daily montana ...

A great splendor ...

2011-04-27T08:00:00.003-06:00

In one of my early posts here, I mentioned that I was very fond of the work of the late CBS Television journalist Charles Kuralt ... and that Charles Kuralt was pretty fond of Montana. In part, that was certainly because Montana is where he would rendezvous with his long-time mistress, but Kuralt loved the state for other reasons, too. One of the reasons was fishing -- like so many people,

Picture-postcard view ...

2011-04-26T08:00:00.002-06:00

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

Missoula's just alright ...

2011-04-25T08:00:00.003-06:00

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

Prairie Sunrise ...

2011-04-24T08:00:00.002-06:00

The famed artist Maynard Dixon is best known for his paintings of the American Southwest, but his work was also influenced by a 1917 visit to northwestern Montana. Sponsored by the Great Northern Railway, Dixon's Montana trip included time in Glacier Park, as well as the Blackfeet Indian reservation nearby. In the years that followed Dixon translated his Montana memories into a number of

Places known and come to before ...

2011-04-23T08:00:00.006-06:00

In 1938, during what would prove to be the last summer of his life, the novelist Thomas Wolfe undertook a great adventure -- a marathon automobile roadtrip across the West, aiming to visit as many National Parks as possible. Crammed into a Ford sedan with two companions, Wolfe managed to put on 4,500 miles in a little under two weeks, and glimpse eleven of the parks.Wolfe died two and a half

Wigwam Cafe ...

2011-04-22T08:00:00.002-06:00

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

Evans Hotel ...

2011-04-21T08:00:00.002-06:00

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

Bars are the thing in Montana ...

2011-04-20T08:00:00.004-06:00

Going through some old papers at home recently, I came across a page torn from a magazine long ago. The page contained an essay called "Moving Through America," written by a travel author named Caskie Stinnett. The piece described a cross-country trip on Amtrak, including a day spent trundling through northern Montana on the Empire Builder. I'm guessing that the page came from a 1980 issue of

Silver Dollar Bar ...

2011-04-19T08:00:00.003-06:00

I freely admit that I have an unusual fondness for kitschy destinations ... and Montana certainly has its share of those. I haven't visited nearly as many of them as I'd like, though.One destination in that category is "Lincoln's 50000 Silver Dollar Bar," in the little town of Haugan, out on I-90 almost to the Idaho line. The place started its long run back in 1952, when a single silver dollar

Fur-bearing fish ...

2011-04-18T08:00:00.001-06:00

I'm kind of surprised I didn't upload one of these postcards sooner ... after all, this is a true Montana legend.People have been telling stories about fur-bearing fish in this part of the world for at least 80 years, and taxidermists have been encouraging the legend for just as long, by creating examples of the species. They're almost always trout, and the local version of the myth has them

Montana Pastoral ...

2011-04-17T08:00:00.001-06:00

Today's poem is "Montana Pastoral," by a fairly well-known twentieth-century author named J. V. Cunningham. He lived in Montana only for a few years as a child, in Billings during the 1910s and 1920s, but those years influenced a lifetime of writing. "Montana Pastoral" was written in 1941, and published in an anthology called The Helmsman the following year.I am no shepherd of a child’s

Small-town sports ...

2011-04-16T08:00:00.001-06:00

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 ...

2011-04-15T08:00:00.003-06:00

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,

Stack talk ...

2011-04-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

Here's an evocative reminiscence of life at an old railroad "beanery" in northwestern Montana. It was written by a man named Robert W. Downing, who later rose through the ranks to become president of the Burlington Northern Railroad. Rexford is on the old Great Northern line between Whitefish and Libby via Eureka ... part of which is now under the waters of lake Koocanusa.After I became

Sun-faded prairie ...

