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.

Christened the Yellow Stone, its voyage in 1832 was, according to Hiram Martin Chittenden, a “landmark in the history of the West. It demonstrated the [feasibility] of navigating the Missouri by steam as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone, with a strong probability that boats could go on to the Blackfoot country.”

Lynching at the hands of a group of self-appointed vigilantes was employed in many mining towns across the Western U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century, including Montana. With the legal structure of courts, lawyers and judges lagging well behind the growth and the ensuing lawlessness of each gold strike, expedience was sometimes the preferred instrument to establish “law and order.”

There are, at the time of this writing, 329 separate entries in the Story of Butte database, with more coming all the time. In addition to discrete entries, there are also many tours that organize locations into a series of stops that tell a fuller story, such as the 11 locations featured in the Murder of Frank Little tour.

Studio photographs of Spotted Tail’s wife and Running Antelope, a Hunkpapa headman, were taken by Gardner in Washington, D.C., during 1872. Running Antelope was splendidly dressed in a magnificent quilled shirt, peace medal, dentalia-shell ear pendants, otter-fur hair wraps, and three eagle feathers, one of which bears specific war-exploit markings.

By 1854, an estimated 34,000 abandoned or orphaned children filled New York City's streets. Many of their parents had immigrated to America, lured by the promise of free land out West.

The fire was set by a 14-year-old elevator boy, the son of one of the Club's employees. The boy was named Harry Anderson. He was what modern parlance calls a pyromaniac: or rather, he liked to see all of the firemen and their horses come to the hotel.

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.”

If Dempsey had it made, then Shelby, Montana was on the make. The little Hi-Line railroad town had been on the map since the late 19th century, but had fallen on hard times when homesteading in the region went bust. But in 1921, oil was discovered north of Shelby. Within months, the town filled with oil field workers, geologists, and drillers.

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. 

Of special note is the Chouteau County Court House.  Built in 1883, to replace the original court house destroyed by fire that year, today the building is the second oldest court house still serving that function in the state of Montana.