MONTANA

Makoshika State Park

The name of this area comes from the Lakota maco sica, which means “bad land” or “land of bad spirits.” Located near Glendive, in eastern Montana, Makoshika offers camping, disc golf and hiking, including the Montana dinosaur trail.

Missoula

TOP: Surfing and kayaking on the Clark Fork River, downtown Missoula; ABOVE, left: Green study; ABOVE, right: Americana (including my home for the night, Motel 6).

Butte

The Salish people, who mostly settled near Missoula, used the Butte area for hunting and fishing. In the 1860s, it was a gold and silver mining camp, but by the 1880s had attracted people from Europe and Asia to mine its abundant copper. In 1888, Butte mined $23 million worth of copper — or so says Wikipedia.

ABOVE: left: Butte in 1942 (public domain photo); right: Butte in 2022. BELOW: The Hotel Finlan, built in 1924, was modeled after the Astor Hotel in New York City.

Forsyth

Forsyth, population 1,900, bills itself “The City of Trees.” It might better tout its position along the Yellowstone River — but who asked me? Montanahistoriclandscapes.com informs me that “The county seat of Forsyth is a Northern Pacific Railroad town from 1881.  For its first generation, it was a rather minor place stuck as it was between Miles City to the east and Billings to the west: there is no census data for Forsyth before 1900.  But in the early 1900s, two developments changed Forsyth’s fate: the arrival of the Milwaukee Road, which cut a new path through the county north of the Yellowstone before turning northwest at Forsyth, and then the homestead boom of the 1910s, which county leaders wanted to take advantage of to change their fortunes.”

According to Montanahistoricandscape.com, “The Howdy Hotel (1903-1906) is a rare surviving small-town “booster” hotel, built to impress traveling businessmen that Forsyth was a place of promise.  Designed by the Billings firm of Link and Haire, the building’s classic Renaissance Revival look was impressive for a small Montana town.

“The Howdy is an amazing historic hotel featuring low price rooms, amazing home cooked meals in the restaurant, The Speedway Cafe,” according to its Facebook site. On July 4, 2018, a member of the hotel cafe’s media staff, feeling “Patriotic,” posted the photo above, declaring, “We hope everyone had a great Fourth of July We all got time to enjoy the festivities and an AWESOME meal followed by these yummy treats! Smoothies and jello shoots! God bless the USA! Thanks Ashley for making it extra special and awesome food!”

A storm approaches, gracing the landscape with an eerie light as I drive east toward North Dakota.