feature article
By Ellen Baumler
The Montana Historical Society is celebrating its 150th birthday and we invite you to share this special year with us.
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s the steward of Montana’s stories and its history, the Montana Historical Society is the best place to begin a Montana adventure. Whether you are a visitor or a resident, we warmly welcome you to explore the exhibits that tell Montana’s stories, search your Montana roots in our research center, and take home Montana treasures and books from our unique gift shop. Founded in 1865, just months after the creation of Montana Territory, the Montana Historical Society is the second oldest historical society west of the Mississippi. Unlike other similar organizations, the Montana Historical Society was born during the days of the gold rush as the state’s very foundations were being laid. Its inception was not a nostalgic look backwards at events past. With astounding foresight, our founders realized they were living history as it happened and wanted the events remembered. The society’s initial purpose was “to collect and arrange facts in regard to the early history” of the territory. Today, it does that and much, much more. Collections of all kinds fill its galleries, library, archives, and storage facilities. The society’s six programs are committed to education, research, and preservation that reach across the state in many ways. The research center includes 95 percent of all newspapers published in Montana; 18,000 reels of microfilm; 14,000 maps; 32,000 books and pamphlets; and 500,000 photographic images. Our publications include the award-winning quarterly Montana The Magazine of Western History. The museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, collects, preserves, and interprets fine art, as well as historical, archaeological, and ethnological artifacts related to Montana and its adjoining geographic region. It houses over 48,000 artifacts as well as textiles and extensive art collections. Its diverse 6
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Montana Historical Society Helena Area Chamber of Commerce
exhibits, both temporary and permanent, are world class. Your Montana museum experience might begin with the Montana Homeland Exhibit, tracing the prehistory of the state from the time when buffalo roamed the prairie and early inhabitants hunted with stone tools. As you work your way through Montana’s story, you’ll pass through Native American lifeways, the fur trapping era, the turbulent gold rush and vigilante period, cattle and sheep ranching, the struggle for statehood, the advent of the railroad, the technological advances of the twentieth century, and much more. If you are a fan of “Cowboy Artist” C. M. Russell (1864-1926), the society’s Mackay Gallery of Russell Art features 2,000 square feet of major oils, watercolors, pen and inks, pencil sketches, bronzes, sculptures, and illustrated letters by Montana’s most celebrated and beloved artist. If Russell is not familiar to you, this gallery is the place to fall in love with him. Russell lived and loved the cowboy life and captured it in the various mediums of his art. The gallery includes some of Russell’s finest work expressing the quintessential spirit that is Montana. “Neither Empty Nor Unknown” offers a kaleidoscopic look at Montana when Lewis and Clark trekked through the state in 1805 and 1806. This groundbreaking exhibit is set against a backdrop of unforgettable landscapes where grasses grew tall, stars shone like diamonds, and people lived off the land and prospered. Montana’s topography, animal life, and native plants surround the visitor, immersing him in the natural world while interactive displays and “stations” pack the 4,600 square feet. Explore cultural and environmental perspectives through featured sites that were places of spiritual and/or economic importance to Montana’s Native peoples. They were also crucial to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. These areas provide a common thread and the key to understanding Montana’s Native peoples and counters Lewis and Clark’s impressions that Montana was largely uninhabited. “Big Medicine” is perhaps the Montana Historical Society’s most visited exhibit. This rare white buffalo, born on the National