New Book Highlights Montana’s Historic Sites

• August 12 2025

From the ever-busy Logan Pass Visitor Center in Glacier National Park to the rusting remnants of Smith Mine Number 3 on a lonely hillside in Carbon County, “A History of Montana in 101 Places: Sites and Stories from the Montana Historical Society” is a fascinating anthology of the locations that have made and remade the Last Best Place.

The beautifully illustrated, 304-page book from the Montana Historical Society Press – companion to the popular “History of Montana in 101 Objects” published in 2021 – is now available to order online and will hit bookstore shelves this week.

Compelling stories by current and former Montana Historical Society historians Christine Brown, Martha Kohl, Kirby Lambert and the late Ellen Baumler, to whom the book is dedicated, are accompanied by stunning photography from Tom Ferris.

Some images, like Alberta Bair’s bright yellow kitchen in her lavishly decorated home near Martinsdale, need little visual interpretation, leaving us to enjoy the carefully researched and artfully told stories of the people who created them.

Others, like the remote Rosebud Battlefield National Historic Landmark in Big Horn County—known to the Tsétsėhéstȧhese naa Suhtaio (Northern Cheyenne) as “Where the Girl Saved her Brother”—offer few visual clues to the dramatic history they have witnessed and are brought to life instead by their powerful stories.

Each turn of the page is a journey through the major cultural, economic and political developments that shaped the Montana we know today. Battlefields and government buildings appear alongside homes, schools and taverns. Indigenous cultural sites share space with farms and mines, telling the stories of the community groups, tribes, elected officials, workers and everyday folks who lived and labored there.

"While Montana has, rightfully, been dubbed the Last Best Place, in reality it is not just one place but many,” said Co-author Kirby Lambert. “The Society's newest publication weaves together the stories behind a carefully selected cross-section of sites—large and small, natural and human-made, urban and rural, old and not-so-old—to tell the colorful history of this place we call home." 

The authors selected sites through a thoughtful winnowing process informed by factors such as industry, government, architectural style, technological change, and cultural and economic shifts.

“Through it all, we kept in mind that while so much of Montana’s past is worth celebrating, other aspects of it are truly tragic; and in many cases it is the buried story, not its present-day appearance, that makes a site noteworthy,” writes Historian Christine Brown in her author’s note.

Brown began recruiting authors for “101 Places” following the success of the book’s prequel, “A History of Montana in 101 Objects.” She was inspired by the book’s power to make Montana history accessible and relevant through the stories of items in the Montana Historical Society’s museum collections.

“I wanted to explore more and share how Montana’s historic places provide a vivid, sometimes even more tangible, connection to history,” Brown writes.

Readers will be inspired to visit the locations featured in “101 Places” and deepen their experience of the Treasure State. Available in hardcover and softcover, the book includes a Historic Montana Places Checklist offering a way to personalize this beautiful publication as a family keepsake.

“A History of Montana in 101 Places” is available to purchase online or over the phone through the Montana Historical Society Store at mths.mt.gov/store or 406-444-2890. It is also available through Farcountry Press at  farcountrypress.com or 1-800-821-3874. Hardcover $49.99; softcover $29.99.

The book will begin arriving on bookstore shelves across Montana this week, including the Montana Historical Society Gift Shop at 101 N. Last Chance Gulch in Helena.