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.

Roughly 15 miles south of Chinook, you will find one unit of the Nez Perce National Historic Park. The park, also known as the Nee-Me-Poo Trail, commemorates the 1877 trek made by 750 Non-Treaty Nez Perce Indians from Joseph, Oregon to the Bears Paw Mountains.

It feels like the sort of place where scenes from Norman Rockwell play out behind every closed door. There’s street after street of adorable homes nested in beautifully maintained yards, watched over by lovely old neighborhood churches.

Two jumpers are in the air – they make sure they stay a safe distance apart on their descent to the jump spot. The first jumpers land in the spot. The J-13 is now over the exit point, and the second two jumpers exit the plane.

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.

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.

Across the Great Plains in both the U.S. and Canada, up to 30,000 prairie skyscrapers dotted the landscape during their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Today only about a third of the old wooden grain elevators are left. 

Let's go back in time to understand the future. The year is 1883, and American railroads were transporting moving passengers over thousands of miles of rail lines that covered North America. Since the first railway 56 years earlier in 1827, railroads were now shrinking travel time between cities from days down to hours.

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. 

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.

I love introducing people to new foods. With the kitchen as my sanctuary where so much deliciousness can be created, I find enjoyment and comfort there. I want others to feel the same way.

"God be with the happy times, when trouble we had not,
And our mothers made colcannon in the little skillet pot."

The Baker Massacre—what many Blackfeet call Bear River Massacre because they would rather not speak Baker’s name—is still too vivid and raw for Guardipee to paint. Pepion has never painted it either.

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.

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.

Imagine investigating unknown territory without map or guide. As the point person, you make the first astounding discovery. A hundred-foot waterfall. A herd of tiny striped ungulates gathered around a lake. You call to your companions: wow, look at this!

Paul is a shadow person in my life. He has shaped my life without me being fully conscious of it. When I got into the news business, I discovered that it was exactly where I should be. I’m sure that was partly due to Paul’s example. But he was a negative example, too. 

The phrase "words can't describe it" is often used when a person is trying to articulate something either extremely good or extremely bad. And mere words definitely could not describe the extremely bad winter of 1886-87 for the Montanans who experienced it.

Toston, like Radersburg, owes its existence to the gold mines in the nearby hills. The Toston Smeltering Company processed ore for a short period in the late 1800s, but that was long enough to bring in a population that stayed on and farmed the area.