Margaret

Gardeners brought tastes of Asia

Pictured: An 1878 woodcut by W.M. Cary, titled Wagon Trains at Helena, Montana, for Harper’s Weekly, shows a Chinese vendor (highlighted in detail) traversing Last Chance Gulch.

He came in 2023 to detail the historic Chinese presence in Montana, which at one point made up more than a tenth of the state’s population. Then he came in 2025 to talk about how the Chinese kept their traditions alive, including new year and burial practices, in the American West despite mounting challenges.
     
Now Mark T. Johnson comes to talk Sept. 9 about how Chinese Montanans grew food for the tables and introduced whole communities to fresh vegetables they’d never seen before.

Johnson, raised in Great Falls but now a resident of Helena, spent some years in Shanghai and has made it a mission to shine a light on Asian aspects of Montana life and history.

In his latest presentation, Feeding the Frontier: A History of Chinese Vegetable Gardens in Montana, Johnson shows the impact and role of Chinese gardeners.

In towns across Montana, Chinese gardeners were once a familiar sight—walking the streets with baskets of fresh vegetables or cultivating fields on the edges of growing communities. Drawing on farming traditions from southern China, they introduced techniques that produced remarkable crops in the challenging conditions of the Mountain West.

Their vegetables fed mining camps, railroad towns, and city neighborhoods, becoming essential to local diets. Yet their success also brought hostility, as anti-Chinese groups called for boycotts and sometimes turned to violence.

This talk explores the history of Chinese vegetable gardens in Montana through maps, photographs, newspaper accounts, and community memories, highlighting the resilience and impact of these often-overlooked gardeners.
 
Details: Doors open 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, for history happy hour in Hollensteiner-Stahl Hall; free presentation starts 6 p.m. Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. E., Kalispell; 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org

Regular museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays through August

Gardeners brought tastes of Asia Read More »

Talk about hard choices

Get a glimpse of sites statewide, including Kalispell’s Woodland Park, that made the cut for 101 places that tell Montana’s story, and learn why, by one of the authors, Kirby Lambert (pictured), an engaging presenter with a lifelong love of Montana history.

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 is an impressive anthology of the locations that have made and remade the Last Best Place.

The illustrated 304-page book from the Montana Historical Society Press follows on the popular A History of Montana in 101 Objects (2021).

Essays by current and former Montana Historical Society historians Christine Brown, Martha Kohl, Kirby Lambert and the late Ellen Baumler are accompanied by photographs from Tom Ferris.

Some images, like Alberta Bair’s bright yellow kitchen in her 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 the stories behind them.

The selections show 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.

About the presenter: Now retired, Kirby Lambert worked for more than 36 years at the Montana Historical Society where he served in a variety of capacities—as museum registrar, curator of collections, curator of art, and director of outreach and education. Among numerous other duties, he curated nearly three dozen exhibits on a wide variety of topics relating to Montana art and history and, for a number of years, organized the society’s annual Montana History Conference. Kirby has co-authored several publications, and regularly contributes to Montana The Magazine of Western History. 

Details: Doors open 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 26, for history happy hour in Hollensteiner-Stahl Hall; free presentation starts 6 p.m. 

Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. E., Kalispell; 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org

Regular museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays through August

Talk about hard choices Read More »

Come learn bookbinding and more at the ballpark!

We look forward to seeing you at Glacier Bank Park (aka Glacier Range Riders home turf) from 5 to 7:30 Tuesday, Aug. 11, for the launch of the Great Fish Community Challenge!

We are delighted to take another swim along with 88 other worthy Flathead Valley nonprofits in the Whitefish Community Foundation’s annual casting of the net for funds that keep the good work going all year long.

Stop by the museum’s booth to do some bookbinding and learn what’s happening at the museum. Stay to browse all the other booths, and partake in free food and other activities.

Visit here for all the details.

See you there!

Come learn bookbinding and more at the ballpark! Read More »

See Glacier like never before

Reserve your spot and mark your calendar for Glacier National Park in 1940 and 3-D: The Found Kodachromes of Clyde A. McCoy, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 29.

Lost for 50 years, a collection of 3-D images of Glacier National Park surfaced in the early 1990s at a garage sale in Lincoln, Neb. Northern Arizona University history professor Michael A. Amundson (shown above at Goat Haunt) scooped them up and began a decades-long quest to detail the life of the photographer, Indiana lawyer Clyde McCoy, as well as revisit the sites McCoy photographed.

Join us for a rare pre-World War II visual feast of historic views in Glacier National Park in multidimensional splendor. Learn about how serendipity can shape a life’s trajectory, how an intrepid Midwestern photographer made his way into remote backcountry then met a mysterious end in Detroit, and how an email can go unanswered for 11 years and then lead to significant discoveries.

