Montana Place Names: From Alzada to Zortman

by Montana Historical Society Press, Montana Historical Society Press Staff, Rich Aarstad, Ellie Arguimbau, Ellen Baumler

Overview

Among Montana’s most enduring legacies are the names assigned to its geographic features and places found on the state map. As long as humans have inhabited Montana they have named places. While the past two centuries have changed the way people live in Montana, the names given to some rivers, mountain ranges, cities, and towns have persisted, while others have changed with time. Naming Montana explores the origins of more than 1,000 Montana place names, drawing upon the knowledge of Montana Historical Society historians and the expertise of local historians from across the state. This new publication includes both geographic features, selected historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, historic photographs, and maps. The authors’ extensive research illuminates the stories behind the names of places that we call home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780975919613
Publisher:	Montana Historical Society Press
Publication date:	07/15/2009
Series:	Montana Historical Society Guide
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	683,179
Product dimensions:	6.08(w) x 9.04(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

For more than two years, five staff members from the Montana Historical Society Research Center in Helena researched Montana’s varied place names. Using a Montana state highway map as their guide, they set out to find the history behind the naming of more than 1,000 Montana places. Collectively, the authors represent decades of archival and historical research experience.

Read an Excerpt

Since the early nineteenth century, explorers and surveyors placed names on their maps of the region of North America that would become Montana Territory in 1864. Among the earliest mapmakers, Lewis and Clark arrived in 1804–1806, David Thompson of the North West Fur Company followed shortly. Geographic features dominate those maps, especially rivers and mountain ranges. Father Pierre DeSmet, a Jesuit missionary, arrived on the scene in the 1840s. The first towns appear on Walter W. DeLacy’s 1865 map, commissioned by the first Territorial Legislature. In just over half a century the Montana map sprouted hundreds of new names, created by hundreds of thousands of homesteaders who poured into the state seeking cheap land. The railroads promoted homesteading and offered up a wide array of names, some associated with railroad executives but others plucked off a world atlas, such as Sumatra and Malta. Between 1900 and 1918, Montana’s population more than tripled, but drought during the 1920s and 1930s prompted a mass exodus from eastern Montana, and the current Montana highway map reflects the steep decline in population; hundreds of towns have disappeared reflecting a shift in the state’s economy from mining, timbering, and small farms to a service economy and much larger farms and ranches served by regional commercial centers.This new traveler’s guide explores the origins of more than 1,100 Montana place names, drawing upon the knowledge of Montana Historical Society historians and the Society’s extensive collection of historic maps and newspapers, as well as the expertise of local and county historians.Montana is a vast landscape, its history and significance unknown to many, both to the native and the interested tourist. Clues to the meaning of the past can be found in the names that grace the contemporary Montana highway map, and this guidebook strives to illuminate some of the mysteries. The following entries document the names as we currently know then, and whenever possible, include both the history of the present name, as well as any and all previous names.

Table of Contents

(1) Epigram (2) Preface (3) Introduction (4) Alphabetical guide to place names (5) Maps (6) Bibliography

Interviews

Since 1865, the Montana Historical Society has been charged as the keeper of Montana’s historical record. The research for Naming Montana is based upon more than one hundred years of Montana history. The MHS Research Center is the preeminent repository for Montana and Western history resources. Naming Montana offers a brief glimpse at the breadth of resources available at MHS and serves as a definitive guide to Montana place names.