In Which a Merry Christmas is Wished to All

Christmas is a time for spending with family and friends, but lots of people in Montana in the 1800s ended up spending Christmas away from their families. Miners, and lumberjacks, and railroad workers all ended up spending many Christmases in camps scattered across the unpopulated plains and mountains of Montana. It may seem bleak but, … Read more

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Better Watch Out…Jan Brett is Coming to Town

This week I was scheduled to write about Ponderosa pines, (aka Pinus ponderosa, aka Montana’s state tree, aka not the best choice in Christmas tree). But something important has come up. This blogger has an exclusive scoop. By exclusive, I mean that I saw this on the SouthWest Montana upcoming events page. Jan Brett is … Read more

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A Hunting Blog Post, and Welcome to It

Thanksgiving, at least in my mind, has a close connection with hunting. I think it is a common tradition to take advantage of the long weekend and gathered family to go hunting. Also, the general hunting season ends on November 29, and much Thanksgiving hunting has the air of desperation (in fairness, the holiday in … Read more

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Minnie Two Shoes: A Montana Wit and Activist

Why is there not a book of Minnie Two Shoes columns? That question might make a bit more sense if you had some context. Minnie Two Shoes was born in Poplar, Montana, in 1950 as Minnie Eder. She worked as a publicist for the American Indian Movement, an advocacy group for Native Americans founded in … Read more

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Maximilian of Wied and Karl Bodmer: Instagram like it’s 1833

One of the first tourists to Montana was a man named Maximillian of Wied. Or, if you want to be more specific, Prince Maximillian Alexander Phillip of Wied-Neuwied. Unlike the Lewis and Clark Expedition or the fur trappers that followed, Maximillian did not come to explore or make money, he came simply to look around. … Read more

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Learning a Trapper’s and a Hunter’s Art from Frank Bird Linderman

Frank Linderman came to Montana 60 years too late. Linderman moved to Montana in 1885, at the age of 16. He came to escape the confines of civilization, looking for adventure and wilderness. Unfortunately, as we all know, Montana was a completely tame and civilized place by 1885. Ok, so that’s not entirely true. After … Read more

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Some Weekend Reading

Longboarding down the Beartooth Highway. Photo from National Geographic

I’m not going to lie, I spent a good deal of my morning reading other people’s tourism blogs. There are lots of really good reasons for reading the work of other people in your same line of business, but saying that I got sucked into a spiral of Facebook and Twitter links is the most … Read more

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It’s the Little Things: A Book Review

Not long before Christmas, I needed a new notebook. On a whim, I bought one without lines. I’ve started drafting my blog posts using unnecessary squiggly arrows and doodles. In reality, this is just an ingenious procrastination method, but it also makes me feel like an old fashioned natural philosopher. I like to think that … Read more

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A Homestead Christmas

In Christmastime in Montana, David Walter has compiled hundreds of stories and descriptions of Christmas celebrations from the archives of Montana history, and I was perusing it earlier this week. Wait, peruse means to “examine carefully and at length?” Never mind, I wasn’t perusing anything. I speed-skimmed Christmastime in Montana, on the search for blog-postable … Read more

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