Therriault Ednor - Montana Off the Beaten Path®: A Guide to Unique Places Off the Beaten Path Series

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Globe
Pequot

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2015 by Michael McCoy

Text design: Linda R. Loiewski

Maps: Equator Graphics Rowman & Littlefield

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISSN 1539-7033

ISBN 978-1-4930-1283-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4930-1759-1 (e-book)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Michael McCoy, a former 18-year resident of Big Sky Country, lives in Teton Valley, Idaho, where on a clear day he can still see Montana. His outdoor and travel writing has appeared in Snow Country, Mens Journal, Bicycling, Montana, and other national and regional publications, and he serves as editor of Jackson Hole magazine and field editor of Adventure Cyclist magazine. McCoys Globe Pequot books include The Wild West and Journey to the Northern Rockies, and he edited Classic Cowboy Stories for the Lyons Press. He has also written for the National Geographic Book Division. His website is emptyhighways.com.

Ednor Therriault is a writer, musician, and graphic designer. His writing can frequently be seen in the Missoula Independent, Montana Magazine, and other area publications. His first book, Montana Curiosities, was published by Globe Pequot in 2010. His first novel, Stealing Motown, is being readied for release. Ednor lives with his wife and two redheaded teenagers in Missoula.

For Boone, a remarkable town,
and all of its boys and girls,
young and old, there and gone

My wife and I lived for several years in Troy, a timber town squeezed into a tight, tree-filled valley so far west in Montana that from there you can almost spit into Idaho, and so far north that half its residents speak with a Canadian accent. Having already resided in Montana for several years, I knew, theoretically, that it was big. But it wasnt until living in its extreme northwest corner that I came to appreciate just how big.

Early on a July morning in 1981, Nancy and I packed our Mazda sedan with more gear than it was meant to hold and took off to visit family in the Midwest. After driving for 15 hours and covering more than 800 long, hot miles, we were disappointed at nightfall to find ourselves still in Montana. We were relieved, however, and honestly surprised to learn that we were more than halfway to where we were going in central Iowa.

Yes, Montana is spacious. Within its land area of 145,556 square miles, you could fit Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania in it and have room to spare. Heres the clincher: Fewer people live in Montana than in Rhode Island alone. While the typical Rhode Island square mile holds more than 1,000 people, an average of about seven occupy that space in Montana.

Montana is big, and its a melting pot. During the short, 160-year history of European settlement, the state has been a magnet for the restless and intrepid, the displaced and persecutedthose willing or forced to take a chance with their lives. The result is an eclectic mix of people who settled in the states mountains and valleys and on its windswept, arid plains. The Hi-Line Scandinavians. The many Germans, including the communal Hutterites of the north-central plains. The Butte Irish, the Butte Chinese, the Butte Polish, the Butte almost-anything-you-can-name. And, of course, those who came first, the American Indians, a glance at whose family trees will prove everyone else newcomers by a large measure.

So here in the immensity of Montana we have a wide cast of characters populating a land vibrant and beautiful, a country also cursed (or blessed, depending on your perspective) with a climate of extremes. These factors coalesce to create an atmosphere ripe for the fashioning of unorthodox ways to make ends meet. As a result, a fascinating mix of attractionssome strange, some wonderful, some strange and wonderfulawaits the traveler in Montana.

The setting for countless western novels and movies, Montana has been subjected to endless romanticizing and dealt more than its share of nicknames: the Bonanza State, Big Sky Country, the Treasure State, andoverused and overstatedthe Last Best Place. Of all the descriptive phrases Ive heard, far and away my favorite is Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome, the title of the 1943 book by Joseph Kinsey Howard. Unpretentious, honest, and unerringly accurate, it fits Montana like a well-worn pair of cowboy boots.

Speaking of which, as you might expect, youll still find plenty of working cowboys, miners, and loggers in Montana, and you can still experience no-holds-barred Wild West celebrations (try Butte on St. Patricks Day or the World Famous Bucking Horse Sale in Miles City). But you also can find gourmet restaurants employing Paris-trained chefs and surroundings that whisper rather than scream. You can bed down at night in a dude-ranch bunkhouse or under a fluffy comforter at a bed-and-breakfast inn as elegant as any found in New England or Californias wine country. You might dine on buffalo-hump roast one night and Greek cuisine the next. Youre bound to tour spectacular and highly touted Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, but the lands beyond the park boundariessome subdued and others of national park quality themselvesmay catch you off guard.

The House committee charged with splitting the Montana Territory from the Idaho Territory in 1864 was leaning toward designating the Continental Divide as the boundary between the two. A group led by Sidney Edgerton, chief justice of the Idaho Territory, however, persuaded the committee to include in the Montana portion those lands west of the Divide and east of the Bitterroot Range. Consequently, cities including Missoula, Butte, and Kalispell today are in Montana rather than Idaho; likewise all of Glacier National Park ended up in Montana, rather than the majority of it residing in Idaho. Edgerton may not have won new friends among the Idaho delegation, but he did win the subsequent governorship of the newly created and larger-for-his-efforts Montana Territory.

Sidney Edgerton and fate were responsible for the boundaries Montana claimed when it finally became a state in 1889, and this book dishes out a sample of whats contained within them 121 years later. My goal with this book, now in print for some years now, has always been to showcase a spicy mixture of the states diverse attractions while emphasizing lesser-known places of both the natural and human-made varieties. Where well-known destinations, such as Glacier National Park, are included, Ive highlighted features overlooked by the majority of visitors.