The main thing that struck Lucey right away was the stunning quality of Cameron’s photography. In an era where most photographs showed their subjects as stiff and unsmiling, Cameron captured life on the prairie with a realism that was unique.

The Treasure State was the birthplace of two of the biggest movie stars of the golden age of American cinema: Gary Cooper and Myrna Loy. If readers don’t recognize the names, they would do well to look into them.

According to Walsh biographer Marilyn Ann Moss, "20,000 extras, 1,800 head of cattle, 1,400 horses" traveled with the production, along with "185 wagons" and "123 baggage trains that trekked over 4,300 miles in the seven states used for locations." Finally, there were 293 actors, 22 cameramen, and 700 barnyard animals.

The film was shot around Libby, Montana, as well as in portions of the Kootenai National Forest (though the scenes that are ostensibly set in Colorado were shot in Washington state and soundstages were used for the interiors). Several hundred locals from Libby served as extras in some of the bigger scenes on the air base.

And he wrote the Montana he saw. For all Western literature's transcendent fly-fishing sessions and sublime auburn sunsets, he balanced with, say, inclement weather and human corruption. Besides crime fiction, Reid is well-versed in writing poetry, literary fiction, and, now, nonfiction. Writing has been a consistent force for most of his life.

Glenn moved to the Bitterroot 25 years ago, where he works out of a forty-by-forty-four-feet studio integrated into his home outside Victor. While he continues to travel across the country for installations, Glenn makes it a priority to teach closer to home. He opens his studio to tours, and has held demonstrations for high school students enrolled in welding classes in Corvallis.

The Ballad of Little Jo arrived right at the moment when the Western re-emerged after a protracted period of stagnation back into popular appeal. Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves (1990) and Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) both won the Best Picture Academy Award for their respective years of release.

Hugo’s a bulldog. Horseshoe balding. Steel squint. Open collar shirt. A sports jacket strains across the shoulders of this former semi-pro baseball catcher. He’s gruff but with self-deprecating humor and genuine laughs. He listens. More than that, he senses. Feels. Searches for the heart of this moment.

Charley didn’t see the man’s death, but heard about it from other smelter workers. Told and retold, the man’s gruesome demise became a cautionary tale for the other workers, a bedtime fable for the unwary.

Norman Maclean was not born in Montana, nor did he die here. His published work is slim, especially when compared to A.B. Guthrie or Ivan Doig. But I wager that if you asked people what piece of writing best exemplifies Montana, many would respond A River Runs Through It. 

Sliding, he picked up speed. Snow that had frozen, melted, and refrozen into shards tore at his skin while rocks, jutting out of the snow like land mines, struck his head and body, leaving large gashes but failing to slow his descent

Even 25 years down the line, What Dreams May Come still stands as an impressive visual achievement, as well as an option for viewers in search of an earnest romance. And it’s not every day that Love Across the Supernatural Divide is aided by Glacier National Park. 

Ever since I was a little kid (a long time ago, since now I'm ten years old), dinosaurs fascinated me. My shelves were lined with dinosaur books, my bed was filled with dinosaur stuffies and my walls were covered in dinosaur wallpaper and stickers. So you can see why the Museum of the Rockies is one of my favorite places to go. And when I heard there was a new permanent exhibit, I knew we had to get someone, Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, anyone, to take me!

Much of the failure of Heaven's Gate can probably be attributed to the fact that long before anyone even saw the film, it had become notorious as an example of overspending. By the time it made its first appearance, after Cimino finally cut it down to two and a half hours under the threat of being fired, people were almost prepared to hate it. The initial response was so bad that the studio pulled it out of theaters after only one day.

For in the basement of a building on the Steamboat Block, they labor on a project as heroic as it is quixotic: nothing less than a model of the roads and tracks connecting the heart of Montana's railroad corridor, including Great Falls, Livingston, and Butte, with many smaller towns in between.

A wonderful companion piece to the earlier A History of Montana in 101 Objects as well as a fascinating read in its own right, A History of Montana in 101 Places is a wonderful armchair journey for any lover of the state's history, geography, material science, and culture.

Subtlety wasn't part of Craney's playbook. But he also understood that Montana was a unique market for advertisers, whether in radio or television, as he recalled to an interviewer in 1977: "It is a high cost market and one that is difficult to get national advertisers to come into…because there just aren't the people in Montana to make it a market."

The business where Lightfoot gets employment before the heist is Pinski Bros. Plumbing and Heating, which was an actual business in Great Falls, one that had been a fixture in the community for several years. One of the most crucial locations, the drive-in movie theater where the bank robbers hide out after the job, was provided by Great Falls’ 10th Ave Drive-In.

When it comes to getting it right, Dennis is a perfectionist, as his wife, Mary, can attest. “We’ll be watching a movie and she’ll say, ‘Dennis, don’t say what’s wrong with this one,’” he said. “I’m not trying to be a critic – I just notice things that are inaccurate – be it the way someone is holding a firearm or the way someone is dressed.”