I have always enjoyed exploring Blaine County, Montana. In earlier posts I have discussed such famous places as the Fort Belknap Reservation, and Harlem, its north gateway town, as well as Hays near the south end of the reservation and … Continue reading
Hinsdale (just over 200 people in Valley County) and Saco (just under 200 people in Phillips County) are two country towns along the Hi-Line between the much larger county seats of Glasgow and Malta. I have little doubt that few … Continue reading
The Hi-Line is Montana’s major northern transportation corridor–first carved by the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway in the 1880s and then extended by the Great Northern Railway a decade late. Today most travelers use U.S. Highway 2, which largely … Continue reading
This week’s Great Falls Tribune featured a story about the heavy snowfall this here in Havre, the largest town along Montana’s Hi-Line. The story got me thinking about this classic late nineteenth century railroad town, one of my favorite places to … Continue reading
The 21st century boom in the Williston Basin has significantly reshaped western North Dakota, and as that region “fills up,” the boom has spread into far eastern Montana, especially along the Hi-Line corridor of U.S. Highway 2 and the historic … Continue reading
When I encountered the northern prairie of Roosevelt County in 1984, it was difficult to tear your eyes from the omnipresent tracks of the Great Northern Railway. The trains roared past regularly, and the tracks defined space and town location … Continue reading
Glasgow, the seat of Valley County, has a rich small-town urban landscape, among the best along the Hi-Line of U.S. Highway 2. Although businesses and population has struggled since I spent time there during my 1984 fieldwork (the population dropped … Continue reading
Phillips County is one of my favorite places along the Hi-Line. The Milk River Valley is beautiful; the high plains at Loring and Whitewater are lonesome yet compelling. Empty I guess is how many would describe the county as just … Continue reading
Whenever travelers or residents for that matter talk about Hi-Line towns, Havre, Shelby, Glasgow, Wolf Point always enter the conversation. Some places, inexplicably to my mind, never do: Harlem is a case in point. A gateway to the Fort … Continue reading
Chinook, the seat of Blaine County, has long been among my favorite Hi-Line towns. Certainly there is the Elk Bar, with its cowgirl in the champagne glass neon sign,–is there a better bar sign in the Big Sky Country? But … Continue reading
Montana's Historic Landscapes 