Two caveats as you approach this essay: First, this might NOT be news to any of you. I may be leagues late in seeing or feeling this divide between then and now. Second, I do know that Montana in the 80s was not perfect. I’m talking imagery more than reality.
I landed in Montana forty-six years ago—with a big gray cat and a trunk. For a job at the Montana Historical Society. In the Preservation Office that didn’t sport so much as a correcting Selectric typewriter. More than I realized when I arrived in June 1980, Montana was young. Not even a century-old state. Our living local legends were born in the nineteenth century. Community historians had walked visible Indian trails and early wagon ruts with their parents. Cords of firewood for 1880s steamboats clung to Missouri River Breaks hillsides. We had shed our “copper collar” only in recent years, as our dwindling easy copper wealth slipped through the grasping fingers of the Anaconda Company. A mixture of precious metal mining, ranching, logging, and tourism carried our economy.
Ted Schwinden became governor that year. He and his wife came from farming families and the same one-room school in northeastern Montana. Schwinden’s bona fides included a spell as president of the Grain Growers Association. He and the legislators who served then wore leather-trimmed cowboy sport jackets and their fathers’ top-coats.
Montana’s Congressional representation that year included Senator John Melcher, a veterinarian from Miles City; Senator Max Baucus, son of an early Helena Valley ranching family; Rep. Ron Marlenee, an Eastern Montana rancher and auctioneer; and Rep. Pat Williams, a Butte school teacher. All but Melcher born here. Whatever their politics, sons of the state all of them.
Through my working life, I learned that the state’s mansions belonged to our first freighting-magnates-turned-entrepreneurs and to sheep, cattle, and copper barons. And though startlingly elegant for Montana, they were modest by East Coast architectural standards.
Those were also the years that Wally McRae, a third-generation rancher, our most celebrated cowboy poet, and a founding member of the Northern Plains Resource Council advocacy organization, used his honeyed words to decry strip mining coal in his beautiful ranch country.
And we were riding high and proud with a new state constitution. Crafted in 1972 by a bipartisan convention, Montana’s governing document guaranteed “a clean and healthful environment . . .for present and future generations” and promised “remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources. . . .” Equally unique, that new Constitution committed the state to recognizing, preserving, and educating its children about the culture and heritage of our Native Indians.
Even as logging continued unabated, we were also reveling in Montana’s wild and scenic public lands. We prided ourselves on the Bob Marshall Wilderness that kept the Rockies’ Crown of the Continent free of development and available for recreation. And we were keen to explore wilderness or protected designations for a wide variety of other public lands. We understood our largely untrammeled scenery as a priceless resource—emotionally for our own identity and use and financially through tourism. Boomers were eager to hike and cross-country ski.
In 1988, still in my first decade here, the Montana Historical Society Press published a “foundational” collection of writing by and about Montanans titled “The Last Best Place.” The title quickly became the state’s tagline. The anthology showcased Montana’s incredibly skilled and thoughtful assemblage of authors from Native American first peoples to the then contemporary crop of novelists and essayists whose Montana roots and wordsmithing skill created fabulous prose and celebrated our landscape.
Critically, throughout my first years here, our visual imagery still belonged to Charlie Russell. Turned loose in Montana in 1880, at the age of 17 by his St. Louis parents, Charlie had served his time as a cow wrangler, as a visitor to the regions’ tribes, comfortable standing elbow to elbow with cowboys in our early bars. His fifty years of sketching buffalo and elk, campfires glowing in the dark, camp cooks rustling up breakfast for working cowboys and his lush paintings of Montana’s buttes and sunsets comprised OUR world. Charlie and his art weren’t anachronisms; we thought he “saw” us and celebrate our Montana.
And in those years Ian Tyson—of earlier Ian-and-Sylvia fame turned Albertan rancher–wrote cowboy ballads. His most famous, released in 1988, being “The Gift” that celebrates Charlie:
“. . . . God made Montana for the wild man,
For the Piegan and the Sioux and Crow,
Saved His greatest gift for Charlie,
Said, “Get her all down before she goes.
