Stories from Montana's Enduring Frontier: Exploring an Untamed Legacy

by John Clayton

Overview

At the turn of the twentieth century, Montana started emerging from its rugged past. Permanent towns and cities, powered by mining, tourism, and trade, replaced ramshackle outposts. Yet Montana's frontier endured, both in remote pockets and in the wider cultural imagination. The frontier thus played a continuing role in Montanans' lives, often in fascinating ways. Author John Clayton has written extensively on these shifts in Montana history, chronicling the breadth of the frontier's legacy with this diverse collection of stories. Explore the remnants of Montana's frontier through stories of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, the Beartooth Highway, and the lost mining camp of Swift Current—and through legendary characters such as Charlie Russell, Haydie Yates, and Liver-eating Johnston.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626190160
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	04/30/2013
Series:	American Chronicles
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

John Clayton is the author of The Cowboy Girl and other books. Since 1993 he has written regularly about history and culture for Montana Magazine, the Montana Quarterly, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, and even some publications that don't include Montana in their names. You can learn more at his website, www.johnclaytonbooks.com.

Table of Contents

Author's Note 7

I Places and People

In the Bighorn Canyon 13

The Best Kind of Cowboy Hero 20

Montana's Carnegie Libraries 24

II Outlaws

An Urban Army 35

Fame and Bandits 42

The Trials of John L. Smith 48

III Economies

Camp Senia and Montana's Dude Ranching Heritage 55

Origins of the Beartooth Highway 62

Hope and Bacon 70

IV Communities

Mossmain: Montana's Near-Metropolis on the Plains 77

Community, Enriched by Formula 84

In the Garden of Eden 90

The Teenaged West 97

V Frontiers

Wister's versus Turner's Frontier 103

Disney's New Western Frontier 106

What We Do on Today's Frontier 109

VI The New West

All-Harley Cowboys 115

The "New West" Is an Old Concept 118

Ten Years and Counting on a Meaningless Phrase 121

VII Authenticity

A Permanent State of Not-Quite-Decay 125

Vacation to the 1830s 131

Clarence Mulford's Odd Western Journey 136

A Regular He-Man Horse 139

VIII Heroes

The Mountain Man Who Outshone His Legends 145

Resurrecting Haydie Yates 150

At the Little Bighorn 157

The Native Home of Governors on Horseback 165

Acknowledgements 171

Index 173

About the Author 176