If Manifest Destiny had a smell, it would surely stink of rotting garbage, excrement, and a heady whiff of BO. Literature and film have cultivated in the American imagination a highly romanticized take on the Old West, but they’ve necessarily left out some of the crustier details of day-to-day hygiene.

Who was the "Cattle Queen of Montana"? Her name was Libby Collins, but don't look to Hollywood for any sense of true history. 

Near the corner of North Excelsior Avenue and Caledonia Street sit a pair of unassuming brick duplexes with the tell-tale bay windows of the Italianate style, an architectural style popular in America in the mid- to late-nineteenth century.

"Here, we owe a great debt to past generations – people like George Bird Grinnell whose vision and tenacity protected places like Yellowstone and Glacier. But protecting these places did not happen by accident, or without great opposition."

The sky turns slate as thick, billowing clouds gather darkly in the east, blowing in from the Panthalassic Sea. The insects hush, suddenly, moments before sheets of warm rain begin to fall, dappling the leaves and disturbing the surface of the waters.

A cabal of rich cattlemen met in Helena in 1883 to discuss what was to be done. There were plenty who had reason to want the horse thieves taken care of—among them Granville Stuart, cattle baron, politician, and sometime vigilante.

When a witness came forward to testify that he was given a $30,000 payoff, evidence of bribery was dismissed as “inconclusive” by a Helena-based grand jury of Clark supporters. Indeed, Twain rightly said, “No one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary.”

On April 10, 2012, the State of Montana honored Sarah Bickford by inducting her into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans in the Capitol Rotunda in Helena. As a former slave who became one of Montana's most prominent early businesswomen, Bickford certainly deserved this honor.

The knives were stiletto-thin, able to slide between an enemy combatant’s ribs with appalling ease. But unlike traditional stilettos, sharpened only at the point, the V-42, as it was eventually named, was edged on all sides, so that it would pull through a Nazi’s throat as easily as it could pierce his steel helmet.

The Good Roads advocates wanted better, smoother roads for the popular new craze sweeping the nation: the bicycle. At the forefront of this effort was the League of American Wheelmen (LAW), which had been lobbying for better roads since 1880.

He was still handsome in a way that even time and illness couldn’t diminish. His looks, which had inspired a poem by an anonymous English woman who, apparently speaking for much of the female population of Victoria’s kingdom, had called him “[n]ature’s perfected touch in form and grace.”

Granite was founded in the 1870s, situated over a few particularly rich veins of silver ore. It was a big enough town to have neighborhoods roughly divided by country of origin, with a Finnish street, a Cornish street and, of course, an Irish street.

A few imaginative paleontologists have suggested that what people are seeing could be a plesiosaurus, an aquatic reptile from the Early Jurassic period. Some eyewitness reports are uncanny in their description of this carnivorous dinosaur, from its 40-foot length to its large flippers and snake-like neck, tiny head and long tail.

In 1884, Hill visited Paris Gibson, a business associate from St. Paul who was plotting the new town of Great Falls. While standing on the edge of the Missouri River, Hill recognized the potential of the region.

From the journals, we learn only the bare facts. It was September 4, 1805. They had had a very difficult time climbing out of the North Fork of the Salmon. The steep terrain and deep snow left many of the horses lame from falling. A lack of forage and game left both humans and horses hungry and weak.

Those winters in northwestern Montana were very challenging, both physically and mentally, even brutal at times. There was constant repair and maintenance work on the post itself, as well as canoe building, firewood collection and hunting.

The Dooley Church, was mostly forgotten by everyone except the residents of Sheridan County and a handful of photographers who travel across the country to photograph old, abandoned buildings.

Multiple accounts place Sacagawea and Charbonneau at Fort Manuel Lisa, and it is historically very likely that Sacagawea died there as well, as a traveler’s journal had noted that the young woman died after having recently given birth to a baby girl.

These were some challenging times for travel in Montana, but in the 1930s, when Lolo National Forest West was established, a dirt track was constructed to the resort from Highway 200. Better days were ahead for Martin Quinn's favorite destination, and —through it all—the location stayed in the family name.

Before they set out, Lewis and Clark received unofficial orders, a secret mission, if you will: find a living mastodon out there in the uncharted wildlands of the Louisiana Purchase.