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all right hello and thank you for logging on to the library's third montana conversations of the summer montana towns then now and always this event is sponsored by the belgrade community library foundation and presented with humanities montana funding for the montana conversations program is provided by humanities montana through grants from the national endowment for the humanities montana's cultural trust and private donations my name is sarah creech and i am the adult services librarian for the belgrade library we are proud to bring this program to the belgrade community and the montana community i know that not everyone logging on today lives in belgrade um in general just because montana's history is quite expansive we agree with humanity's montana's stance that we are in the homelands of indigenous people and we want to offer our respect for their history and culture understanding where we have come from will help us learn and grow making way for future generations successes one of the attendees at the humanities montana town hall today mentioned that montana is a state with low population over a large land mass and this statement rings true for me and hopefully this talk will help us glimpse some of the struggles that come along with that now a little about our presenter hal stearns is an educator for 34 years um and an instructor for the university of montana's lifelong learning institute and humanities montana he has a particularly fond interest in sharing his passion for montana and the west and education with community members students teachers and administrators he has led tours coast to coast and lectured in over 40 states germany england japan korea and brazil his undergraduate degree is from the university of notre dame and his advanced degrees are from the university of montana his military schools include ocs command and general staff and the army war college if you are interested in signing up for the humanities montana monthly email their diy humanities weekly email or the library's monthly newsletter please let me know i'm happy to sign up sign you up for that and i am going to drop a link in the chat box right now and will again at the end for the post attendee survey take a minute at the end of the event to submit your thoughts so humanities montana and the library can continue the excellent programming that we both strive to provide i will keep an eye on the chat box during hal's initial presentation keeping note of any questions that come up during that time please make sure you are muted and that your webcam is turned off for this first part just so that the recording of the presentation portion is clear and then when hal opens it up to questions we'll start with the ones that come up throughout the program but uh my understanding is that he's open to them um throughout so if you have questions um feel free to unmute yourself and ask and then um when he does open it up we'll go with the ones that came through chat and then uh from there we'll keep going so i'm gonna make sure that everybody's muted and they are and i'm gonna turn off videos that i see and then we will get started so take it away hal okay well first of all i am delighted to be here with everybody um i am in love with montana towns i'm flat out i'm just like john steinbeck i'm just flat out in love with montana so what i'd like to do is to take you all on a little trip if we can get things going here um so uh toponymy now that's one of my very favorite ones that's the study of place names i'm always looking about place names so i carry with me all the time a book that i call my right that is named montana place names from alzada desortman a montana historical society guide and i use it everywhere as i travel along montana because i'm just fascinated with names now the corners of montana my dad uh later in life uh he was quite proud of his son with his doctorate that i finally since i taught montana in the west you finally have seen all the corners of montana yes dad from yak the northwest al zaida to the southeast west be way up in the northeast corner monida way down south of dillon but some say darby now because bonaire doesn't have anybody living there anymore so anyway now you know the corners our smallest incorporated town wanted to change the name to joe because of the great football player joe montana never happened but the town is may one of my favorite little places the last county created in the license plate now if we have 56 counties you'd think license plate 56 would probably go the last one created it was petroleum county the number is 55. well silver bow is one and i promise you butte is never going to get rid of number one well our two most popular high s high school mascot names kind of an interesting one bulldogs and the panthers and we got plenty of both of them i'll tell you the town designed around a central block with the streets forming a radiant pattern from its corners like a mini washington dc it's just outside of great falls the town of sims it is an astounding little place to drive around the smallest state park that we have is just outside of boulder elkhorn number of miles from northwest to southeast now guess about that one northwest to southeast and you can just imagine how big this is going to be if we took a look at all all of america it's 884 miles that's all of new england half of pennsylvania and new york and that's where we are in terms of distance broadest the county seat of what county this one's a real toughy one it's powder river number nine i love that one powder river county seat of weibo that's another tuffy a lot of people have trouble with this one it's weibo number 52. now robbers roost very frequently visited by people kind of stands out there by itself anymore down in the sheridan twin bridges country in the world virginia city and that area of the world a little place called alder and why saint marie famous and in the news well there's a good reason for that one glasgow air force base the last air force base ever created in the united states military and it was very short-lived the town made famous because of the pig races you haven't been to bear creek you got to do it sometime the free enterprise raid on mine just outside of boulder and boy some people swear by it that it makes them feel a ton better than boulder montana so let's take a look now at just uh some of the ideas of where populations are in montana those circles represent the major population areas and in the greenish that part shows the areas they basically serve in one way or another now if you take a look at full and part-time employment you can see it by colors so wood product over there in the purple for example work your way across to the green for example you see where it says above its services manufacturing way over there on the left-hand side healthcare trade these are all the types of jobs that we have in montana this gives you a good clue of what we do for a living in montana and you can see it's a real interesting hodgepodge now if we take a look at jobs by county you can see that the number of jobs that are in billings for example the bozeman area and that includes