People & Place

  • Warrior Spirit: Celebrating Native American Veterans

    By Ellen Baumler
    While some of Montana’s Indian veterans have been individually honored, the contributions of many others remain unrecognized. The Warrior Spirit Project Consortium, created in 2019, aims to change that.
  • Telling "The Story of Butte"

    By Sherman Cahill
    There are, at the time of this writing, 329 separate entries in the Story of Butte database, with more coming all the time. In addition to discrete entries, there are also many tours that organize locations into a series of stops that tell a fuller story, such as the 11 locations featured in the Murder of Frank Little tour.
  • The Lakota Delegation: Portraits from 1868 - 1877

    By Douglas Schmittou
    Studio photographs of Spotted Tail’s wife and Running Antelope, a Hunkpapa headman, were taken by Gardner in Washington, D.C., during 1872. Running Antelope was splendidly dressed in a magnificent quilled shirt, peace medal, dentalia-shell ear pendants, otter-fur hair wraps, and three eagle feathers, one of which bears specific war-exploit markings.
  • The Tradition of Spring Branding Lives On

    By Todd Klassy
    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.
  • Get To Know Big Horn County

    By Bryan Spellman
    With the creation of Montana Territory in 1864, all land east of Bozeman Pass was called Big Horn County. So few settlers lived in this vast area that the entire eastern part of the state fell under Gallatin County's jurisdiction.
  • Miles City: Friendliest Town in the West

    By Donnie Sexton
    MC is a welcome break from the long stretch of I-94 that runs across southeastern Montana. It’s an ideal jumping off spot for a quick bite, filling the tank, stretching the legs or perhaps spending the night in one of the chain hotels. But to understand the heart of the city and why it’s sometimes referred to as the “cow capital of the world,” give yourself the gift of time to explore Miles City. This is best done by heading over to Main Street and checking out what makes the city tick.
  • Dorothy M. Johnson's Recycled Cinema

    By Sue Hart
    In the 1940s and early ‘50s, a double feature always included at least one Western, usually depicting Hollywood’s version of what Johnson claimed as her West—the frontier on which she set the majority of her stories.
  • Old Red and 27 Seasons of Calving

    By Holly Matkin    
    Her body’s muscling and fat cover rival those of cows one-fifth her age, but the reality of time is less hidden in the telltale angles and shadows of her fa
  • Beautiful Montana Roads for All Seasons

    By Todd Klassy, Photos by the Author
    These are some of my most favorite drives in Montana, regardless of the season. But I think they can be appreciated even more so in the colder months of the year. So, grab your Thermos of hot cocoa, an extra warm blanket or two, and your best winter tires. Let’s go for a drive.
  • Montana's Snowmobile Clubs

    By Lacey Middlestead
    With over 4,000 miles of groomed trails, Montana is a true snowmobilers' paradise. Every winter these trails deliver sledders to the sweeping mountain-meadow playgrounds, deep untouched backcountry, rugged ridgelines, and frozen alpine lakes they seek their thrills from.
  • Digging Montana's Yogo Sapphires

    By Hallie Zolynski
    Jewish traditions hold that the Ten Commandments were engraved on sapphire tablets. Some may be legend or myth, but there’s no denying that sapphires have an air of mystery and magic, not unlike Montana. 
  • Montana on The Move!

    By Rob Rath
    Historically, agriculture has always been Montana's foremost economic engine from jobs to exports. Because of the Great Depression and World War II, only 30% of working farms used gas-powered equipment into the 1940s, while the rest still relied on horses to work in the fields.
  • Get to Know A County: Lincoln

    By Bryan Spellman
    As the Kootenai River cut its canyon between the Percell Mountains (shown as Purcell on Canadian maps) to the north and the Cabinet Mountains to the south, the view is almost disorienting; it is hard to feature being at Montana’s lowest point when you’re surrounded by mountains rising 5,000 to 6,000 feet above you. 
  • Great Falls: Defined by the Railroad and the Falls

    By Russell Rowland
    Perhaps one of the most significant towns that originally came about because of the railroad is Great Falls, although Great Falls developed a strong foundation around many other industries after its founding.
  • Montana’s Sedition Act

    By Clem Work
    The sedition law said that anyone who said or wrote anything in wartime that was “disloyal, profane, violent, scurrilous, contemptuous, slurring or abusive” about the United States was guilty.
  • Frank Conley: Warden on the Edge

    Toss a coin. “Heads,” Frank Conley was a hero. “Tails,” Frank Conley was a villain. The trouble is, no matter how many times you toss the coin, it will land on edge.
  • Yellowstone Brokers Presents: Jeff Carter Delivers Montana Boots to the World

    Sometimes they’re steel-toed and rubber-soled to protect the wearer. Sometimes they’re something we lace up tightly before filling our backpack with water and goodies and running into the mountains. But if you’re a Montanan, we’ve got a crisp ten-dollar bill that says you have a pair of boots. Or a whole closet full of them.