Imagine that the year is 1910 and you have just moved with your family to Montana. The last spike of the Milwaukee Road was driven in last year just west of Garrison, and the small town where you live is now accessible by rail from both the West Coast and the distant metropolis of Chicago.

Plenty Coup said that "The Cheyenne, and the Sioux... have always been our enemies... But when I fought with the white man against them it was not because I loved him or because I hated the Sioux and the Cheyenne, but because I saw this was the only way we could keep our lands... And it was my dream that taught us the way."

Erik Ole Nelson, Ole to his friends, creates one-of-a-kind sculptures and signs all over Montana. And if you've been to Bozeman or Missoula recently, chances are you've seen and admired his work. 

Like many Montanans, Chris Bruha loves the outdoors and is a bonafide adrenaline junkie. His motto is, and always has been, "moderation in everything, except for excess." 

For all that, they're still very much a Montana company which means that buying a piece of furniture from Black Timber Furniture is buying local. There are obvious benefits to buying local, like keeping money in the state and helping to support Montana's working families.

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. 

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.

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.

Our rent had been increasing dramatically every year, and there was no way we could afford a house in Missoula, our desired city, without a hefty lump of change saved up. We made a plan. We would live in the RV for one year to save enough money to buy our first home.

We asked three of Montana's most esteemed log home manufacturers some questions about the present and future of the craft. Here are their answers.

He was a traditional architect who saw his vocation as synchronized training of hand and mind, of reasoning and of imagination. Design, as he presented it, was the arrangement of the component parts combined with a nimbly executed symbolic flourish.

What is inside Montana homes is almost as stunning as what is outside. We asked three interior design companies: Design Associates, Black Timber Furniture Co., and Gallatin Valley Furniture to bring us inside their favorite projects.