belgrade uh butte silver bow the missoula bitter red valley of the kalispell area the helena great falls area that the bulk of jobs those big circles those tend to be the urban areas of montana and then employment change by region and you can see that really what we have tended to see is more health care jobs in most regions and we have the number of jobs in some ways are uncategorized because they could be services they could be in construction they go back and forth depending on how much mining we have going on how much lumbering we have going on but you can take a look at all of this can be documented where we get a sense of how people make a living in montana and how they have done it over a period of time so we can also do it in terms of the amount of money that people tend to make we can see where the growth is but also who pays the best so for example health care average pay about 50 000 today average earnings in montana though is about 36 000 so it can vary from one state to another very easily or one area of montana to the other now the montana wage gap compared to jobs across the united states also you can get a clue for us and you can see that we tend to be below the national standard in terms of the salaries that are made or the pay the people earn from one way or another if they're working out on their own now we can also do it then buy earnings and dividends and transfer payments like social security payment somebody's retired what do they get out of it you can get a sense of how people make a living as well that way now if we take a look at montana just as a state then you can see we have mountain montana then we have plains montana or as some will argue what we really have is three areas of montana we have mountain montana then the east we have plains montana and then in the middle we have mountains and plains or the isolated mountains montana is a huge state and we know it now here's another way and that is we just take a look at montana in terms of all of the major roads that we have and put towns along those roads it gives you kind of an idea of montana and you can see the number of areas of montana they're wide open particularly the great wide open area south of wolfpoint for example now everybody has their own towns i was born in haver raised in harlaton married a girl from glendive my wife was the head of the college in dillon we lived in helena when she was the commissioner of higher education grandparents from white hall the deer lodge valley between anaconda and near lodge of missoula we claim his home today now i was visiting with some friends down in the south a couple years ago we went into this restaurant they love to tease me being a montana boy and this lady came over and she saw him coming there was a big wink i think and she said really are you from davy crockett territory way up there in the north i said yes ma'am i am thank you very much kind of proud of that now here's a new yorker's idea of the united states and you can see it's all new england period and out here in montana the capital of montana's wyoming the capital of minnesota well there's no capital then you have california and then you have san francisco and then finally you have hollywood uninhabited areas or a bostonian's idea there's the western prairies and then it's all new england that's basically a view that some people might have of what we're all about too and of course a lot of people like teas and when i take them out on tours that we still have jackalopes out there and fur fish how the heck do you think a fish makes it in the wintertime you know it's not easy now another way to look at it is we just get a montana highway map and take a look at communities and highways and try to figure out where the highways go in montana so for across the northern tier of montana you have highway 2 you can see where the interstate highway is coming up from salt lake city heading up toward helena great falls or coming up from wyoming into billings or coming across from north dakota down along the yellowstone river and following now here's another way to look at things that is just throw a bunch of montana towns out there and you can see that oh my goodness belgrade is swallowed up by bozeman even in townsend and three fours all right well my hometown harleton at least made it now here's another way we can take a look at things and that is uh just take a look at communities i want to focus on glasgow for just a minute because it's kind of an interesting town this is what glasgow international airport that's what they like to call themselves and this is what the town looks like if we draw it out here's what it looks like from the air and the washington post said that it was in the middle of nowhere the town furthest in the united states from anywhere four and a half hours to any community of over 75 000 people scoby was second wolf point was third so montana got some dubious honor but what did the community of glasgow do we're going to live with it so here's another view of it from the air and they have these beautiful beautiful t-shirts that they sell because i love montana i love glasgow montana and here's what the nice motel in town is the old days of a depot in glasgow and they've got a lot of art on the buildings in glasgow and of course they have a lot of uh grain products that are shipped out of that area of the world the beautiful old hotel wonderful supper club in town and the high school the glasgow scotties beautiful little catholic church here that's been there forever and ever and ever then a neat little cinema and they say dagona we live in the middle of nowhere and we're proud of it and that t-shirt has really sold glasgow air force base 25 miles north of there the last of the air force bases created and i pointed this out to you that this um from the air look at it looks like a major metropolis doesn't it but let's get down and look at it welcome to st marie home of the adventurous that's what the bulk of it looks like today but the place to go and visit now you can visit some of these interesting places in montana and i always think that's kind of fun so here's a good old map of montana superimposed on all kinds of other things and i take a look at missoula where i live and we've got slant streets nobody ever talks about it very much but mostly this is a town that is laid out in squares but the slant streets because of a couple of ranchers who lived it and they wanted to visit with each other occasionally and that's why all the community got going in the first place and then just outside of missoula you have mill town which at one time was an absolute wreck it was one of the major cleanup sites of the united states and this community wanted to see something done so all the sediment coming from the clark fork of the columbia from mutant anaconda all of that and then the stockpiled mess that was there they worked hard at getting this done and this is what it looks like today a beautiful state park and it's just on the edge of a community and a lot of people within minutes go out to take a look at now this is the best i have in terms of the actual census and please fill out your senses and please be sure to encourage all of your neighbors