The federal government’s strategy for populating a newly claimed territory and limiting land use by Native Americans led to a series of Homestead Acts passed between 1862 and 1912. Under these acts…

As the U.S. industrialized after the Civil War, logging and mining jeopardized the country’s vast western woodlands. Congress responded to the threat, authorizing the National Forest reserves in 1891.…

Fraternal societies flourished in Montana and throughout the United States in the mid to late nineteenth century, an era sometimes called the “Golden Age of Fraternalism.” By 1897, approximately six…

Backed by the powerful San Francisco syndicate of Hearst, Haggin and Tevis, Marcus Daly built the world’s largest smelter (combined upper and lower works) on Warm Springs Creek between 1883 and 1889.…