The Nifty Fifty: Montana

Montana is a state in the western region of the United States with the abbreviation of MT. Montana became the 41st state on November 8, 1889, making the state 135 years old, as of November, 2024. It is debated whether the name Montana comes from Spanish or Latin, however, the name itself means Mountains.

Montana is the 4th largest state and the 43rd most populous; the capital of Montana is Helena and its demonym is Montanan. Montana is bordered by the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Idaho and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

The motto of Montana is Oro y Plata, which is Spanish for Gold and Silver.

One of the most well known nicknames of Montana is the Treasure State, which was given to Montana due to the state’s rich mineral reserves. Montana can also be called Big Sky Country, which was popularized by a Montana State Highway Department promotion in the 1960s that borrowed the name from a book written by Alfred Bertram Guthrie Jr. called Big Sky.

The landscape of Montana is filled with mountains, canyons, caverns, river valleys, forests, prairies, and even badlands.

Montana is known for its natural beauty and scenery, wildlife, minerals, Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, Glacier National Park, Yellow Stone National Park, and for being the largest landlocked state in the United States. Some of the minerals that Montana possesses are gemstones: garnet, rhodonite, topaz, and diamonds; metals: zinc, lead, copper, manganese, molybdenum, silver, gold, platinum, and palladium; and rare earth elements: yttrium, lanthanum, and cerium.

On December 19, 1919, William Wylie Galt was born in Geyser in Judith Basin County, Montana. In June of 1942, After serving in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) at Montana State College (now Montana State University), Galt joined the US Army from Stanford, Montana; Galt even married Patricia Sandbo the following month. Galt fought in World War II; during his service, Galt was wounded once in 1943 in North Africa and a second time in January, 1944, in Monte Cassino, Italy. These wounds only put Galt out of combat for a few weeks; in May of 1944, Galt served as Captain and Operations Officer (S3) of the 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Division. On May 29, 1944, Galt volunteered to personally command an attack on German positions at Villa Crocetta, Italy. Under intense enemy fire, Galt jumped on a tank destroyer and ordered it to precede the attack as he manned the .30-caliber machine gun in its turret. Despite the hail of enemy sniper and machine gun fire ricocheting off the destroyer, Galt stood fully exposed in the turret as he relentlessly fired his machine gun and tossed hand grenades into the enemy trenches as they passed by. Only minutes later, an 88mm shell struck Galt’s tank destroyer and, sadly, Galt was mortally wounded; Galt was only 24 years old, and he died just 2 months before his 2nd wedding anniversary. Galt was awarded the Medal of Honor and a Silver Star; Galt was buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Great Falls, Montana.

In 2013, Montana became the first state to pass a law that protects its citizens from having the government track their personal information stored in their electronic devices without a warrant.

On January 8, 1877, the Battle of Wolf Mountain occurred in the Tongue River valley of Montana Territory, in what is now Rosebud County. Following the American defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, during which Lieutenant Colonel George Custer was killed, the United States government sent a large number of reinforcements to Montana Territory. Months later, several hundred Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors faced several hundred troops of the United States Army. Lakota leader Crazy Horse and Cheyenne leader Two Moon began launching their attacks on the US troops around 7 AM, however, their attacks were continually repelled, after which they attempted to flank the US troops, which also failed. US General Nelson Miles ordered several of his troops to take a series of hills occupied by the warriors, but as they were capturing the hills, the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne withdrew due to deteriorating weather conditions, technically allowing the battle to result in an American victory.

An interesting fact about Montana is that the state is home to the only known record of the Lewis and Clark trail. Near Billings, Montana, there is a sandstone pillar, known as Pompeys Pillar, which still bears the inscription that William Clark left behind. While traveling down the Yellowstone River, Clark and his team stopped their boats and climbed the rock formation, at which point Clark scratched an inscription into the rock, reading W. Clark July 25, 1806. It is believed that Lewis and Clark had carved their names at other sites in order to prove that they had actually reached the Pacific Ocean, since they became the first Americans to reach the West Coast in 1805; this occurred during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency and only 22 years after the United States won the Revolutionary War.

A strange fact about Montana is that the state was also the home of the largest snowflake ever recorded. The average snowflake is about 0.2 inches (1/5 of an inch) in diameter, however, the largest recorded snowflake — which landed near Missoula, Montana, in 1887 — was 15 inches in Diameter! That is about 75 times the diameter of an average snowflake.

What fact about Montana most interests you?