Montana's Early Name Choices: Tayabeshockup--Shoshoni--or Montana?

Had political push come to partisan shove 150 years ago – and lord knows it did at times in 1864 – we could be living today in the state of Shoshoni or Jefferson or, Granville Stuart’s preference, “To yabe-Shock up.”

But in 1864 a Republican congressman from Ohio named James Ashley out-politicked others from down East in Washington, D.C., to hang the best name on a new frontier territory that glistened with gold at the time.

Monday’s 150th anniversary of Montana’s birthday seems as good a time as any to revisit the roots of the name.

We’ll need to start in Denver. A few miles south of downtown, past the Pepsi Center and Mile-High Stadium, past the downtown neighborhood of Auraria (we’ll get back to that in a minute) you take a hard right on Evans Avenue to the east bank of the South Platte River and pull into the parking lot of Grant-Frontier Park.

Welcome to the first Montana.

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