Rodeos, art walks, fiddle contests and Christmas strolls from Glacier Country to the Missouri Breaks. Our new events calendar gathers them up, and a free email brings your corner of the state to you every Wednesday.
Pondera County has fourteen census-designated places and other unincorporated communities, few of which have more than 100 residents. Heart Butte, on the Blackfeet Reservation, is the largest with a 2020 population of 621. Five of these census-designated places are Hutterite Colonies with a combined population over 700.
The goal, in the words of Travis Kabalin, project manager for Martel Construction on the East Terminal Expansion Project and the man whose task it is to keep it all running, is "essentially allowing the airport to continue to function with minimal owner and passenger disruption."
Both being part Native themselves, it was easy for Ovila and Marie to integrate into both the Native and white cultures of their day. In addition to their native French, which was not an uncommon second language on the Reservation at that time, they learned the Pend d'Oreille (Salish) language of their local friends, as well as English.
It was the ideal location from which to measure the vast land that twenty-two years later, in 1889, would become Montana, the Big Sky State. The confusion Vince and I had felt when we first hiked to that point now made absolute sense.
The Bozeman boom is a named phenomenon, frequently discussed on social media, where posts track the sounds and folks all over town report where they heard them. There was a boom on June 5, 2022, at nearly 6 pm. A loud, cacophonous noise was heard in Bozeman, Belgrade, Four Corners, West Yellowstone, and Livingston, with no official cause ever discovered.
Topographically, Wibaux County is mostly prairie, but not plain in the dull sense. The land rolls, breaks, drops, and cuts into coulees and badlands formations. The website Peak Visor lists eleven "mountains" in Wibaux County. Note that the tallest of these "mountains" is less than 3,100 feet, and the most prominent rises only 443 feet above the valley floor.
"I don't know how much I can improve playing Billings 16 times," Montana forward and current Golden State Warriors Assistant Coach Terry Stotts told the Kansas City Star at the time. "Basically I'm playing against Marlon Redmond 16 times. He knows my moves. He knows I'm going to fake and turn. I know he's going to drill it."
After leaving the Air Force he became the flight team director for Air Force One, one of the most prestigious assignments in the military. Raynor was in charge of the detail that flew President Kennedy's Boeing 707 to Dallas on that fateful November day in 1963. Air Force One returned to Washington the next day carrying JFK's body while Lyndon Johnson was aboard, being sworn in as President.
The museum has a number of other remarkable planes, including a 1929 Travel Air 6000 on loan from founder Dick Komberec (one of only six still-flying Travel Airs in the world), a Bell 47G helicopter, and an A-26 Invader prominently featured in Steven Spielberg's supernatural smokejumper romance Always (1989), which was filmed in Montana.
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.
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.
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.
In size, Lake County ranks 46th among Montana counties. With a 2024 estimated population of 33,403, the county is ninth in the state. Almost sixty-eight percent of the County's land area lies on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Polson, at the southwestern corner of Flathead Lake is both the largest city and the County Seat.
Beginning around 1890, men came west, looking for steady jobs. Many were immigrants who first lived in eastern cities, such as Milwaukee, Chicago, and Minneapolis. These immigrants were originally from European countries, including Italy, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Scandinavian countries. Once they were settled in Montana, they found ways to bring additional family members from overseas.
As Montana's response to the national "Good Roads" movement of the 1920s, Highway 200 gained popularity, along with Highway 89, as the border-to-border travel corridor for tourists bent on exploring the state by motor vehicles. The aim of the Good Roads initiative was to connect isolated rural communities and promote social and economic vitality.