but the best projection if we're lucky would be a million one hundred thousand if we had that our chances of getting two members of the house of representatives it could actually happen now if we take a look at population by square mile you can see billings and bozeman the helen area the great falls area the missoula area and the kalispell area that's it nothing else in terms of population of any size at all now here's another way to look at it if you take a look at the frontier counties of the united states you can see that basically montana is a frontier county more so than any other state in the united states now here's another way if we would have the 1.1 million if everybody filled out our census we would still have the 44th population in the united states out of all of the states of the union now we can look at it again here all the towns in montana now and you can see them by population again i've told you the major population centers that are there and then we could take a look at it another way and that is where are the power centers for politics and population so you're going to have more members of the state legislature coming from yellowstone county gallatin county lewis and clark missoula and the flathead followed by silver bow and by the area up around great falls cascade county than anywhere else that means the best representation now if you live up in northeastern montana your representation isn't going to be too hot i could tell you now here are the bigger towns of montana again and you can see if we have mountain ranges on there we have glacier on there yellowstone on there some say those are the two great anchors of montana why do people want to come out and see us you can see the milk in the missouri the flathead the clark four and you see the true missouri river working up in the yellowstone so these are major bodies f water now some say that if you take a look at montana we have nine tenths of the population within that cowboy boot that's the population base of montana so we could take a look at indian reservations and you can see the one little one there chippewa cree the landless headquartered now in great falls finally recognized after all these years but of course this would one time was all indian country so here are the montana anchors some will argue it's really yellowstone and glacier people come to montana why are you coming here well i'm coming here because i've got to go see the last of the glaciers for myself oh my goodness yellowstone everybody has to get the yellowstone you got to go and see old faithful and spend a couple of days looking around so there's yellowstone you can't beat it we all know it there's glacier we love that and now we can take a look at another way let's go up and take a look at westby which is way up in the northeast corner of montana and right on the edge of the town you leave montana turn around look at the other sign that says entering montana right up there you can see the sign that says entering north dakota so here's al zeda which is the southeast corner of montana and basically all you have down there is a good old cowboy bar and a little rodeo arena now you can take a look at um the here it is there's that bar you've got to stop it here's manita nobody's living there now and you can see this was the old school house one time oh boy i'd love to look at these old buildings darby which now says it's the um south west west corner of montana that's kind of reinventing itself as being kind of a community uh that really emphasizes the old west and there's beautiful homes down in that area of the world and then yak way up in northwest corner if you ever get to yak boy it's beautiful country but you work hard then you have to go into the dirty shame saloon you haven't been there you haven't been to yak i'll tell you so how did i become interested in rural america rural montana it was because i was a part of an institute when my wife was the head of wayne state college in nebraska i got really intrigued with the literature of rural nebraska and that's what really got me going on all of this so i've done quite a bit of studying trying to figure out populations so if you just take a look at one third of our population is seven communities then the next 14 communities from havard down to dillon look at that dillon down to 4 200 21 communities from billings over a hundred thousand down to dillon now look at this then we only have seven towns over ten thousand ten more over five four over four four more over three six over two thousand twelve more over fifteen hundred then think of incorporated communities 134 of them but look at how many unincorporated and many of you've been to places like garniel and savage and jackson and whitelash and zurich and redstone those are unincorporated communities but alive now larger than a village smaller than a town here's what a town is all about see if any of you identify with this if you had a skipped day everybody went uh-huh whole school after the graduation goes to the same party any house newer than 1980 is owned by rich people skip a class the whole town knows you before your mom you go snipe hunting you like to drive the three block drag uh-huh you know everybody in all four classes can't help but date a friend's ex-girlfriend never lock the doors three hour trip to the store you got to stop to talk with everyone in town more pickups than cars and you never give directions by street names we can probably identify with that so here are small town facts and this is where it gets kind of interesting aging populations little political clout lack of diversity older infrastructure so for example i have headlines that i could show you a bill offering incentives to address doctor shortages in small town montana another one montana fish physicians working to keep the economy fit by traveling from one place to another to help out 868 doctors in montana we have nine counties with no doctors at all none at all so why do small towns struggle well we know it used to be you came out you homesteaded 160 acres of land we keep buying buying buying because you're raising cows you're raising sheep you are in the not only the ag industry but you were also raising alfalfa wild hay huh the railroad was a reason for people to come out the loss of the mining the oil the timber often location makes all the difference in the world and the distance from anywhere so we know lewistown we used to say it was always the center of montana it's actually a a kitchen on in a hutterite colony just west of town but lewistown to great falls a hundred to billings 120 to bozeman 160 forever to missoula and that's the way people would see it if they saw lewistown as being the center of montana you travel now here's a montana job growth that's another way to look at it and you can see the biggest job growth is in gallatin county yellowstone county missoula lewis and clark and flathead then it goes to shoto county and then the rosebud area and that happened to be because of people being down there where we had that coal industry and then there's daniels county way up there why was that and that was because of all of the mining activity in the keystone pipeline and the rest of it now if you