You gotta get her all down,
’cause she’s bound to go.”
God hung the stars over Judith Basin.
God put the magic in young Charlie’s hands.
And all was seen and all remembered,
Every shining mountain, every longhorn brand. . . .”
Those poems, that prose, those songs, those thoughtfully and carefully crafted legal words set the stage for the Montana I knew in my first years here.
How far we’ve come since then. And in what disturbing directions. How prescient God was in directing Russell to “get her all down ‘cause she’s bound to go.”
We have become the plaything of the rich. Our original motto “Oro y Plata,” Spanish for Gold and Silver, is again apt. Only this time, it references not minerals in the ground, but the bank accounts of those who now run and represent the state. Our big sky hasn’t shrunk and the shining mountains still rise up from our golden plains. But more and more of them are in the clutches of people who want it all for themselves. Who feel entitled to turn us into their exclusive park and their political power base.
The slide from paradise to purchasable began in the 1970s, when down-to-earth Montana native Chet Huntley, for 14 years the co-anchor of NBC’s nightly Huntley-Brinkley Report, purchased a ranch close to Yellowstone National Park. He wanted to create a ski resort. A nice one that would put Montana’s skiing on the map, that would give the state a year-around tourist draw. He named it Big Sky after A. B. Gurthrie’s book of the same name. A title that reflected the state’s uncannily enormous stage-set sky. Huntley died in the opening moments of the resort, but over time, his dream exploded. Into an expensive, up-scale ski mecca and community. A series of major mountains, an alpine meadow, lifts and trams and elegant homes.
Nestled next to and partially within Big Sky, the Yellowstone Club was founded in 1977 by a timber entrepreneur. He stretched Huntley’s more egalitarian plan into a member-only, exclusive ski and golf and mountain resort. After a bankruptcy hiccup, another owner picked up the reins and added land, more facilities, and even more exclusivity. As of 2025, initiation fees run from $300,000 to $400,000; with annual dues ranging $36,000 to $78,000 plus the requirement to purchase property ranging from $5 to $20 million. In a move that spawned an entire investigative book, the Club now has secured water and use rights in the wild and spiritually important Crazy Mountains.
Members include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Brady, Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, Leonardo DiCaprio . And there are new rumors that the Yellowstone Club might be mentioned in the Epstein files.
Behind and along-side Montana’s other breath-taking views, billionaires have also scooped up much of Montana ranch land. For example (and not a complete list): Plum Creek Timber Company-47 million acres; oil-and-fracking barons Farris and Dan Wilks-350,000 acres; Stan Kroenke, owner of the Rams, Nuggets, and Avalance-225,000 acres; Sinclair Oil owner, Robert Holding-225,000 acres; Rupert Murdoch-grazing and ownership rights to 340,000 acres; Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch-114,000 acres. Recently elected Senator Tim Sheehy, shares ownership of a 20,000 acre Montana ranch with a fellow former Seal.
Greg Gianforte is our current governor—best remembered nationwide for body-slamming a Guardian reporter when running in a special Congressional election. A California native, tech entrepreneur, and creationist, Gianforte made over a billion dollars in 2012 when he sold his RightNow Technologies company.
(FYI: Four native-born Montanans whose terms dated back to 1993, none of whom was particularly wealthy, preceded Gianforte: Steve Bullock, Brian Schweitzer, Judy Martz, and Marc Racicot.)
And with similar patterning, our current Congressional delegation sports extremely deep pockets, tech and military ties, intertwined companies in some cases, and, with the exception of Ryan Zinke, flimsier ties to Montana than many of their predecessors. Senator Steve Daines, for instance, worked for Gianforte’s RightNow Technologies. Representative Ryan Zinke and Senator Tim Sheehy were both Navy Seals—with some odd blips in their discharge stories.
Now, it’s all about how “buyable” Montana is. One of the country’s largest states with one of its smallest homegrown populations—located a significant and expensive distance from markets, we have been an easy target. We’re not last in median income across all states or subjected to the highest cost of living. But scarcity of people and distance still spells hard-fought lives.
