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 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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Among the most impactful elements of the Montana Hope Project are the feelings of inclusion and comradery that continue to flourish long after a child’s wish is granted. Hundreds of family members and wish recipients attend each of the twice-yearly reunions held at Fairmont.

The sky turns slate as thick, billowing clouds gather darkly in the east, blowing in from the Panthalassic Sea. The insects hush, suddenly, moments before sheets of warm rain begin to fall, dappling the leaves and disturbing the surface of the waters.

They stand solemnly alongside the state’s highways and interstates, flashing by with no particular cadence—one cross here, another six miles down the road, a cluster of five attached to a single post 50 miles later.

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.

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 Great Northern Railroad, building its way west, reached Kalispell in 1892, and built their depot at the north end of downtown. In 1904, the railroad moved its main line north to Whitefish, leaving Kalispell to be served by a spur line only.

In ’66, local studies estimated around 300 pot smokers, mostly at the university. By 1968, that number neared 2,000, according to The Missoulian. For the first time, Missoula’s medical clinics saw patients suffering LSD-caused panic and anxiety. A few “acid casualties” wound up at Warm Springs state mental hospital, the paper claimed.

The bustle of city life hasn’t yet knocked at the door of this community. Harnessed to its past, Willow Creek’s main purpose is denoted by its roads leading out of town through the pastureland—to ranches and farms.