take a look at it in terms of school district look at this with 158 school districts double a 14 20 a 42 b 107 c and is there a possibility of d well some of these small ones have even been forced to join each other we have in montana only 14 schools with over a thousand students and you can see we have 54 schools with under 50 students so what do you think is going to be a real difficult issue for many places and that is finding teachers teachers are really hard to find in small towns and particularly up on the high line so the one room school 1918 there were 2793 of them now this was nationwide 200 of them are left in the united states and montana has more of them than any other state in the union the famous one-room schools here's what some of them look like in the olden days what they look like now empty of course i went just out the big timbers there that beautiful little uh museum they have just on the edge of the interstate here are some of the abandoned schools that we have oh boy when i was a kid we used to play ball against sumatra oh the shaman school which only closed about four years ago well another way to look at it we could do a profile of one town let's take superior because i just kind of like that town because it's halfway between billings and seattle and boise so it's kind of in the middle place all right here it is it's right along the clark fork of the columbia now if we take a look at it it has a community hospital and it has got the rail track going through there there's the clark fork river and it has a beautiful park and it's got a darn good little junior high school high school and this is what the main drag looks like and in the summer they have a terrific auto show that they have every year and there's the little community hospital but their big problem is doctors how do you keep them now here's what the school plant looks like here we are playing bald now here's my hometown of harlem growing up this was the letterhead of my parents newspaper any kind of mail that they sent out they're writing a letter somewhere this is what it looked like now on the back side of it it showed harlaton as being the center of the universe and i think that's the way most small towns see themselves as being the center of their own little mini universe so here's my little town from the air one of my closest friends who wrote a wonderful remembrance about the town this the old graves hotel when the railroad the milwaukee was going 105 miles an hour this was a great hotel it's completely abandoned today there's the main street look at it it's a busy day the old flower mill all that flower going to be shipped off to the twin cities that corners where all of us kids stood around during lunch hours or after school friday and saturday night the courthouse which at one time was the school the bear memorial clinic get that name bear b-a-i-r if it hadn't been for the famous charlie bear family there would be no hospital in harlem nor roundup nor white sulfur springs that family has given a tremendous amount to keep that those hospitals going now there's the present day school football field when i was a kid 11-man football eleven-man football guess what it went to eight-man football are you kidding me eight-man football now it's six man and harleton wouldn't even have football if it did not have rygate joining up from golden valley county at one time or another they wouldn't even talk to each other now they have to share so i looked at the way we built railroads this is the way the railroads looked in 1887. now look by 1898 and then look by 1910 now how many communities came around because of railroads a lot of them so here are the montana railroads in 1915. look at this all of those are communities along rail tracks and the great northern the northern pacific the milwaukee the burlington the utah all of them would stop in those little communities picking up people people getting off so now in my hometown of harlem you can see one of the old electric engines it just sits there well it was electrified from my hometown of harlem all the way to avery idaho my goodness that was 660 miles now we see these abandoned old section houses today that provided the power for those electrics and that's what the depot looked like so that was the glory days of my hometown i rode those dome liners a lot i did my undergraduate at notre dame i could get on the milwaukee five minutes from my house get off in chicago take a cab for about 10 minutes and get on another train for two hours and i would be in south bend indiana and the great northern and the northern pacific have wonderful wonderful superdomes just like the milwaukee well jim hill's great northern railway if you go up to haver you can see that great monument to jim hill right there you know his idea was he was going to have a railway that was going to be built all the way up there and we're going to make use of a lot of the possible traffic that would be not only northern montana but also glacier national park now that northern pacific railway boy there was one that carried an awful lot of folks carried a lot of coal carried a lot of wood different directions so now you know of course the burlington northern the bnsf and take a look at the trackage that's in montana today and only on that northern line do you see that infrequent traffic that is taken where you could have passenger service periodically somebody will say you know we need to bring the train back why the heck aren't we like china japan all over europe where you have great train service we don't we have a love affair with the automobile so my goodness what would it be like if we had that kind of train traffic today this might be an idea what it could be like yeah if people get on the train now here's another way to look at things we could have some interesting train traffic this way yeah now coal trains and amtrak montana we see a lot of those coal trains livingston there's a place that has been able to survive pretty well because this is where they do a lot of the maintenance work and they have done a beautiful job with that great little museum that railway museum right in downtown livingston boy well hi frank how's life in the past lane well that's me i spent a lot of my time in the past lane but that's what historians often do so history is kind of an ongoing puzzle so what should we visit all right we want to pay attention to montana the little big horn the nez first trail the early mining camps the caverns the state parks the museums the homesteads the ranches the big towns the little towns and of course everybody's familiar with sitting bull to tonka and george armstrong custer and this was the most famous piece of artwork there was in america in the 1880s 1890s now we go down to the battlefield today here's the famous nes first war joseph and the nez perce an unbelievable story and of course our ghost towns now let's take a look at a few of those kinds of ghost towns the famous one two dot oh there's the two dot bar out on the highway there on highway 12 it says two dot bar easy to find hard to leave now here's the old mining camp of garnet uh just about 45 50 minutes outside of missoula and it's been well restored because of a