Malmborg School ...

I'm definitely intrigued by old Montana schoolhouses, and here's a photo of what might be the coolest one of all. This is the old Malmborg School, constructed 106 years ago in the Jackson Creek area east of Bozeman.

It's a great little schoolhouse, and a great old photo ... but the best part is that the building is still around today. And not only that, it still serves as an operating one-room school! How cool is that?

Highway 212 ...

Most people driving east from Montana out to South Dakota will just get on Interstate 90 and stay there ... but a few knowledgeable folks will venture off the freeway and strike out on US 212 instead, which is actually the shorter route. I really like the US 212 drive -- it's a lovely mix of mountains and plains, forest and prairie. And there are some interesting old towns along the way, too.

One of those little towns is called Hammond, down in the southwest corner of Carter County. There was never an awful lot at Hammond, and today the place is just a post office, a one-room school, and a handful of abandoned buildings. Here's a photo I took last year of one of them ... a long-closed gas station. It's definitely the coolest thing in Hammond, and I think it's the coolest gas station in Montana.

Sonnette Hall ...

Here's a photo I took last summer of the old community hall in a place called Sonnette, down in Powder River County. It's one of the prettiest settings for a building you're ever going to find.

Ralph's Cabins ...

Let's head out to southeastern Montana for a couple days of photos. Here's a postcard photo of an old Forsyth hostelry called Ralph's Cabins ... a shot from maybe 60 years ago. Looks like a welcoming and homey place, that at least in some ways would beat the heck out of a Super 8.

Montana Inventory ...

I had a conversation with a friend recently, in which she confessed to me that she'd never heard of Richard Brautigan. I was thoroughly appalled by the revelation ... but of course Brautigan was a product of the 60s and 70s, and my friend is of a different generation. Brautigan just isn't going to be a timeless author, I'm afraid.

But his work is still a lot of fun, and since he lived in the Paradise Valley for a time he's worth another mention here. Unlike most Montana authors, though, there are surprisingly few mentions of the state in Brautigan's work. Here's one that I was able to find, an odd little poem called "Montana Inventory." It's from his 1976 collection, Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork.

At 85 miles an hour an insect splattered
like saffron on the windshield
and a white cloud in blue sky above the
      speed-curried bug

The Glacier quarter ...

I was a big fan of the "State Quarters" series that the U.S. Mint finished up a year or so ago ... though I was a little disappointed in the bison-skull design that ended up representing Montana in the series. But now the National Parks quarters are coming out, giving Montana another chance to show off to the numismatists of the world -- and this time I think we got it right.

The choice of parks was a no-brainer, of course -- it had to be Glacier. And though I would have loved to have seen Lake McDonald on the coin, this composite image of Mt. Reynolds and a mountain goat captures Glacier's iconography very well. And it looks good on a coin, to boot.

Oregon or bust ...

Here's another wonderfully evocative photo from the 1930s efforts of the Resettlement Administration and its successor, the Farm Security Administration. Taken by the noted photographer Arthur Rothstein, the shot is of a man named Vernon Evans, who was driven from his South Dakota farm by the Dust Bowl and grasshoppers. He and his family were headed to Oregon to start a new life when Rothstein photographed him near Missoula on July 10, 1936.

Riverboat diary ...

For now, here's one last quote from the diary of James Knox Polk Miller, this one dated June 4, 1867. It was written as Miller rode a Missouri River steamboat downstream from Fort Benton ... a journey with some darker moments, and some nineteenth-century sensibilities.

This morning a negro, one of the boat hands, fell overboard. No effort was made to save him and he sank to rise no more, the crew standing about watching for him to rise. Having discovered the excellence of the view, from the same I spent most of the day in though wheel house. Passed a herd of buffalo & saw hundreds of wild geese with their young. They did not attempt to fly away as our boat approached, but sinking their bodies into the water floated in foolish security, leaving only their heads visible. Passed Fort Hawley, a post erected last year for the purpose of trading with the Indians. Past the point and saw the remains of a trading post directed by steel and burned by the Indians. Passed the “Yorktown” and “Mountaineer” on the last of which I saw Billy Childs and his newly elected wife. The boats, both upward and downward bound, are this year filled with families, some going home to educate their children or flying to the comforts not to be found in the Rocky Mountains. Others are coming up river to meet their husbands who have gone ahead and prepared homes for them. One Jew and his wife came up on the “Waverley” and, after looking about Fort Benton for a week, concluded that Montana was not the place for him. Accordingly he hired himself to the same boat and is at present engaged in packing wood from the flats or peeling potatoes, as the case may be.