2011-04-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

Speaking of prairie ghost towns, here's a photo of one of my favorites -- the little hamlet of Ingomar, on the long-abandoned Milwaukee Road mainline across the state. This evocative photo was taken back in the early 1990s by a man named Dave Matthews, who lived in Bozeman back then. It's been many years since I heard from Dave ... he moved back east ages ago, to photograph things that could

Lonesome ghosts ...

2011-04-12T08:00:00.001-06:00

There are certainly lots of ghost towns here in Montana ... old mining camps up in the mountains, and homestead villages out in the prairies. I'm a particular fan of the prairie ghosts, partly because they don't get as much attention, and partly because their settings can be exceptionally evocative. And for me, the old towns don't even need buildings in order to be interesting.Here's a photo I

Springtime rain ...

2011-04-11T08:00:00.000-06:00

There's no doubt about it: Montana's weather definitely feels like it's been getting weirder lately. This spring, the story has been all about moisture ... lots of snow, and lots of rain. It's a year for flooding.The situation is unsettling enough that it's got people thinking about similar times in Montana's past -- particularly the great flood of June 1964, which hit north-central Montana

Monarchs of the Past ...

2011-04-10T08:00:00.001-06:00

Here's another great old postcard photo: "Monarchs of the Past," by T. J. Hileman. The image probably dates from the 1920s, when Hileman was an official photographer for the Great Northern Railway, capturing views of the Glacier Park country for use in the GN's promotional efforts. The shot is highly reflective of the GN's traditional use of Blackfeet imagery in its advertising materials ...

Largest lumber mill ...

2011-04-09T08:00:00.002-06:00

This is an old postcard view from about 1960 or so, with the caption, "the largest pine lumber mill in the world." The photo shows a part of the old J. Neils Lumber Company complex just outside of Libby, by then owned by St. Regis Paper. Neils Lumber was the economic lifeblood of Libby for decades, harvesting timber with a sustainable-use philosophy that both kept the company strong and

Topography ...

2011-04-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

As far as those maps go, I haven't been to either Gallup City or Lonesome Prairie (yet) ... but I have made a couple of visits to Boulder Pass. This is a photo from a backpacking trip in 2003, looking across Hole in the Wall Basin. Boulder Pass is in the center of the photo, with Boulder Peak off to the left.Talk about topography!

Boulder Pass ...

2011-04-07T08:00:00.001-06:00

This is the last old topo map that I'll post here for a long while ... a clipping to contrast with yesterday's relatively flat landscape.Based on late 1930s cartography, the the image below shows the Boulder Pass and Hole in the Wall areas, in the far north edge of Glacier National Park. It's one of the most spectacular spots in a spectacular state, and creates a map that fulfills most peoples'

Lonesome Prairie ...

2011-04-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

Here's a clipping from another old topographic map, with a place name and a look that's the quintessence of big chunks of eastern Montana. The location is a little northwest of Big Sandy, and the map is from 1906 ... and I bet the country is even more lonesome today.

Gallup City ...

2011-04-05T08:00:00.004-06:00

As someone with an incurable case of wanderlust, I've long maintained that a good map is the greatest recreational reading there is. Topo maps are especially fascinating for someone enamored of a place as vast as Montana, in part because they reveal so many obscure place names that few of us have ever heard of.I was looking through a list of old Montana topos recently, for example, and came

The Crystal ...

2011-04-04T08:00:00.001-06:00

One more neon photo for today ... this is the Crystal, a dark, blue-collar bar that's been on Bozeman's Main Street for decades.This is a great sign, though it's actually a fairly recent creation ... the Crystal's original neon sign is now hanging inside the barroom. I confess that I know this because part of my misspent youth was mis-spent at the Crystal. Anticipatory historical research, I

Bozeman neon ...

2011-04-03T08:00:00.001-06:00

I love taking photos of old signs, and I've been doing that in Bozeman for years, now. The neon ones are the best, of course, and Bozeman has a few really great ones ... like this one, up on North 7th. Who wouldn't want to stay at a motel that has a sign lit up like that?