lot of people who have joined a society who said we want this mining camp to be around a lot of visitation in the summer too now here's bannon bannock state park we're familiar with that today part of the state parks of montana and here's dortmund landusky which we've just let go ahead and fall apart but boy there's a great story up in that area and here's the parrot smelter down the south and west of present-day dylan another one that would have a great story to it and of course butte beautiful butte there it is and it's got a great museum there and it's people pay two dollars two dollars and fifty cents to go out and so they can take a look at the largest superfund site in the united states there it is beautiful but america the pit now let's take a look at some of the issues that often impact montana towns than now tomorrow and that is if we did have a keystone pipeline you can see that it would impact montana because it would go right across that northeastern corner of montana which would mean jobs so that's one way but go down and take a look at the area where you would be in nebraska in nebraska western nebraska has the great underground water system called the ogallala now if there was a leak of a keystone the ogallala would be dead if the ogallala is dead that means all of ranching in western nebraska is done so see it here's another way to look at it now this kind of damage could be in a lot of different places but on the other hand it provides a lot of different kinds of jobs so um so now let's take a look at another area and that is if we take a look at what we have in terms of that mining in the great williston basin now here's the bakken there's the williston and you can see the impact of places like glasgow sydney glendive mile city and i've known people that live in western montana that have worked over there in that bakken that come home every other weekend for three days they work straight through for 12 days and get a couple of days off and here's some of the possible reserve areas that be out there in terms of areas that you might be able to see possibility of getting minerals now here's the bakken and the man camps and we know if you've been to williston in a long time you know things have slipped considerably here is the little town of bainville that was really gonna make it they thought slipped away though the golden sunlight mine just outside of whitehall owned by a company out of australia now the price of gold is up they work price is down no work right now things have calmed down in terms of very very little mining activity also now you have to restore everything now here's down at nine near the columbus area palladium the only site that we have anywhere for this and a product that is much needed and here's coal strip now if all are aware of the fact that two of those big old smelters you see over there are all done cold strip in an earlier day and age though everybody believed this is go on forever and this is going to be an unbelievable cleanup but if you go and take a look at the little town of cole strip the town is really well laid out beautiful school plant oh my goodness but jobs aren't like they used to be now here's the new energy world there's the judah gap wind farm wind farms are coming in big time in a lot of different places and what about solar energy we see this in many places and it's going to continue to grow so i'm going to go back now and do a case study with you here's white sulphur springs now there's the castle built by a guy who was only going to get his scottish girlfriend and that's where he migrated from to come to the new world if she could have a scottish castle al of her own and he built it for and down there in the bottom you see the old railway days from the ringling brothers circus and there's the main street of the community of white sulphur springs so the museum is up there in that old castle today that's a beautiful place to go and visit sometime and there you can go and see one of the famous old mills from the days when um we used to do an awfully lot of that timber work right there in the spot just two miles out of town you can go and see this beautiful old plant and here's the wonderful hot springs going way back to indian days natural hot water and it's a beautiful little place to stay now it's all fed by that hot water cleared out every night at 11 o'clock at new fresh water the next day at 6 00 a.m and they've got a neat little brewery in town now why are things looking pretty good here because of red ants pants this great little women's wear business and they have brought in unbelievable talent to little old white sulphur springs montana and let's put the little town on the map now music festival nitty gritty dirtband we've all heard of them i mean these these are big time outfits that come in there now here's the next issue though the smith river now if you've never done a float to the smith river then you gotta get put in for it because there's only a certain number that are allowed on the river each day that's it so it's a lottery system a blue ribbon trout fishery you get on the river and you'll if you see anybody else on the river because it's spaced in such a way that you feel like you own the river to yourself oh the country you go through is absolutely gorgeous uh-uh but now the hot potato an outfit called tintina resources black butte copper a copper project and you've seen the advertising in a lot of different places this is the hot potato would it be responsible development taking waterways to develop this copper and they have found good copper deposit but what would happen if some of the water polluted gets down into the smith river which is a hundred and forty miles of absolute treasure one of the great treasures that we have anywhere so take a look at it there's great falls helena townsend bozeman livingston white sulphur black butte and you take a look at where the mining would be mar county montana wow a lot of jobs now here's another case study okay now look at this this doesn't look like much at all does it well fort shaw now fort shaw this is an intriguing place because at fort shaw this is where some of the earliest military training was done here's the old fort shaw walls nothing has happened with fort shot nobody's ever paid much attention to it but when you go over and take a drive around there a little bit has it got some great history including the government industrial indian school and here was a very special place because the great story of the 1904 fort shaw indian girls the first world champions came out of fort shaw montana indian girls taught to play basketball by the superintendent of the indian school and they went to st louis and won it all never done much of a job at telling this story though and here they are those were the indian girls that won it all now here's another one fort assiniboine eight miles outside of haver now we let this one just kind of go very very little historic documentation out here but at one time this was a major major training area for the military and a guy by the name of blackjack pershing was located at fort assiniboine where did he get the name world war one thing because the first unit he commanded after