Arts & Culture

  • 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.
  • Wild West Words: Wool, Lodge, and Explore

    By Chrysti the Wordsmith
    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!
  • BEYOND WORDS: C.M. Russell's Real Montana Winters

    By Robert Rath
    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.
  • Evelyn Cameron, Forever

    By Russell Rowland
    The main thing that struck Lucey right away was the stunning quality of Cameron’s photography. In an era where most photographs showed their subjects as stiff and unsmiling, Cameron captured life on the prairie with a realism that was unique.
  • 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.
  • Isle of Books Presents Last Best Books: "

    Peterson, author of "The American West Reimagined" and "American Trinity: Jefferson, Custer, and the Spirit of the West," composes studies of the West that are fascinating and philosophical in ways that most history texts are not.
  • Montana’s Vintage Neon Signs—an Endangered Species

    By Teresa Otto
    It started with a random photo of the Top Notch Lunch sign in Great Falls. Originally an ice cream parlor, the sign was added in 1938 when the place became a diner. As I sat in a booth near the back of the cafe, enjoying a sloppy joe that was too big to pick up, I knew this sign was just the beginning.
  • Our Interview With Author Gwen Florio

    By Lindsay Tran
    Distinctly Montana spoke with Florio about her favorite places in Montana, works-in-progress, what she’s reading, and eating camp stove ramen on book tours. It was a lively and funny conversation that underscored how much she has to offer readers who crave the fast-paced and gritty stories that she tells so well.
  • Wild West Words: "Pasty"

    By Chrysti the Wordsmith
    For centuries, the traditional meal of Cornish tin miners was the pasty. Made daily by wives and mothers, pasties were the perfect portable meal: a miscellany of vegetables and meat encased and baked in a D-shaped pastry shell. 
  • Isle of Books Presents: Last Best Books for Summer 2024

    These true tales include terrifying grizzly encounters, the quietly elegiac story of finding a dead man propped against a tree in the Bitterroot, a frantic struggle to stop a spreading wildfire, days spent in the sun and nights spent camping under the stars.
  • The Bad Luck Boys On Powder River

    By Dorothy M. Johnson
    Two or three weeks after the setting forth of two groups of gold seekers, with their belongings on pack horses, a smaller party, only three persons, rode off in the same general direction, toward the Yellowstone River, but for another purpose. They were going to mark the way that became known as the Bozeman Trail.
  • Butte’s Dimple Knees Sex Scandal

    By © 2018 by John Kuglin
    Beverly Snodgrass owned two of Butte’s leading houses of prostitution. In 1968, the talkative madam, her affections scorned by an official she called “Dimple Knees,” who stole her heart and then her money, decided to tell her story to a newspaper reporter.
  • Alara's Wedding Ring Extravaganza, April 6 - 14th

    When shopping for an engagement ring or wedding band, "Shop by putting rings on your finger, dont' look with your eyes," says Changell Cazell at Alara Jewelry. "You can quickly find out that you look best in a metal clor or diamond shape that is different than what attracted you while scrolling."