Buyable during Covid when Californians could snap up good but modest houses—sight unseen—boltholes and investments that pushed the price of our housing to new highs.
Buyable by folks who can wear expensive jeans, big belt buckles, and the best handmade leather boots—retro flashbacks to Charlie Russell’s solid, unassuming world. But really disguise and camouflage. Hoping to convince us that they are living Charlie’s values.
Turns out that these Montana wannabes have their own “lifestyle” magazine. It wasn’t always theirs. But I was slower than I should have been to name it for what it is. Launched in the 1990s, Big Sky Journalhas become a glossy tribute to what Montana wealth eats and wears and builds. What artists can sell for feature walls. What sports (flyfishing and skiing) are “in” for those who have the money to expend. What novel little eateries should be patronized.
The Journal’s double-paged real estate ads do not feature 1950s ranchers or sweet Victorians or even modest suburban-sprawl fake bungalows. Instead, the ads showcase multimillion dollar homes built with huge timbers, massive rocks, and cathedral windows. And some acreage, of course, and views. Expensive jewelry stores command advertising space as do upscale Western-and-outdoor wear shops, purveyors of exclusive furniture and décor, sources for the highest tech hiking and fishing gear. Artists advertise their studios and creations as well.
Should you need more background on the nouveau rich who have designs on the state, visit the Bozeman airport for a day and size up the arrivals. Check out the huge black rental SUVs waiting in the parking lot. And watch for faces that you recognize from the media. Although he didn’t, of course, walk in through a regular gate, J. D. Vance and his family flew into Bozeman and spent Christmas at the Yellowstone Club. And a year earlier, landed at the modest town of Dillon, to visit Fox executives at Rupert Murdoch’s ranch. The Trump sons have valued Montana for the opportunity to prove their manhood and shoot prairie dogs.
The world portrayed by the Big Sky Journal is foreign to most Montanans. For every enormous stone and glass “ranch house” here, there are several thousand trailers and manufactured houses. In fact, Montana ranks among the top ten states in mobile and manufactured homes—never mind that we’re in the northern latitudes of the country. The “Western dream” eludes most of the people who come here to live it. We rank in the top two states for suicides. We are the fourth-ranking state for fatal traffic accidents. We are first in the nation for alcohol-related traffic deaths. And a heart attack in many of our rural counties won’t get you to a big hospital any time soon. Notwithstanding our Constitution’s promises, life on our Indian reservations can be tough and short.
But, I hear you say, those shining mountains and enormous skies remain. Not so fast, I’m going to respond. Despite Montanans overwhelming support for our heritage of extensive public lands. Despite novel relationships crafted between ranchers and hunters. Despite a thriving tradition of farming and conservation easements designed to serve ranchers and farmers and the public. Despite groundbreaking coalitions like the Blackfoot Challenge where landowners commit to preserving a blue-ribbon trout stream.
Despite all of that, our current U.S. senators and congressmen, have capitulated to Trump’s determination to open public lands to industry. True, Daines, Zinke, Sheehy, and Downing have feinted on the issue—saying the right words when it costs them nothing politically and voting with the administration when they can get away with it. Recently, Zinke and Downing both voted FOR a resolution that would strip the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota of its ban on mining. You can bet that Daines and Sheehy in the Senate will do the same. A Chilean copper company is waiting.
Trump and his ilk have managed to find and latch onto a previously passed Congressional Review Act—meant only to allow Congress to quickly fix small errors in legislation. Instead, Trump’s toadies have manipulated it to undo public land protections. Montana is in their sights.
And here at home, uber conservatives are lobbying for a new convention that could strip our state constitution of its pesky promises to protect our environment.
The land that Charlie Russell painted for God and that Wally McRae and a dozen other authors and songwriters honored with wise and golden words is about to be sold right out from under us. To the highest bidder.
Whose Montana will it be? ©
