Sometimes they’re steel-toed and rubber-soled to protect the wearer. Sometimes they’re something we lace up tightly before filling our backpack with water and goodies and running into the mountains. But if you’re a Montanan, we’ve got a crisp ten-dollar bill that says you have a pair of boots. Or a whole closet full of them. 

Check out these jaw-droppingly beautiful day hikes in Glacier National Park!

You already know the story: thousands of immigrants, arriving at Ellis Island, carrying signs bearing the name of their intended destination. They read, not "Butte, Montana," but "Butte, America." Because Montana, one of the biggest states in the Union, was too small to contain the legend of the Mining City. 

Distinctly Montana and the Montana Memory Project are proud to feature the winners of the second annual Montana Memory Project Short Story Contest!

It's Montana's ruggedness he loves most. Here, he says, you can "create your own adventure and do wild things that many back east would never dream of. Every fall my friend George and I do a nearly 3-week elk hunt" during which they "carry all of our gear 5 to 7 miles into the wilderness, live in pop up tents, and hunt with longbows until we can't go anymore."

As a freelance photographer and cinematographer, Jimmy Michaels has traveled worldwide working on documentaries for The History Channel, Discovery, HGTV, and MeatEater. Then he met Jackie Wickens and Trecie Wheat Hughes of Yellowstone Brokers on the set of their HGTV show Mountain Mamas. 

Whoever you are, whether you're an existing medical marijuana patient in Montana or you haven't smoked a joint since your days following the Grateful Dead, you're bound to have questions about the legalization of recreational marijuana in our state

I’m old enough to remember the golden age of TV Westerns, when shows like The Rifleman, Have Gun, Will Travel, and Gunsmoke filled the few channels we did get. Hell, I’m old enough to remember getting our first television, an enormous humming Philco...

Burke has lived in Missoula for decades now, and both Robicheaux and the Hollands have found themselves in the Treasure State. His most recent novel, Another Kind of Eden, tells a searing story of violence and mysticism among the changing times of the 1960s.

When you live in a remote place, you’re maybe even more drawn to company, and because meetings are less frequent, each becomes something of a celebration. Hospitality takes on a new meaning when someone drives 40 miles to have dinner at your house, never mind just to stop by and say hello.

I've been to the Tasting Room many times before, and every time someone visits me in my adopted town of Butte, I always take them there. But somehow, I never paid much attention to the bar before now. It is a long, gorgeous hardwood number that looks as if a hundred years or so of cowboys and miners have rubbed it to a reflective polish. 

Although Montanans pride themselves on their rugged individualism, sometimes we need some help to achieve our dreams. Jackie Wickens and Trecie Wheat Hughes of Yellowstone Brokers are good at that; it’s what they do. They worked with him for a year before finding him the perfect spot.

Ancient Egyptians used a variation of them to protect their crops along the Nile River Delta from pesky quails. But it was the Greeks, Romans, and Japanese who anthropomorphized them, dressing wood and straw up in old clothes and lending them clubs and scythes to enhance their capacity to intimidate birds.

The thing I love most about Montana is: the warmth and friendliness of the people no matter if they live in a small town like where I live (Superior) or Missoula (where we lived for four years)

She went to retrieve a hat from a trunk, and as she rifled through its contents, she somehow accidentally discharged the pistol into her own head. Suspicion immediately fell on the magician, but after multiple people, including the girl’s mother, said that there was no way that the kindly magician could have killed her, he was found not guilty.

Stretched between the Marias River and the Canadian border, Toole County covers 1,946 square miles, of which 30 are water (mostly Lake Elwell aka Tiber Reservoir). The 2020 census estimate showed 4,686 county residents, a drop of 12 percent since the 2010 census, and the lowest count since 1920. 

Their most important quality might just be their abiding love for the Treasure State. Hughes says that she is grateful to raise her son, Sawyer, amongst like-minded, salt of the earth people in Montana.

Montana's rich heritage is near and dear to my heart. My desire to learn about that history through the early inhabitants of the land leads to the opportunity to help tell the story of the growth of our society in the West. Reflecting upon the difficulties early peoples faced as they developed a civilization helps tell the story of 19th and 20th century America.