It had been 73 years since the Nez Perce had greeted Lewis and Clark with friendship and pledged peace with the U.S. government, thinking they would get the same respect in return. They were now retracing the Voyage of Discovery's route back through the rugged Bitterroot Mountains on a flight for their lives.

Eventually, the escalating violence, particularly in Helena, became so overwhelming that newspaper editor Robert Fisk famously called for stemming the tide of recent vigilante terror by returning to "decent ordinary lynching."

t was believed that the Montana airspace, terrain, barometric pressure, and winter temperatures would replicate what air crews might expect over Germany. On base, though, the barracks and other assorted operational buildings, erected quickly, lacked adequate insulation.

Published accounts generally concur that aerial bombardment of the ice jam commenced at approximately 7:30 p.m. and was conducted at an altitude of 2,200 to 2,600 feet. An article published in The Billings Gazette on March 22nd specifically indicates that sixteen "250-pound bombs [were dropped] along a five-mile ice gorge." Destruction of a target that large by one bomber with conventional ordnance would, presumably, have required strategic use of the intervalometer.

This was the hellish reality facing Montana's 163rd Infantry Regimental Combat Team in the steaming jungles of Papua New Guinea. The men from Montana's small towns—farm boys and ranch hands, miners and shop clerks—were in jungle hell-holes, L-shaped to help them survive rolling grenades.

Gold attracted people to the region, and Helena’s “main street” is a memorial to the early prospectors. Much of Last Chance Gulch is a pedestrian mall, and the turn-of-the-century architecture lining the sidewalks attracts the eye, just as the various window displays attract shoppers.

The most prolific Crow warrior-artist of his generation, White Swan was one of six Crow scouts detached to Lt. Col. George A. Custer's regiment on June 21, 1876. White Swan saw extensive combat in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where he was severely wounded. He recovered sufficiently from that conflict to chronicle his military career in artworks. This robe, however, was devoted primarily, if not exclusively, to honors achieved in intertribal warfare.

These so-called "patent medicines" thrived during the frontier era. Part of the reason is that the tent shows, presided over by colorful and theatric charlatans, were as much entertainment as medicine.

Along with Washington D.C.’s famous summer of the saucer sightings in 1952 and Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s hallucinatory year spent in the shadow of Mothman in 1966-1967, whatever really happened in Montana during its sustained ”flap“ constitutes one of the strangest episodes in the history of America’s long, intimate dance with the just-plain weird.

Cooke’s graphic description indicates that the bear’s claws literally scraped flesh from the bones of the shoulder and thigh. George C. Yount’s narrative strongly suggests that another wound perforated the windpipe, which spurted a “red bubble every time Hugh breathed.”

Like Colter before him, the more seasoned trappers did not believe him. For the “greenhorns,” new to the wonders of the American West, he laid it on thick. Believed or not, he surely would have had a captive audience around the fire. 

And when Montana experienced its own gold rush, many Chinese came to Bannack and Virginia City to seek their fortunes; the first mention of Chinese arriving in the area was in an 1865 issue of the Virginia City newspaper The Montana Post, which groused at the arrival of a small group of gold-seeking Chinese workers. 

Day after day, Richard witnessed the horrors of war—the loss of comrades, relentless shelling, and devastation everywhere. But on October 8, just north of Aachen in Übach, a military photographer captured a rare image of Richard at the piano—playing not for an audience, but for a moment of peace and humanity in the midst of war.

Daly spent about $2.5 million on the Anaconda campaign, while Clark spent $500,000 on his own campaign for Helena. Helena won the second referendum, helped out by 40% of the Butte vote and overwhelming support from eastern Montana.

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.

What better way to tap into the nineteenth-century fascination of the perceived free, nonconformist Western lifestyle than a woman who dressed in men's clothes and did stereotypical men things, like army scouting, drinking whiskey and smoking cigars? 

So, amid the larger profusion of oddities like two-headed animals, conjoined piglets, Fiji mermaids, ancient Viking runestones found buried in midwestern fields, bearded ladies, pickled punks, "savages", and other bizarre traveling attractions, there emerged a very specific and surprisingly popular variety: the petrified man. 

Harvey Logan, better known as Kid Curry to his friends and enemies, was no stranger to Mon - tana. As a matter of fact, his criminal career had started here. It was where, some years earlier, he had committed his first murder. 

The Cremer Ranch served as headquarters for his traveling rodeo, which he called "Leo J. Cremer's World Championship Rodeo Company." Though it was a working ranch that raised livestock, the Cremer Ranch also raised the best string of bucking horses in the entire state of Montana. Perhaps the world. 

As the Great War shook the world, Montana felt more impact than most states. WWI was at the nexus of political and immigration issues, labor strife, and a deadly pandemic, as well as the beginning of a prolonged drought that shaped one of the most tumultuous times in our history.