The Powder River Kid was quick to temper and drew his gun with lightning speed and accuracy and down his adversary would go. He knew many outlaws and fast guns in his lifetime, and called them by their first names.

They seemed oddly out-of-place in the landscape, as if they had been dumped out of the sky and onto the forest floor below. Their rusty color contrasted with the drab gray of the boulders lying outside the perimeter of the pile.

Dr. Jessica Hart is an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine at Ortho Montana in Bozeman, which serves patients across south-central and eastern Montana with locations in Bozeman, Billings, and Miles City, providing orthopedic care for both surgical and non-surgical treatments for the demanding physical lives Montanans lead.

We Montanans love to travel around our state. Maybe we take a trip to Hawaii, or Florida, or Bucharest now and then, but we mostly like to travel around our own little demesne. And, luckily for us, Montana offers such a range of climes, landscapes, and experiences that a trip a few hours from home can feel like a grand journey.

The geyser basins had already been visited by the Washburn Expedition, but it was the Hayden group who got to see the eruptions of some of the park’s largest geysers. They gave them names such as Giant, Giantess, Grand and Castle.

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. 

The war between the Thunder Birds and the Water Monsters involved ranged warfare; they fired missiles at one another which the Sioux called kangi tame, or the blackened remains of lightning bolts.

They’re the unsung heroes of Montana road travel, these 63 benefactors of bladder and bowel. And as any road warrior knows, they’re much more than just a place to, um, lighten your load.

Folks who don’t live in regions with high-angle avalanche zones and railroads don’t know much about snowsheds. Part lean-to and part tunnel, they don’t catch the eye. As an architectural piece, they are strictly utilitarian and certainly not things of beauty, unless you’re a construction engineer who digs bulky, behemoth buildings.

With the exception of 1970, Powder River County has lost population every decade since 1930, when 3,909 folk lived in the county. That count placed it at number 46 in the state, but somehow the county ended up with 9 on its license plates. 

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.

Participants might cover miles of blowdown trees and dozens of creek crossings in the rain. "By day two, everyone is exhausted and wet," Urick says, recounting one recent trek. "But that's where the magic happens. They realize they can 'suffer well' and that this experience was exactly what they needed."

In fact, they work so well together that some scientists think that, if the nutrients are ample enough and in the absence of the few factors that can actually kill them, lichen is functionally immortal and does not grow old.

Across the bridge on the south bank is the site of the new state park, comprising a 109-acre parcel acquired by the state in 2025. It includes the Judith Landing Historic District, which contains the remnants of several structures from various periods in the confluence’s history, and encompasses notable historic events that date back, oh, 150 million years or so.

We continue to scour Montana’s vintage cookbooks for forgotten dishes of yesteryear. These were gathered, as were so many of the state’s most interesting and daring culinary compositions, in a church cookbook—in this case, Episcopal Cuisine, compiled in 1983 by the Junior Cathedral Guild of St. Peter’s Episcopal Cathedral in Helena, Montana.

Sixteen miles south of Florence by US Highway 93 lies Victor, named for Salish Chief Victor, who as a youth met Lewis and Clark at Ross’s Hole. Today’s Victor is home to Hamilton House, an authentic Scottish pub serving the best fish and chips I have ever had. And if you are an aficionado of Scotch whiskey, the bar has one of the widest selections this side of Scotland.

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.

Hugely popular television shows and movies have made cowboy culture popular again, but branding is more than just a passing fancy found in Hollywood scripts. In Montana, it is tradition.

The elements only grew more difficult the farther west the railroads built, especially as they reached the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains toward the end of the 19th century. While the locomotives became more powerful each year, even those fire-breathing machines of iron and steel could be hampered by deep snow.