Coldest spot ...

We've had some real mid-winter weather in Montana this month, so it seems like a good time to mention Cut Bank's giant penguin. The penguin was reportedly constructed decades ago to advertise one of Cut Bank's hostelries, and and it still sits in front of a dated motel building near the east end of town. A classic piece of folk art, and almost certainly Cut Bank's best-known attraction.

There's some debate. though, about the penguin's claim that Cut Bank is the "Coldest Spot in the Nation." The author of the phrase presumably decided that Alaska didn't count in the rankings ... or Rogers Pass, Montana, for that matter, which was the site of the coldest temperature ever recorded in the lower 48. Still, there's no denying that Cut Bank is down there in the rankings ... somewhere.

Prickly Pear Canyon ...

Back in the days before the Interstate Highway system, old US 91 was unquestionably one of the great drives in Montana. Between Butte and Great Falls, the route crossed the Continental Divide and wandered through a series of lovely mountain canyons, evocative of the best of Montana.

One of the narrowest and most spectacular stretches of road was along Prickly Pear Creek, north of Helena. Prickly Pear Canyon was narrow and steep-walled and scenic, with barely enough room for the creek, the road, and the tracks of the Great Northern Railway.

Today's photo is an old postcard view of the canyon, probably shot in the 1920s or early 1930s. (The road through the canyon was paved in 1931.) The photo has been retouched a bit and heavily hand-colored, but it's a great view of a scenic spot and a vanished age of travel.

Memorial Falls ...

My favorite north-south road in Montana is probably US 89 ... not only for the amazing drive along the Rocky Mountain front north of Choteau, but also for the great trip over King's Hill in the Little Belt Mountains. One of my favorite stopping points on the King's Hill drive is Memorial Falls, just a little south of Neihart. It's a short walk up a lovely little canyon, a fine respite in the middle of a long drive.

Joshua Spotted Dog ...

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Montana's Native American peoples received a surprising amount of attention from artists and photographers ... people who were presumably enchanted by the romance of the vanishing Indian lifestyle, and who hoped to document it in their own way before it was too late.

An intriguing but lesser-known person in this category was a woman named Olga Ross Hannon, an Midwestern transplant who taught art at the college in Bozeman from 1921 until her death in 1947. Hannon's paintings and other work explored a variety of Montana themes, including explorations of Native Native American art and culture. (Hannon Hall on the MSU campus is named for her.)

The evocative image below is credited to Hannon ... it's a portrait of a man named Joshua Spotted Dog, taken at Poplar on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation.

Hyalite Lake ...

I mentioned the Hyalite Mountains in yesterday's post, and here's a picture of its crown jewel: Hyalite Lake. The lake is about 8,800 feet high, in a gorgeous basin in the shadow of its namesake peak, and is at the end of a five-mile trail that is arguably one of the most beautiful in the Rockies.

I took this photo in late July, the year before last. The last mile or so of the trail was still mostly under several feet of snow.

Bridger range ...

There's no doubt at all that Montana has some of the finest mountain ranges anywhere. The mountains up in Glacier are of course my favorites, but honorable mentions go to the ranges that surround Bozeman: the Hyalites, the Spanish Peaks, and especially the Bridgers. The Bridger range defines the eastern edge of the Gallatin Valley for a good two dozen miles, remarkably straight and tall. The views from the ridgeline are uniformly amazing, especially looking down into the Gallatin Valley, some 4,000 feet below.

Sacajawea Peak is near the center of the Bridger range, and at 9,665 feet is its highest point. The trail from Fairy Lake up to the summit is a classic, and the view from the top is stellar. Today's photo is from the summit of Sacajawea, looking south along the range. The handsome dog admiring the view is Charlie, my Australian Shepherd; a couple minutes earlier, he'd just been introduced to his first mountain goat.

Fifty Mountain Camp ...

This is an historic photo of a spot called "Fifty Mountain" ... easily one of Montana's most evocative place names. Fifty Mountain is high in the backcountry of Glacier Park, a dozen miles from the nearest road, and it's a spectacular location. That's Mount Kipp in the background.

This image, reportedly by the noted park photographer T.J. Hileman, dates from the 1920s or 1930s. Back then, the fashionable way to see Glacier was on a guided, multi-day horseback trip, and Fifty Mountain was an overnight stop for horse parties doing a popular route called the North Circle. For a few weeks every summer, the horse concessionaire operated "Fifty Mountain Camp," a collection of heavy canvas wall tents that provided hot meals and beds to the travelers. You can see the camp nestled in the trees near the bottom of the photo.

It's been over 70 years since Fifty Mountain Camp closed for the last time, but the park still maintains a small backcountry campground in the area. I recall camping there on the night of August 1 a number of years ago, and waking up to find the campground buried in new snow.

German Gulch sunset ...

Even though it's cliché, I'm still hooked on taking random photos of Montana sunsets. I saw this one in the summer of 2011, in the German Gulch area southwest of Butte.

Howdy ...

Speaking of older motels, here's a photo I took a little over a year ago while on a trip to Miles City.  I stayed at a faded chain motel on the south side, probably built in the 1970s or so, and I noticed this welcoming message painted on the concrete footing of the building's porte cochere.  That little sign was easily the best part of the whole motel!

Mid-century Billings ...

Here's an interesting postcard view of Billings, shot to advertise a downtown motel in the late 1960s or so. Both the motel and its adjoining restaurant are great examples of mid-twentieth century roadside architecture, and the classic advertising signs add to the period feel.

Lurking in the background, though, are two other major examples of mid-twentieth century design. The staid, tan-and-cream office tower is the Yellowstone County Courthouse, built in 1957 to replace a far smaller (and more imposing) building. The extraordinarily ugly building off to the right is the federal courthouse, which was completed in 1963.

