Make Mine a Ditch: Beautiful Backbars Under the Big Sky

Make Mine a Ditch: Beautiful Backbars Under the Big Sky
Author: Paul Snyder
Publisher:
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 9781591522812

As a young child, author Paul Snyder became intrigued with his local establishment’s large ornate backbar. This led him to delve further into researching backbars, the backbone of Montana’s historic watering holes, their history, artistic woodwork, and the bars they graced. He felt compelled to capture as much history—and many photographs—as possible of the backbars remaining. These backbars influenced and are part of the development of Montana even before it became a state. They remain a combination of mystery and history in the transformation of Montana into statehood. This book takes a close look at these beautiful, often overlooked, silent witnesses to Montana’s history.

Wild and Beautiful Yellowstone

Wild and Beautiful Yellowstone
Author: Fred Pflughoft
Publisher: Farcountry Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2003-06
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9781560371465

Yellowstone National Park in all its four-season glory in full-color photography. 129 color photographs.

Montana Watering Holes

Montana Watering Holes
Author: Joan Melcher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2009-10-14
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0762761628

In many small towns across Montana, the local bar is also the only restaurant and is an important part of community life. In larger towns and cities, gems from Montana’s Wild West past are still found. This book celebrates the quirky, unusual, and downright fun and entertaining saloons across the state. Montana Watering Holes features more than fifty of the best spots to stop for a drink (or a burger) scattered across Montana. From big-city spots like the Rhino in Missoula (with its 150 beers on tap) to the famous cheeseburgers at the bar in Pony (pop. 50), community spirit and tradition abound in the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century buildings that have served as saloons, restaurants, and gathering places throughout the Treasure State. This book describes the best of the best, offering geographic diversity, anecdotes, and sidebars on local characters from the past. It is illustrated with archival and contemporary black-and-white photographs.

Wanted!

Wanted!
Author: Barbara Fifer
Publisher: Farcountry Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2014-08-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1560375876

This rare collection of wanted posters from the American West is a historical treasure. The book's nearly 150 original wanted posters, fugitive notices, and Pinkerton Agency circulars are supplemented by fascinated details about the technology of identification, the history of wanted posters, and the stories behind the crimes, which ranged from horse theft, safe blowing, train robbery, seduction, ''white slavery,'' and murder. Posters for notorious bandits such as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid are also featured.

Legendary Locals of Bozeman

Legendary Locals of Bozeman
Author: Rachel Phillips (Research coordinator)
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2016
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1467102369

From its inception as a supply town during Montana's gold rush in the 1860s, Bozeman has attracted visionaries, leaders, and pioneering thinkers. Bozeman's first mayor, John V. Bogert, established a precedent for keeping the city clean, safe, and orderly. City commissioner and tireless worker Mary Vant Hull spearheaded efforts to build a new library and to expand local parks and trails, and early physician Dr. Henry Foster successfully performed one of the first caesarean sections in Montana. Incredibly talented outdoor advocates and athletes like mountain climber Alex Lowe and long-distance runner Ed Anacker have complemented Bozeman's outdoor lifestyle. An emphasis on art, music, and culture began in the 1860s with piano and voice sensation Emma Weeks Willson. Today, artist Jim Dolan's sculptures are enjoyed all over town, and illusionist Jay Owenhouse wows children and adults with his live shows. Inspiring individuals like Cody Dieruf, who passed away from cystic fibrosis at the age of 23, and dedicated streetcar driver Larry O'Brien have added kindness and courage to local life.

Home Waters

Home Waters
Author: John N. Maclean
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0062944614

“Beautiful. ... A lyrical companion to his father’s classic, A River Runs through It, chronicling their family’s history and bond with Montana’s Blackfoot River.” —Washington Post A "poetic" and "captivating" (Publishers Weekly) memoir about the power of place to shape generations, Home Waters is John N. Maclean's remarkable chronicle of his family's century-long love affair with Montana's majestic Blackfoot River, the setting for his father's classic novella, A River Runs through It. Maclean returns annually to the simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search of the trout of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally write the story he was born to tell. A book that will resonate with everyone who feels deeply rooted to a landscape, Home Waters is a portrait of a family who claimed a river, from one generation to the next, of how this family came of age in the 20th century and later as they scattered across the country, faced tragedy and success, yet were always drawn back to the waters that bound them together. Here are the true stories behind the beloved characters fictionalized in A River Runs through It, including the Reverend Maclean, the patriarch who introduced the family to fishing; Norman, who balanced a life divided between literature and the tug of the rugged West; and tragic yet luminous Paul (played by Brad Pitt in Robert Redford’s film adaptation), whose mysterious death has haunted the family and led John to investigate his uncle’s murder and reveal new details in these pages. A universal story about nature, family, and the art of fly fishing, Maclean’s memoir beautifully captures the inextricable ways our personal histories are linked to the places we come from—our home waters. Featuring twelve wood engravings by Wesley W. Bates and a map of the Blackfoot River region.

Boudoirs to Brothels

Boudoirs to Brothels
Author: Michael Rutter
Publisher: Farcountry Press
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2015-10-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1560376260

From boudoirs to brothels, historian Michael Rutter takes you into the intimate world of the Wild West's women of the night. Eighteen richly researched biographies reveal the tricks and torments of the trade, with fascinating sidebars on venereal diseases (and dire "cures"), children of prostitutes, a floating brothel, and hog ranches.

Lady in Room Number Nine

Lady in Room Number Nine
Author: Larry Ohman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-10-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9780578791999

SHOCKING MONTANA COLD CASE!On April 18, 1940, Theresa Evans was brutally beaten at the Empire Hotel in Butte, Montana. She never regained sufficient consciousness to tell what happened. Today, her murderer's indentity remains unknown.Could it have been her husband, who she hadn't seen in four months?A woman who had spent months in town pretending to be a man until Theresa discovered the truth?The goon for the local crime boss to whom Theresa and her husband owed money?Someone else?In "Lady in Room Number Nine," Larry Ohman recounts the story of Theresa Evans - his grandmother - and the other characters in one of Montana's greatest unsolved mysteries.

Evelyn Cameron

Evelyn Cameron
Author: Kristi Hager
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Frontier and pioneer life
ISBN: 9781560374657

Born in 1868 to a wealthy British family, Evelyn Cameron traded privilege for adventure, the lush English countryside for the austere eastern Montana badlands, a lavish estate for a tiny homestead shack. In 1894, at the age of 26, Evelyn turned to the burgeoning art of glass-plate photography as a way to support the Camerons' struggling horse ranch, producing some of the most remarkable images of pioneer life ever seen. Often riding twenty to thirty miles roundtrip, carrying her nine-pound camera around her waist and her wooden tripod in a gun scabbard, she spent thirty-four years documenting eastern Montana. She captured western landscapes: the ruggedly beautiful badlands, vast expanses of unfenced prairie, and otherwordly sandstone formations. And she photographed western characters: sodbusters, cowpunchers, and sheep shearers, stern-faced ranch families, and hopeful, dreamy-eyed immigrants. She also produced some of the first photographs of North American birds. Evelyn Cameron: Montana's Frontier Photographer showcases 117 of the finest and most fascinating images by this adventurer, homesteader, ranchwoman, and great American photographer.