and the landscape of the West, forever. As author Ian Frazier writes, the nuclear missile silo has become "one of the quintessential Great Plains objects," along with the American bison, the prairie dog, and the outhouse.

At first glance, he wouldn't make for a Fred Astaire, but he's better than a lot of men half his age, and he likes to show it. He says the old ladies he dances with have knee issues, and can't twirl because if you spin them around they get dizzy.

Prior to the mid-1800s, the diminutive Swift Fox, like the bison and wolf, abundantly roamed the short grass prairies east of the Rockies in Montana, heading north into Canada and south through the 10 states that make up the Great Plains. Admired across Native American communities for its hunting abilities and speed, the one thing the fox couldn’t outrun or out-maneuver was westward expansion.

For centuries, the traditional meal of Cornish tin miners was the pasty. Made daily by wives and mothers, pasties were the perfect portable meal: a miscellany of vegetables and meat encased and baked in a D-shaped pastry shell. 

The crucial role of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and other big mining enterprises in World War II materials production is widely appreciated. Less so is the contribution of Montana’s many small-scale mine operations.

The team also found several artifacts that could be attributed to the Corps, including a blue bead, melted lead, and a tombac (metal) button. Most interestingly, the latrines they uncovered contained a not insignificant amount of mercury, a dead giveaway that the poop in the pit belonged to non-Native individuals.

Jewish traditions hold that the Ten Commandments were engraved on sapphire tablets. Some may be legend or myth, but there’s no denying that sapphires have an air of mystery and magic, not unlike Montana. 

Major Eugene Baker of the Second Cavalry was sent to punish the Piegan (Blackfeet) village of Mountain Chief who was thought to be harboring the murders of Malcolm Clarke, prominent Montana rancher. Instead, the Calvary mistakenly attacked the village of Heavy Runner, known to be peaceful.

One could be forgiven for thinking that a city so drenched in decadence wouldn't have hosted one of North America's earliest saints. Yet in the midst of this hedonism and chaos, an Orthodox Christian priest named Sebastian Dabovich played a significant role in Butte, and the fruits of his labors have endured for generations.

Sixty-six million years ago the earth was going through a transition. The climate was changing, and Montana was shifting from a sub-tropical to a more arid environment.

Sailors across the Big Sky state hoist their sails on Fort Peck Reservoir in the dusty eastern part of the state to the pristine waters of Flathead Lake in the northwest.  And, although there truly are many lakes in Montana on which to set sail, we focused on two of the largest—Flathead Lake and Canyon Ferry Reservoir. Both are deservedly popular among the sailing community.

Historically, agriculture has always been Montana's foremost economic engine from jobs to exports. Because of the Great Depression and World War II, only 30% of working farms used gas-powered equipment into the 1940s, while the rest still relied on horses to work in the fields.