McCoy chased beauty. Amundson chased answers. Attendees of this special event will receive both.

3-D glasses provided.

About the presenter: Michael A. Amundson is a professor of history at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where he teaches courses on the History of the American West and Public History. He grew up in Colorado and received degrees from the University of Wyoming, then a PhD in History from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has written books about the nuclear West, rephotography in Wyoming, and cowboy songs.

Doors open 5 p.m. for history happy hour in Hollensteiner-Stahl Hall; presentation starts at 6 p.m. Reserve your space online here or come in to the museum. $10 for members, $20 for nonmembers. Payment due at time of reservation.

Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. E., Kalispell; 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org

Regular museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays through August

See Glacier like never before Read More »

The revolution galloped

(Above: In the area that would become Montana, Indigenous people used dogs to pull travois. Horses were a game-changer, and contributed to the rapid rise of horse nations in the West.)

As leaders of the nascent United States signed the Declaration of Independence, in this region 250 years ago — then arguably a claim of Spain — another revolution was afoot, on four feet.

Although present in this area thousands of years ago according to fossil evidence, the horse had disappeared from western North America until Hernan Cortes made landfall much farther south, unloading more than a dozen horses in the Yucatan in 1519 from the holds of his ships.

Indigenous peoples didn’t have to have horse technology explained to them. They ran with it, and the horse population spread like wildfire along the mountainous spine of the American West, so quickly that the area to become Northwest Montana saw horses decades before California.

Some Indigenous people called horses “elk dogs” on first encounter. Horses were a dream come true: collapsing distances to hunting grounds and enabling easier travel across rugged landscape. They were integral to increasing trade, protection, and conquest. In little more than a lifetime, the Ksanka (Kootenai), Selis (Salish), Qlispe (Pend d’Oreille), and Niitsitapi (Blackfeet) saw horses transform life in the northern Rockies. 

Join us at the Northwest Montana History Museum for 250 Years Ago: This Revolution Came at a Gallop,  a presentation by equine researcher Brenda Wahler, who often writes and lectures on horse history. The museum also presents a companion exhibit, A Western Revolution Came First.

More about the presenter: Helena author and lawyer Brenda Wahler has consulted widely on equine matters and written several books, including Montana Horse Racing and, most recently, Marcus Daly’s Montana Empires, which prominently features Daly’s significant horse-related activities. Copies of books will be available for sale and signing.

Details for both 250-year anniversary events: 

Talk: 250 Years Ago: This Revolution Came at a Gallop, featuring equine historian Brenda Wahler at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 18; doors open 5 p.m.; free admission

Exhibit reception: A Western Revolution Came First: The Rise of Horse Nations, 5 p.m. Thursday, June 18

Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 2nd Ave. E., Kalispell, MT 59901; 406-756-8381
nwmthistory.org; regular museum hours 10 to 5 Monday-Friday (10 to 3 most Saturdays through August)

The revolution galloped Read More »

Up with downtown

The exhibit, Going to Town: Stroll Kalispell in 1941, remembers the city’s golden jubilee, which marked Kalispell’s 50th birthday (1891-1941). The downtown area served as the commercial hub for Northwest Montana, drawing residents from the Flathead Valley and beyond to shop, socialize, and stroll Kalispell’s downtown streets. Shoppers could find everything from essential goods to high-fashion apparel. Nine automobile dealerships offered 14 different makes of cars. Multiple department stores, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, beauty and barber shops, and drugstores lined Main Street.

Visitors will see artifacts including a glass-globed “visible” Husky gas pump, a re-creation of the Mae West sandwich served by the Kalispell Cafe, beauty shop equipment, and period fashions. A grouping of items purchased from the Kalispell Sears Roebuck Order-Only Store alongside the original catalogue advertisements occupy a corner of the exhibit. Also on display: a rare 1938 Western Field rifle—one of 189 made by Mossberg and sold under the Montgomery Ward brand.

Photos of 1941 storefronts in Kalispell along with vintage ads (as shown by one of the volunteer curators, Nancy Hart, above) offer insight into our area’s economy and consumer trends.

An interactive kids’ area features period automobiles.

Visitors are encouraged to wear 1940s period attire, and car owners of the 1941 vintage or earlier are welcome to park in front of, or streets around, the museum for extra ambiance.

Details:
Going to Town: Stroll Kalispell in 1941
free exhibit-opening reception: 5 to 6:30 p.m. July 1

Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. E., Kalispell, 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org 
Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays (10 a.m. to 3 p.m. most Saturdays through August)

Up with downtown Read More »

Are you getting ready for summer?

We are!

We are busting out of winter with lots of events on the way, at least three new or updated exhibits, and more.