he got out of west point was it ford assiniboine on all black african-american unit now let's go into haver just nine miles away and have her beneath the streets is amazing and you can see a buffalo jump that is right on the edge of their shopping center now look at that neat little sign there in the middle and it looks like hammer's just booming doesn't it but here's a problem here's the mall remember when we had a herb burgers all done then same way for a big k a mile away kmart is not around anymore now kmart got eaten up by walmart which was right next door now here's the montana cattle kingdom there's another way to look at it this brought an awful lot of people out here to the west cattle brands all over the place and here's maine greg sometimes you get a story told in a very special way the little town of terry look at this cool little place because of a woman by the name of evelyn cameron who came from money she and her husband came from the british isles they were going to raise racehorses and she ended up being out there in the ranch the only woman what she could do with her time and she took up photography and one of the most wonderful photographers we have ever had and she captured the american west like very few others unreal to see the photography of this astounding evelyn cameron look at this a working cattle ranch and only the owner and his wife there the right hand side had to be pretty lonely for her i'll tell you but boy she captured it well there's charlie russell's last of the five thousand waiting for a chinook so here's the homestead era that brought a lot of people out and a lot of little towns go to the land of opportunity let's head to montana raised in chicago out so much as a backyard to play in when i heard you could get 320 acres just by living on i felt had been offered a we're going to build a community schools good roads good homes we knew we had a great country but this is what homesteading really was that little shack down on the bottom the one room school how far away from a doctor a midwife and yet we created counties like crazy a guy by the name of daniel mckay who was responsible for the creation of 18 montana counties he owned a brickyard grilled a white horse and he advocated for county creation who do you think is going to build the courthouses though daniel mckay well look at there boys of my gang were torn between the desire to own a stanley steamer and the wish to continue living yeah car for the mountains and then everybody was ever involved as a county commissioner the roads always the roads good roads will decrease profanity discouragement back taxes share of sales sour grapes and crouches and then the wind and then the drought a hard hard land 20 miles from water 40 from wood we're leaving dry montana or leaving her for good yet every one of us loves to get lost in montana we love our small towns think of lewistown maine drag lewistown read point how many people go and watch all those sheep go running are down a main gray missoula with this the first hand carved carousel since the 1930s the big hole and watching a beaver slide in action as you put up the hay the 10 000 haystacks fort benton that wonderful little community the end of the steamboat coming up from saint louis story galore and that hotel oh the story of the ever faithful companionship the dog who waited for his master to return a fella passed away body ship back to iowa where he was from and the buffalo hunters and of course the buffalo nickel that's a fort benton story because guess what at the montana egg museum there that is the bison the hornady bison that's the one for the nickel a montana animal and then of course look at our magnificent white cliffs of the missouri the tragedy i hate to show this one because you see that little partial circle there some yahoos up there beer cans were found when they ripped the top off of that oh but we have the white cliffs 147 miles of some of the most beautiful area of the world on a trip that i had with people one time lady on the trip i never forgot this i'd been telling stories and everybody's ready to go to sleep at night everybody's looking up at the heavens heavens and this lady said this is the first time i have ever heard the silence but we've got that in montana palm bay's pillar where clark signed his name whitehall neat little town with its great little museum but more so the murals that it has all over town telling the story of the lewis and clark expedition passing through that area beautiful work or the lincoln grizz right up the road in lincoln montana how many people have to stop and see this cruz that was killed when a guy driving to work from lincoln down to missouri had a big pickup he hit that guy largest of all of the grizz the wood sculpture garden right outside of lincoln the beautiful military museum in helena montana the dogs of ward crim camp rimini charlotte on the flathead reservation the marine memorial the charlo family one of those five was a kid who came from charlotte montana to put up that famous famous flag idiojima his name was louis charlotte the town of charlotte well the changing face of montana the prairie cathedrals in the old days when we used to have those old old ways of storing our green there they are that's the prairie cathedral now look at them huge there's one of them blocking off a good view of pompei's pillar by the way so here's somewhere montana and there's anywhere montana there's darby's new old town and medicine lake the spring home of the pelican neat town twin bridges the great racehorse spokane 1889 won the kentucky derby out of twin bridges montana ekalaka and what a fabulous dinosaur museum they have in ikalaka chinook home of the sugar beaters just can't even imagine how you could be a mascot looking like that people have the big dream that they were going to make it in the sugar beet game whitehall has a stack like that so does hamilton there's a little old albertan hundred thousand used books for sale the jersey lily recently closed by the way i don't know people somebody's gonna pick it up again or not if you're going to use the bathroom you're going to have to use the old outhouse out back and they always had the pot of bean soup on troy the lowest elevation highest in recreation neat town now football stadiums and we've got some fabulous ones the only is that a couple years ago did a piece on the great football stages in montana and the one that is the one down on the bottom right d you could play a college football game there and feel like you were playing on the best place going that's the one in glenda of montana built by a fella who did very well in the insurance business grew up in glendive and then went off to play college football and in the pros kremlin and hingham typical little montana towns flaxville judith gap little of martinsdale wonderful little place the crazy mountain inn a little railway depot right there that charlie bear is telling you about keeping those hospitals going you could visit the bear mansion that home oh my goodness it is a stunning place to go visit and there's little o sims montana the miniature washington dc there's a favorite place culbertson they have any kind of an event everybody