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. 

If there is one place where Old West meets New it’s at the rodeo, where broncin’ buckaroos, flashy cowgirls and murderous bulls enjoy a few hours, all together in a large, penned arena. With so much ruckus it definitely (still) pays to have a bit of luck on your side so never, absolutely never, wear a yellow shirt while competing.

When they let me out of high school I didn't have a hat. That was okay. John Kennedy showed you you didn't need a hat to be successful. Kennedy was the first president since Abe Lincoln who was never photographed in a cowboy hat or Indian war bonnet. He got elected anyway, and girls liked him too. So much for hats.

The Off the Beaten Path series has been steering travelers toward the good stuff for decades, and the Montana volume is now in its eleventh edition, freshly revised by Missoula writer and DM contributor Ednor Therriault. Readers of this magazine. know Therriault as a connoisseur of the strange corner and the unmarked turnoff

Harmonville is also a town where magical, impossible things can happen without anyone seeming to notice, like when Costner fires his six-shooter 16 times without reloading, and no one declares it a miracle.

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."

When writing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Johnson said, “I asked myself, what if one of these big bold gunmen who are having the traditional walkdown is not fearless, and what if he can’t even shoot. Then what have you got?” 

And then we played two or three games and I said, "Oh, I didn't introduce myself. My name's Jim Burke." And then he said, "Well, my name's Bud Guthrie." He was the first person I met when we arrived in Missoula. 

Given its international and even sometimes cosmic range of artifacts, it is a model of one Montana man's view of the America he grew up in. That it is presented with all of the oddity, strangeness, and good humor of its founder elevates it above the merely informational into the rarified realm of the miraculous.

The crew arrived at St. Mary’s, Montana, one of the Eastern gateways to Glacier National Park, for location shooting. Alas, the weather interfered, as the weather in Montana will do. Heavy fog, blizzard conditions, and a massive windstorm that trashed the farmhouse set resulted in delays.

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. was born January 13, 1901, in Bedford, Indiana. His parents moved to Choteau, Montana, when he was six months old; he would have an attachment to Choteau all his life.

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.