EARLY MONTANA HISTORY
Before the arrival of French explorers in the early 1740s, the Indian tribes occupying present-day Montana included the Salish (Flatheads), Kalispel, Kootenai, Crow, Cheyenne and Blackfoot. The United States took hold of Montana through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and through the explorations of Lewis and Clark in 1805-6. Fur traders and missionaries had established posts in the region by the early 19th century.
Thousands of prospectors flocked to the Virginia City area when gold was discovered there in 1863. The following year Congress created the Montana Territory. The 400-mile Bozeman Trail, connecting the Oregon Trail in Wyoming with Virginia City, crossed the cherished hunting grounds of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, just as the railroad was disrupting their life in Wyoming. During the next decade their resentment led to a series of wars, culminating in 1876 in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand. A year later Chief Joseph and 700 Nez Percé Indians fled from Oregon across Montana in an attempt to reach Canada but were forced to surrender to the U.S. Army near the Bear Paw Mountains.
Mining activity and the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 brought population growth. Copper wealth from the Butte pits resulted in the turn of the century “War of Copper Kings” as factions fought for control of “the richest hill on earth.” Montana was admitted to the Union as the 41st state on November 8, 1889. The state gets its name from a Spanish word meaning mountainous and was first applied to the territory in 1864.
MONTANA’S MIDDLE HISTORY
Montana’s eastern plains began to fill up in the early 20th century with the increase of homesteading, irrigation and dry farming. Following World War I, the state suffered a depression that lasted into the 1930s. President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs aided the state and included the construction, in 1940, of the Fort Peck Dam, which brought electric power, irrigation, flood control and improved navigation to the upper Missouri. The state’s growth slowed in the three decades after 1940. Stock raising, farming, oil production, and copper mining were the mainstays of the economy. Summer tourism was also important and sites including Glacier National Park and Little Bighorn (then called Custer) Battlefield National Monument attracted millions of visitors.
MONTANA TODAY
Historically, the Treasure State’s economy has been based on its diversified natural resources. Montana is divided into two distinct physical and economic regions: the Rocky Mountains in the west produce lumber and metal ores, and the Great Plains in the east produce petroleum, coal and agricultural goods such as wheat and cattle. By the 1970s, tourism replaced mining as Montanas second leading industry, after agriculture.
Famous Montanans include Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress; filmmaker David Lynch; actor Gary Cooper; daredevil Evel Knievel; journalist Chet Huntley; actress Myrna Loy; and U.S. Senate Majority leader (1961-1977) Mike Mansfield.M