Most of the buildings in this view still survive today, although a new federal courthouse was completed in Billings hast year. The motel and restaurant lost their classic looks in later remodeling projects ... and of course the Sambo's restaurant chain went bankrupt over 30 years ago, following a backlash against the perecived political incorrectness of the business's name.

Depot sunset ...

These days, I'm working on a project to locate and research all of Montana's extant railroad depots, part of an upcoming book for the Montana Historical Society. So you'll be seeing a lot of railroad-stration photos here ... which is appropriate, given their importance to the state's history, and their ephemeral, vanishing nature.

 This is an early-evening shot of the little Northern Pacific railway depot in East Helena. The building was moved there in 1930, after the older East Helena station was destroyed in a fire. The depot has been unused for quite a while, now, and last year the railroad announced plans to demolish it ... but happily, local preservationists are planning to move it to a safe spot about a half-mile away.

Not of London ...

If you get off the freeway in Butte looking for a place to eat, one of the first options you see might be an older, nondescript building on South Montana Street ... part restaurant, part casino, and not really recommended.  But a couple of generations ago, the place was something of a landmark, and one with a memorable name:  Lloyd's of Butte.

I don't know much about the history of the restaurant ... it was opened by a man named J. M. Lloyd in the 1940s or so,  and it was in business under that name into the 60s.  But it would have been a great place to visit just because of its advertising slogan:  "Lloyd's of Butte -- not of London."  Can't beat that!

This is an old postcard view of Lloyd's, probably from the late 1940s or early 1950s.

Snowcrest sunrise ...

I know it's been a long time, but I think this blog should start up again ... at least for a while.

And a sunrise photo seems like a good way to do that. I took this shot last summer near Antone Peak, at the far southern end of the Snowcrest Mountains, just above the Centennial Valley. It's a wonderful area, that (thankfully) very few people manage to visit.

The Olympian ...

For much of the twentieth century, three of America's great transcontinental railroads traversed Montana east to west, and all three companies served the state with luxurious long-haul passenger trains.  The Empire Builder still operates today, the longest-lived and best-known of Montana's trains, but the state's most exotic and memorable passenger trains were operated by the Milwaukee Road.

The year 2011 marked the hundredth anniversary of the first of those trains, the Olympian.  This old postcard view show's the train's inaugural run, pausing at the depot in Deer Lodge.  Even one of the town dogs has come down to see what all the excitement was about!

The Olympian was a fairly conventional-looking train in 1911, but within a few years the Milwaukee electrified its main line across western Montana.  The electric locomotives combined with the railroad's bright-orange paint scheme to give the Olympian a sleek, futuristic style that no other Montana railroad could match.

Picture-postcard view ...

There's no doubt that as a state, Montana is overrun with postcard-worthy views. I've always thought, though, that the very best of those scenes were of Lake McDonald, up in Glacier Park. Most postcard photos of Lake McDonald are shot from the Apgar area, looking down the full length of the lake at the impossibly-beautiful mountains that frame the opposite shore. But I like this closer view even better, taken from the boat dock at what is now Lake McDonald Lodge.

This photo is probably from the first decade of the twentieth century, when visits to the lake were becoming more popular but before Glacier Park itself was formally established ... the caption makes no mention of a national park, but simply says "Lake McDonald, Northern Montana."

Missoula's just alright ...

I spent a winter in Missoula back in my college days, and while I was there I got to participate in an urban-design charette sponsored by the American Institute of Architects. We put together a 100-page report over the course of a single weekend, quite a challenge in the days before personal computers and digital cameras. It was all kinds of fun.

The report definitely looks a little ragged by today's standards, thanks to our lack of technology. I remember, though, that we were all particularly happy with the photo we chose for the report cover ... we decided that it captured the essence of Missoula as well as anything.

I don't know which member of the charette team took the photo, but here it is. It might be the underside of Missoula's old Orange Street Bridge, which was demolished a few years back.

Wigwam Cafe ...

Here's a great old postcard from Browning: the "Wigwam Cafe and Service Station." I won't pass judgement on the political correctness of the design, but architecturally this is about as cool as it gets.

The old cafe has of course been closed for decades, but the old teepee-shaped building is still a landmark on the east end of Browning's little main street. Last time I was in town, someone had opened up an espresso stand in the place.

There's a similar building down in Busby, too ... that one looking much the worse for wear.

Evans Hotel ...

Here's a great old photo, probably taken in about 1910 or so. We're in the little northeast Montana town of Culbertson, looking north up Broadway Avenue. The Evans Hotel looks like it was quite the place.

The Evans apparently didn't last too long, though. A 1930 map of Culbertson shows a completely different building on the site, called the "New Evans Hotel" ... so probably, there had been a fire. As for the New Evans, the building is still there today, though its no longer a hotel and most of the first floor has long since been boarded up. It would be a great restoration project for someone who wanted to return a bit of style to poor old Culbertson.

Small-town sports ...

Here's a photo I took last fall, showing a slice of small-town Montana life. The scene was a football game between the Grass Range/Winnett Rangers and the Highwood Mountaineers. Though the Rangers played very hard, there were only eight of them, half of whom were freshmen ... and so Highwood won in a blowout.

Main Street Polson ...

Today's photo is an old postcard view of downtown Polson, taken maybe fifty or so years ago. Back then, they probably made postcards like that for pretty much every fair-sized town in the state ... the same head-on view of Main Street, the same script lettering, everything. It's an interesting image, but it's also too bad in way ... there are lots of things that make Polson engaging and unique, but this mass-produced postcard doesn't really show any of them.