shows love that little town plenty wood another one look at that long road to anywhere somewhere or nowhere and you know sometimes we feel a little bit like some of our communities are just kind of swallowed up well there's a lot of things i don't know much about i promise you that but i do know that i have a love affair with montana somebody a few years ago in the montana legislature came up with this idea instead of 56 counties let's have 18 counties that didn't get very far you can imagine never even got out of committee but we do know this and that is population is on the move the opportunities for education jobs are happiness why do you live where you live what are the places because you wanted to get away from something the out of doors the nice place just to live family friends schools what do you like most about your community well the economic opportunity bigger town family outdoors natural amenities rural character what do you like the least now look at these the adverse natural conditions the lack of economic opportunity growth just ain't gonna happen seems like there is a poor social climate in the area what's your reason for staying the rural character darn good schools nice place to live employment and then when do you want to leave i want to just get away go to somewhere else or finish school anywhere others economic opportunity so some young people insist they won't move leave home earl montana unless yeah it's hell many young people leave rural towns do so in part because of the slow pace boring so case studies i like the livingston i use this one as kind of an interesting little case study it's close to you folks is this a town in some ways really kind of reinvented invented all over and you've all been there you've seen it i love to see what they've even done with kind of refreshing some of the ghost art on the side of buildings so here's my idea toolbox for you how do montana towns thrive and this is for belgrade community pride you invest in the future you participate community decision maker you support your education programs an active economic development emphasis on the next generation of leaders adequate healthcare preserve the tradition a sound infrastructure information resources why come here to live or work seeking help learning from the outside convict conviction that we've got to step up and do it so how do you engage you join the school a lot of ways by going to the school dance just to watch to go to the ball game join the chamber local coffee club and talk about what can we do to make our town better be a member of kiwanis or rotary you partner up for earth day and food banks and community dinners be bold and creative come up with the ideas get people together to talk about it anytime that you could bring people together with the word of anne so the english teacher and the writer the football team in the business community the fishing shop and the biology teacher known silos we got to recognize we're one community the social contract and the social contract is the voluntary agreement for people to work to gather for mutual benefit of everybody so little livingston pubs the famous beaver creek brewery in weibo has made weibo come alive we've got these little brew pubs all over the place and that's getting people to come in of all ages and talk to each other it can make a difference and we got some cool little places i'll tell you this one's kind of neat this is in deer lodge what a spot so here's another case study here's a little low scoby the daniels county courthouse which years ago happened to be a brothel interestingly enough but look at scoby look at that main drag the whole town gets out together and cleans it up a couple of times a year and they have their own little montana history village right on the edge of the town and then they have a beautiful nine-hole golf course in scobie and here's eureka another place that is dolled up downtown i'm going to be speaking in eureka on sunday night at an outdoor amphitheater that they have i'm looking forward to it it is a special cool little place but people work together and there's the great peaborg look at p bird boy have they done a nice job with that little town because because a lot of people work together i'll tell you but the thing is their school enrollment is going down and if you don't have young families it's tough to make places go and then i love to go and visit courthouses doll em up here's the one in great falls if there's black eagle in the smelter when it was when it had the smelter tell your story the lewis and clark interpretive center and charlie russell in the giant springs and fergus county in carter county in rosebud in richland courthouses are special tool and lincoln and teton and rav valley anaconda dear lodge done a nice job with deer lodge the grand coors ranch the yucca theater and heisha my own hometown harlot the only reason this town still has a theater is because it's managed by high school students so travel montana get yourself your good old montana place names get out and see it get montana behind the scenes and make your town happen yep there's a lot of great stories out there what a montana story the love affair blind your ponies stanley gordon west passed away just a few weeks ago the willow creek cafe and saloon with a bicycle out in the front i had to go and see it for myself little ringling and then there's a chakra leader in 1833 said the crow country good country the great spirit is put in exactly the right place that's montana by the way the big open in northeastern montana we've got all these wonderful places this is in sydney because of course hope they were going to make it big time because of the bakken slipped away i think they had were dreaming a little bit too much eyes were too open they had to think their way through about is this going to be a win one lose one or here one moment and gone the next we have too many places like this in montana too many little places that just sit there well those old saloons ball got a couple of good stories to them yep two dead bar easy to find and hard to leave well what about small towns i guess that's enough of this they often die slowly and often painfully small towns are too often like a person with a long wilderness too often um small towns though have another positive side they're the center of american values the country heart the close-knit the caring the ag and the rural life coming together you know when you stop and think about it every community has something special and belgrade's a classic illustration you live in a neat neat place you know when you think about your population i looked this all up because i was very curious in 2010 7 400 people in 2020 expected that you're gonna have almost ten thousand you're the eighth largest community in montana in belgrade yeah 3150th in the united states population increase has been considerable between 2010 2020 30 percent the largest montana town without a county seat the unmanned railway sighting almost 10 miles west of bozeman and you know you think of the serbian investors in the northern pacific coming together and incorporating it um i think of that the international airport which of course has bozeman's name