Category

  • Ernest Hemingway’s Adventures in Montana

    By Chris Warren
    Hemingway’s time in the Yellowstone High Country began on July 13, 1930, when he first crossed the Clark’s Fork and settled onto the L—T Ranch ten miles outside of Cooke City, Montana. The ranch was owned by Olive and Lawrence Nordquist; the “L” and “T” stood for the first and last letters in the latter’s name.
  • Warrior Spirit: Celebrating Native American Veterans

    By Ellen Baumler
    While some of Montana’s Indian veterans have been individually honored, the contributions of many others remain unrecognized. The Warrior Spirit Project Consortium, created in 2019, aims to change that.
  • Distinctly Montana's 5 Favorite State Parks

    By Lacey Middlestead
    Thanks to the creation of the Montana State Parks system in 1939, residents and visitors alike have been able to hike up, swim through, camp within, and just bask in the grandeur that is Montana for 81 years now. Today, there are 55 state parks, each worthy of admiration and exploration. Here is a snapshot of five of them. 
  • I Didn't Die in Montana: Hank Williams Jr. on Ajax Mountain

    By Nick Mitchell
    Sliding, he picked up speed. Snow that had frozen, melted, and refrozen into shards tore at his skin while rocks, jutting out of the snow like land mines, struck his head and body, leaving large gashes but failing to slow his descent
  • Montana's Historic Hot Springs

    By Charlie Dennison
    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.
  • Wild West Words: Steak Terms

    By Chrysti the Wordsmith
    The word was folded into English at least by 1420, when an early cookbook instructed readers how to “make stekys of venysoun or Beef.” Throughout the centuries, the word was spelled styke, steke, and steyke, arriving at its modern spelling steak by the mid 1600s.
  • Knights of the Tie and Rail

    By Joseph Shelton
    Names were given to ways of life that would have seemed fantastic at the dawn of the previous century: hobos, tramps, yeggs or yaggmen, bums, bindlestiffs, gentlemen of the road, knights of the tie and rail. 
  • The Cowboy and the Lady: Montana's Biggest Movie Stars

    By Kari Bowles
    The Treasure State was the birthplace of two of the biggest movie stars of the golden age of American cinema: Gary Cooper and Myrna Loy. If readers don’t recognize the names, they would do well to look into them.
  • Running Free

    By Jessianne Wright
    Confined to the 39,000 acres that is the Pryor wild horse range, these horses are wedded to the landscape. Many are clothed with the very colors of the Pryor Mountains themselves. Horses the color of dampened limestone, faded grass, and mudstone.
  • Yurt Skiing the Swan Range

    By Aaron Theisen
    Forming the westernmost buttress of the broad swatch of peaks that comprises the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, the Swans lie within an hour’s drive of Missoula but well off the beaten path of the skiing masses.
  • Telling "The Story of Butte"

    By Sherman Cahill
    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.
  • The Lakota Delegation: Portraits from 1868 - 1877

    By Douglas Schmittou
    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.
  • The Tradition of Spring Branding Lives On

    By Todd Klassy
    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.
  • Adventure in the Little Belts

    By Amy Grisak
    With 9,000+ foot peaks surrounded this untamed area that’s home to countless elk, moose, a smattering of wolverines, black bears, mountain lions, and the rumored grizzly. For those seeking adventure or solitude, the Little Belts are the place to be.
  • Get To Know Big Horn County

    By Bryan Spellman
    With the creation of Montana Territory in 1864, all land east of Bozeman Pass was called Big Horn County. So few settlers lived in this vast area that the entire eastern part of the state fell under Gallatin County's jurisdiction.