We’re also hoping to hold Saturday hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. June through August. Should you like to help us offer Flathead visitors and residents the opportunity to visit the museum outside of the workweek, we’d love to talk to you! We seek two volunteers, one for the Welcome Desk and another for the bookstore.

One year a couple of friends did it in tandem and enjoyed the chance to both spend time together and to share regional history.

Contact Margaret at the museum if you are interested. We can fill in on certain Saturdays if you can’t commit to all 13.

Thank you for considering this valuable and fun opportunity to serve the museum and the community!

Are you getting ready for summer? Read More »

Wanted: operations manager

Keep the museum going full steam ahead, and help share the stories of Northwest Montana!

The role of Operations Manager is now open:

The approximately 30-hour/week position at Northwest Montana History Museum is key to running a dynamic nonprofit that draws more than 10,000 visitors annually.

Duties mainly involve membership and visitor services, data keeping, deposits, volunteer and event coordination, helping with exhibits and programs, social media and other promotion, and facility management.

Qualifications:
Bachelor’s or higher degree
Competent in office systems and software

Qualities of the ideal candidate include:
Enjoys working with the public and a variety of people
Team player
Reliable
Purpose-guided
Active learner and problem solver

$20/hour. Potential for full time with paid vacation and time off.

Wanted: operations manager Read More »

C’mon over and take a look, then give feedback

Above: A tour group visits the museum’s On a Passing Frontier exhibit, which is set for an update, thanks to a grant awarded earlier this year by the Montana 250 Commission.
On the heels of the Northwest Montana History Museum’s successful, wholesale renovation of its oldest exhibit, Lumberjacks, Tie Hacks & River Pigs, which reopened in late 2024, the institution will undertake an update of another of its seven permanent exhibits, On a Passing Frontier: The Earliest Stories from Northwest Montana. 

To gather public input on the project, the museum hosts a free open house 2 to 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20. All are invited to view the exhibit, talk with volunteers and staff, and submit feedback.

As stated in the museum’s successful application for the grant from the Montana 250 Commission, which detailed plans to renovate the longstanding On a Passing Frontier exhibit:

“The purpose of this project is to update the Northwest Montana History Museum’s earliest Northwest Montana history exhibit with recent research and modern design to further enhance visitor experience.

“The topics covered will include Flathead Valley Ecology and Native Land Management, Lithic Tools, Salish and Upper Pend d’Oreille People, Kootenai/Ksanka People, Blackfoot/Niitsitapi, and Modern Indigenous History.“

Museum volunteers and staff, including project lead Elle Eberts-Robocker, are excited to get started with not only updates to existing displays in On a Passing Frontier, but additions as well as programming to mark the reopening of the exhibit later this year.

The Northwest Montana History Museum is the premier regional history museum for Northwest Montana, drawing more than 10,000 visitors annually to Kalispell’s culture core. Along with seven permanent exhibits, including On a Passing Frontier, the museum showcases two changing exhibits and hosts approximately 150 events per year.

Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. East, Kalispell; 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org

C’mon over and take a look, then give feedback Read More »

Mr. White says: Schedule your cabin fever cure now

Here we go!

For 24 years, the Northwest Montana History Museum has organized presentations on the many facets of Montana history and life for its John White Series.
 
The talks also give reason to gather in winter with friends, family, and others who share curiosity for our state and its people. Reserve your space early to avoid disappointment (talks almost always sell out) by ordering the series online here or individual talks at the links below. You also can make reservations by stopping by or contacting the museum.
 
2 p.m. Jan. 18 Diane Boyd on “Wolves: Reality, Myths, and Madness”
2 p.m. Feb. 1 Kira Powell on “Fire Lookouts: A Peek into the Past of Structures for Fire Spotters”
2 p.m. Feb. 15 Souta Calling Last on “Blackfoot Place Map Plots a Free-ranging Culture”
2 p.m. March 1 Marty Boehm on “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About ALERT, and Then Some”
 
The John White Series pays tribute to beloved former staff members John Whites Sr. and Jr. of Central School. The 1894 schoolhouse is Kalispell’s oldest public building and home to Northwest Montana’s premier history museum, which draws more than 10,000 visitors annually for exhibits and events.

The John White Series is a fundraiser for the nonprofit Northwest Montana History Museum and its mission to preserve and present regional history.

Details: 2 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 18; Feb. 1 and 15; and March 1, 2026, with social time in Hollensteiner-Stahl Hall afterward

Pricing: Individual talks are $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers. The four-part series costs $50 for members, $75 for nonmembers. Reserve online, or come in to the museum. Payment required at time of registration.

Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. E., Kalispell, MT 59901; 406-756-8381; nwmthistory.org

Mr. White says: Schedule your cabin fever cure now Read More »