Heartland ...

Here's another still image from a Montana-made film ... and another railroad shot, since I'm a fan of those.

This is from the opening of an obscure 1979 art-house film called Heartland, which was based on an autobiographical volume called Letters of a Woman Homesteader. It's a powerful and poignant movie about a pioneer woman's life on an early twentieth-century homestead ... very much recommended. And though the story takes place in southwestern Wyoming, the film itself was shot here in Montana, in Meagher and Wheatland Counties. (The homestead used in the filming is reportedly up by Judith Gap somewhere.)

The little train in this wonderful image was running on the White Sulphur Springs & Yellowstone Park Railway, which ran from White Sulphur down to Ringling. (Nope, it never made it to Yellowstone.) By the 1970s the railroad's days were numbered, the freight traffic almost gone. A promoter named "King" Wilson acquired the line, brought in a steam locomotive and some passenger cars, and tried to turn it all into a tourist attraction. It wasn't a success, though, and the railroad closed down after the Milwaukee Road -- its connection to the outside world -- was abandoned in 1980. The Heartland movie shoot was probably the highlight of the little railway's life.

From what I can tell, the old locomotive is at a railroad museum in Nebraska these days, though it hasn't run in years. And a few of Willson's old railway cars are still sitting up in White Sulphur, just where he left them back in 1980.

Jordan ...

I've been lucky enough to be able to spend some time in a number of Montana's smaller towns, getting to know them. Others, though, I've just passed through, maybe stopping for gas or a snack and then moving on. So I only know bits and pieces about a lot of places, and I regret that ... it always makes me want to go exploring all the more.

I confess that one of those places I've never gotten to know well enough is Jordan, though I've made a number of cross-state trips through there on Montana 200. But the bits and pieces that we hear about Jordan always seem to be particularly interesting. Many Montanans, unfortunately, still stereotype Garfield County by associating it with the Freemen, the cranky anti-government folks who made such a scene back in the 90s. There's also the oft-stated claim that Jordan is the most isolated county seat in the country, which may well be true, though I don't know how you calculate such things.

The historian in me remembers a few other things about Jordan, as well ... like the fact that the state once built a large irrigation dam there, which promptly washed out and flooded half the town. And the fact that the school district there operated the last public school dormitory in the state, something that many eastern Montana high schools once had. Oh, and there's the alleged story about the misadventures of one of Ernest Hemingway's sons in Jordan ... which I'm not going to get into at the moment. All in all, an intriguing place that I'd like to get to know better.

I haven't taken a good photo of Jordan yet, but I'll work on that someday. In the meantime, here's a photo of the town taken by a US government photographer back in 1942.

Downtown Missoula ...

There's something very cool about nighttime photos of small-town Main Streets, especially from the age of neon. Here's a cool one of Missoula, probably from an old postcard. This is looking north along Higgins Avenue from the bridge over the Clark Fork River, showing the heart of the commercial district and a a couple of the city's landmark buildings: the great old Wilma Theatre and the Florence Hotel. Based on the name of the movie playing at the Wilma, the photo was taken in 1965.

Missoula still has one of the state's most interesting downtowns, and both the Wilma and the Florence are still there. The Florence has been turned into office space, though, and the Wilma's current marquee is pretty ugly, far less cool than this one. But at least they still show movies there ...

November in Glacier ...

This is a photo from the first Thanksgiving I spent in Montana, and the first one away from home.

I was in college, and had spent the summer before working at Lake McDonald Lodge before heading out for another year of school. I missed Montana, though ... so instead of spending Thanksgiving at home I drove up to Bozeman to meet a friend of mine from the park, and then we headed up to Lake McDonald to camp in the snow. A friend in Lakeside took pity on us and invited us to Thanksgiving dinner, and we skied up the Going-to-the-Sun road for a ways and basically froze to death. It was a great time.

I was probably standing on the boat dock at Lake McDonald Lodge when I took this shot, looking up through the mountains towards the Garden Wall.

Bannack Thanksgiving ...

Today's quote is a memory of an early Thanksgiving day in the gold rush town of Bannack from the diaries of Harriet Sanders. Harriet came to Montana in the summer of 1863 with her husband, Wilbur Fisk Sanders, a man who became one of Montana's most prominent attorneys and civic leaders. (Wilbur is best remembered for his role as a leader in the territory's famous vigilante movement of the era ... which makes the following quote all the more interesting.) Forty dollars in gold was a hefty price back then.

“Our first Thanksgiving day dinner in the territory in the fall of 1863 was one of the most memorable dinners I have ever at- tended. Henry Plummer, desiring to be on good terms with the Chief Justice, Mr. Edgerton, and my husband . . . invited [us] to dinner . . . he sent to Salt Lake City, a distance of five hundred miles, and everything that money could buy was served, deli- cately cooked and with all the style that would characterize a banquet at ‘Sherry’s’. I now recall to mind that the turkey cost forty dollars in gold.”

Hope you all have a good Thanksgiving.

Bigfoot (!) ...

As far as search engines go, I'm a definite fan of Google ... particularly Google Books, which as you might guess is an invaluable tool when doing a blog like this. It seems like you can find pretty much anything there.

Including, for example, the complete press run of the Weekly World News! I know you're wondering why anyone would want to have access to something like that ... but there are times when you just might be in the mood for a little badly-written, pop culture fiction.

There were at least a handful of Montana stories in the WWN over the years, including one on dinosaurs that had come back to life. And we actually made the cover of their December 30, 2003 issue, as you can see below. This tragic event supposedly happened out near Beaverhead Rock ... you can just ignore the fact that the vegetation in the photo isn't very Montana-like, and that the generic police car has a Musselshell County license plate Photoshopped to it. :)

A good country ...

Undoubtedly, the best-known Native American quote that's associated with Montana is Chief Joseph's famous "I will fight no more, forever" speech, given at the Bear Paw Battlefield in 1877. But my favorite is another well-known one, part of which is excerpted below. Though stories of its origin vary just a bit, it was reportedly given about 1833 by a Crow Chief named Eelápuash (also spelled Arapooish), and recorded in the journals of a man named Benjamin L.E. Bonneville. The journals were later edited and published by the noted author and essayist Washington Irving.

The Crow Country is a good country. The Great Spirit has put it exactly in the right place; while you are in it you fare well; whenever you go out of it, whichever way you travel, you will fare worse. . . . The Crow Country is exactly in the right place. It has snowy mountains and sunny plains; all kinds of climates and good things for every season. When the summer heats scorch the prairies, you can draw up under the mountains, where the air is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the bright streams come tumbling out of the snow banks. There you can hunt the elk, the deer, and the antelope, when their skins are fit for dressing; there you will find plenty of white bears and mountain sheep. In the autumn, when your horses are fat and strong from the mountain pastures, you can go down into the plains and hunt the buffalo, or trap beaver on the streams. And when winter comes on, you can take shelter in the woody bottoms along the rivers; there you will find buffalo meat for yourselves, and cottonwood bark for your horses . . . . The Crow Country is exactly in the right place. Everything good is to be found there. There is no country like the Crow Country.

Winter roads ...

Though I'm a true fan of long Montana drives, I'll confess to slightly mixed emotions about doing it in the winter. There's the whole snow thing, of course, and the ridiculously short days, and the frigid north wind that seems to appear every time you stop for a bathroom break. But there are real joys, too, that you just don't experience in the summertime. There are fewer tourists, and the winter light makes for great photographs, and the snow itself is often really lovely.

Here's a photo I took on Saturday to illustrate some of that. This is US 191, somewhere between Big Timber and Harlowton.