Montana Trivia & Tidbits - Page 9

Looking for Montana trivia? Try our list Montana little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Miles City (pop. 8,487), named after Col. Nelson Appleton Miles (1839-1925), was established in 1877. Filled with saloonkeepers, soldiers on leave, gamblers and "soiled doves," the town was a source of irritation for the colonel. As an advocate of temperance, Miles prohibited the sale of alcohol near his cantonment (temporary camp) at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone rivers and later at nearby Fort Keogh.

first appeared: 1/16/2005

Col. Nelson Appleton Miles’ campaigns in Montana led to victories against Sitting Bull at Cedar Creek, Crazy Horse at Wolf Mountains and Lame Deer at Muddy Creek. After the Indian Wars, Miles rose to commanding general of the Army in 1895 and lieutenant general in 1900. The warrior, called a "brave peacock" by President Theodore Roosevelt, died of a heart attack while escorting his grandchildren to the circus in Washington, D.C.

first appeared: 1/16/2005

Actor-director Peter Fonda received the Gary Cooper Spirit of Montana Award in September 2004, when the HatcH Audiovisual Arts Festival, held in Bozeman (pop. 27,509), recognized his help to aspiring filmmakers.

first appeared: 1/2/2005

Actor Gary Cooper, for whom the Spirit of Montana Award is named, was born in Helena (pop. 25,780) on May 7, 1901. He appeared in 92 films, including starring roles in The Virginian (1929), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and High Noon (1952).

first appeared: 1/2/2005

Peck’s Rex, the 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil discovered near Fort Peck (pop. 240) in 1997, is one of the most complete skeletons of the dinosaur ever found, with more than 80 percent of it recovered. University of Notre Dame paleontologist J. Keith Rigby led the crew that uncovered the bones.

first appeared: 12/19/2004

A 1930s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers laundry building near Fort Peck Dam is now a paleontology field station. The large building allows Fort Peck Paleontology Inc. to store and catalog fossil finds from the area, assemble dinosaur skeletons and prepare replicas of the bones for museums and researchers around the world.

first appeared: 12/19/2004

The night before the freestyle aerial demonstration at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 18-year-old Eric Bergoust from Missoula (pop. 57,053) slept in a field outside the ski jump facility so that he could be the first person through the gate to see the event. At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he won the sport’s gold medal.

first appeared: 12/5/2004

Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition wrote that Tower Rock, southwest of Cascade (pop. 819), marked the gateway between the plains and the Rocky Mountains. Lewis noted immense herds of buffalo below him when he climbed the 424-foot granite outcropping in July 1805 to take astronomical observations. Tower Rock and its surrounding 137 acres were officially named a state park in February.

first appeared: 11/21/2004

Two hundred Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles are located in silos in a 23,000-square-mile area stretching into nine Montana counties and controlled by the 341st Space Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base near Great Falls (pop. 56,690). President Kennedy called the missile program, which began in the 1960s with Minuteman I, the nation’s "ace in the hole."

first appeared: 11/7/2004

Bluebunch wheatgrass was designated the state’s official grass in 1973. The native wheatgrass grows abundantly throughout the state and provides excellent feed for livestock.

first appeared: 10/24/2004

Measuring 585 feet high and 86 feet across its base, the smokestack at the Anaconda Copper Mining Co.’s smelter, near Anaconda (pop. 9,417), is one of the world’s tallest freestanding masonry structures. In operation from 1919 to 1980, it was designated a state monument in 1985.

first appeared: 10/10/2004

With slope pitches up to 50 degrees and all of its runs considered advanced-intermediate to expert, Red Lodge International Ski and Snowboard Camp is one of North America’s steepest training sites. The camp’s elevation of almost 11,000 feet on Beartooth Pass, near Red Lodge (pop. 2,177), allows it to remain open even in July.

first appeared: 10/3/2004

In 2001, PBS Television sent three families to an isolated valley near Big Timber (pop. 1,650), where they spent six months recreating life as it was in 1883 on the Rocky Mountain frontier. The families “trained” at the restored ghost town of Nevada City, learning skills such as animal husbandry, wood stove cooking and carpentry. The Frontier House series first aired in 2002.

first appeared: 9/19/2004

Author Alfred Bertram Guthrie Jr. (1901-1991) grew up in Choteau (pop. 1,781), where his affection for Montana and the Rocky Mountains would later appear in books such as The Big Sky. In 1950, he won a Pulitzer Prize for The Way West and earned an Academy Award nomination in 1953 for his screenplay adaptation of Shane.

first appeared: 9/12/2004

When Mel Ruder, publisher of the Hungry Horse News in Columbia Falls (pop. 3,645), won a Pulitzer Prize in 1965 for his coverage of devastating 1964 floods in the region, he donated the $1,000 cash prize to his local library. The newspaper, which Ruder founded in 1946, is one of a few in the nation still published in a log building.

first appeared: 9/5/2004

The Hungry Horse News shares its name with a creek, lake, mountain, dam and the town of Hungry Horse (pop. 934), the result of two freight horses becoming lost in the Flathead region in belly-deep snow during the winter of 1900. They were found a month later, weak and hungry.

first appeared: 9/5/2004

In 1926, construction workers building U.S. Highway 87 found the remains of an unknown soldier, killed in the Battle of the Little Bighorn—also known as Custer’s Last Stand—50 years earlier. The remains were buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, located on the battlefield in the town of Garryowen, near Hardin (pop. 3,384).

first appeared: 8/29/2004

Garryowen, a privately owned town, was named for a traditional Irish song titled Garry Owen—Gaelic for “Owen’s Garden”—which was one of Lt. Col. George Custer’s favorite marching songs.

first appeared: 8/29/2004

In 2003, Xanterra Parks and Resorts, a park management company, transported 550,000 pounds of material from Yellowstone National Park to a collection station in Gardiner (pop. 851) for recycling—including 6 tons of aluminum and steel cans, 63 tons of glass and 58 tons of mixed paper, along with batteries, antifreeze and paint solvents.

first appeared: 8/22/2004

Football player Jerry Kramer, born in 1936 in Jordan (pop. 364), made the NFL’s all-pro team five times during his career from 1958 to 1968 with the Green Bay Packers. He made one of football’s most famous blocks—helping quarterback Bart Starr score the winning touchdown—in the 1967 NFL championship game.

first appeared: 8/15/2004

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