to it bozeman yellowstone of course it's adjacent to your city boundary but it hits me that the bulk of the history and there's some wonderful history in all that area but the gallatin history museum downtown bozeman and then of course the museum of the rockies wow um you know it hits me that you've got a magnificent special events center i remember a few years ago i wanted to go to a basketball tournament because i wanted to see classy ball and i went and i sat down and i just started visiting with some of the locals and we sure had a lot of fun shooting the breeze so it was state was in missoula this year i was there so it hits me that with your speedway on the outskirts of town and your fall festival you got some neat things going um and you know you're the home of the panthers you know which is and i love that story that little piece of history you know you got to tell your history stories i never knew this until i did a little research and that is that famous the belgrade bull that black and white holstein that no cowboy could ride you know right off the old bozeman trail and then here came this guy this mexican writer who wrote him i guess that into that whole show but uh you know you're a community that is a bit cheaper than say bozeman you're younger than bozeman turned to population you've still got that small town atmosphere and yet you've got the larger town advantage right next door to you well i said it was going to take me one hour and i was going to do it and i just did it in one hour and one minute and 13 seconds now i'll shoot the breeze about any with anybody about anybody that wants to talk about anything hello well thank you yeah that's awesome how are you hi yeah we're great um we have a comment that just came in um what a wonderful presentation certainly makes me want to explore our wonderful state thank you so much and would love to have a recording of this it will be listed on our library youtube channel and if you attended today's session unregistered through the google form i will be sending out the link so look for that probably tomorrow afternoon it'll take us a little while in the morning to get it uploaded but it will be in your inbox tomorrow um when we have our two other humanities montana montana conversations um on our website or on our youtube channel as well so anyone have any questions for hal i was thrilled that you mentioned the belgrade bull we actually just had a local campaign to have one of our local artists our our main local artist wendy marquis who actually stopped in for a bit i saw her name pop up she uh painted a mural for our um main street and now the belgrade bowl is immortalized on our uh the side of a building so you can't miss it when you drive through town now um carmen has a question thought about kovid's impact on montana are you there can you hear me yes yeah okay well obviously it's the largest larger communities that kind of pay the price and for exactly the same reasons that you've seen we have mirrored every other big place and that is if you go to uh centers like rest homes older people and if somebody's been a carrier that gets in there my goodness the impact on family can be astounding and so that's a big one now the big question mark will be let's say the montana state bobcats so the university of montana grizzlies just as two examples that if you get people in confined spaces like that that we could have the same type of a thing of a lot of other places where you get people in a confined area so if we were going to have college football this fall i have no idea about what kind of crowds we would have so in a way i think we're a microcosm of what is in other places i pay attention every chance i get to take a look at what numbers do we see in montana counties and interestingly enough it tends to be the counties like flathead and gallatin yellowstone missoula those are the ones where you tend to have the greater number of cases they also tend to have more and more of folks hanging in the outdoor bar areas where they can sit around have a cold wind and shoot the breeze with each other so i think we're just like everybody else and i just pray that we're going to be able to get out of this thing with no more loss of human life oh this is the 1918 flu epidemic all over again and i can still remember as a kid playing golf with my dad in my little hometown and my dad was a pretty darn good golfer but he hooked one into the old old cemetery of the town it was right in the middle of the golf course believe it or not we went through the barbed wire fence and he said now son we're not going to pay any attention to finding that golf ball i'll never find it i'm just going to take a penalty but i want you to take a look at the number of people dying in 1918. i never forgot how many of those tombstones said 1918. we better be careful or we could repeat yeah thank you who else has got one um caroline bits has said great presentation something for all montanans and has a question have you ever thought about including the jefferson city tiger botanical garden and arboretum in your presentation yeah i really should because that that is a gem the only thing is there's a there are several other things that i should actually include too because we've really got uh a number of uh fabulous uh places in montana to include i could only give a little bit but that would be a gem of one that i would be well worth it for me to include i'll take that one on and then uh just a few other comments very informative great job love montana learned about some new areas to visit and then thank you you're a wealth of knowledge and share your knowledge in an engaging way um just so everyone has it again i will share the follow-up survey again in the chat if you don't mind taking a minute it really does help get humanities montana more funding from the um their funders and then it helps the library learn as well so if you have a moment to fill that out any other questions or comments i have one i liked how you started how with uh the different maps i actually have a map in my bedroom or you know a play on a map of ithaca new york where i grew up um and it's you know shows downtown ithaca and then in the outskirts of it it's like these things are really close like long island is right next door and florida's right next door and boston and then oh over here there's spain and and ireland but everything's all close together because it uh but ithaca's huge on the map so i appreciated that uh it was fun to see some other ones anybody else i'll leave you just with john steinbeck i have a love affair with montana with other states i have respect even admiration but with it but with montana it's love if montana only had a seacoast or i could live away from the sea i would immediately apply for admission of all the states montana is my favorite and my love good way to eat yeah thank you and thank you everybody for joining us um like i said you'll get an email with the youtube presentation afterwards and um i'll send the survey again um tomorrow afternoon so thank you hal for joining us and we hope to see you all soon at another humanities montana or belgrade community library event in the future okay see ya bye everybody