The wilderness supports riparian forests that hold spruce, alpine larch, white bark pine and fir in the sub-alpine areas to vegetation up on the high mountain slopes. Wildlife include elk, bear, bighorn sheep, mountain goats along with one of my favorites, the Pika. It protects the watershed and boosts nearby economies with tourism.

As a member of the U.S. Special Operations (SOF) community for nearly two decades, Rob Vaughan has accepted the likely imminence of his own death more times than he cares to count. 

The Powder River Kid was quick to temper and drew his gun with lightning speed and accuracy and down his adversary would go. He knew many outlaws and fast guns in his lifetime, and called them by their first names.

They seemed oddly out-of-place in the landscape, as if they had been dumped out of the sky and onto the forest floor below. Their rusty color contrasted with the drab gray of the boulders lying outside the perimeter of the pile.

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.