67 Facts About Montana

The western half of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges, while the eastern half is characterized by western prairie terrain and badlands, with smaller mountain ranges found throughout the state.

Montana has no official nickname but several unofficial ones, most notably "Big Sky Country", "The Treasure State", "Land of the Shining Mountains", and "The Last Best Place".

Montana's fastest-growing sector is tourism; nearly 13 million annual tourists visit Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Beartooth Highway, Flathead Lake, Big Sky Resort, and other attractions.

Name Montana comes from the Spanish word montana, which in turn comes from the Latin word montanea, meaning "mountain" or more broadly "mountainous country".

The name Montana was added in 1863 to a bill by the United States House Committee on Territories for the territory that would become Idaho Territory.

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The first permanent settlement by Euro-Americans in what today is Montana was St Mary's, established in 1841 near present-day Stevensville.

Montana Territory became one of the territories of the United States on May 26, 1864.

In 1855, Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens negotiated the Hellgate treaty between the United States government and the Salish, Pend d'Oreille, and Kootenai people of western Montana, which established boundaries for the tribal nations.

Montana did not see a large influx of immigrants from this act because 160 acres were usually insufficient to support a family in the arid territory.

Montana was the Joad of a [half] century ago, swarming into a hostile land: duped when he started, robbed when he arrived; hopeful, courageous, ambitious: he sought independence or adventure, comfort and security.

In February 1918, the Montana legislature had passed the Montana Sedition Act, which was a model for the federal version.

The Montana Act led to the arrest of more than 200 individuals and the conviction of 78, mostly of German or Austrian descent.

The wheat farms in eastern Montana make the state a major producer; the wheat has a relatively high protein content, thus commands premium prices.

These numbers constituted about ten percent of the state's population, and Montana again contributed one of the highest numbers of soldiers per capita of any state.

Montana was the training ground for the First Special Service Force or "Devil's Brigade", a joint U S-Canadian commando-style force that trained at Fort William Henry Harrison for experience in mountainous and winter conditions before deployment.

Montana is the only one of the first 48 states lacking a completed battleship being named for it.

Montana is the only state in the union without a modern naval ship named in its honor.

Montana eventually became home to the largest ICBM field in the U S covering 23, 500 square miles.

Montana is one of the eight Mountain States, located in the north of the region known as the Western United States.

Montana has thousands of named rivers and creeks, 450 miles of which are known for "blue-ribbon" trout fishing.

Montana has some 3, 000 named lakes and reservoirs, including Flathead Lake, the largest natural freshwater lake in the western United States.

Flowers native to Montana include asters, bitterroots, daisies, lupins, poppies, primroses, columbine, lilies, orchids, and dryads.

Montana is home to diverse fauna including 14 amphibian, 90 fish, 117 mammal, 20 reptile, and 427 bird species.

Montana has the largest grizzly bear population in the lower 48 states.

Montana contains Glacier National Park, "The Crown of the Continent"; and parts of Yellowstone National Park, including three of the park's five entrances.

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Montana is a large state with considerable variation in geography, topography and elevation, and the climate is equally varied.

Coldest temperature on record for Montana is the coldest temperature for the contiguous United States.

Many Montana cities set heat records during July 2007, the hottest month ever recorded in Montana.

Montana is one of only two contiguous states that are antipodal to land.

Montana has 56 counties and a total of 364 "places" as defined by the United States Census Bureau; the latter comprising 129 incorporated places and 235 census-designated places.

Montana has one city, Billings, with a population over 100, 000; and three cities with populations over 50, 000: Missoula, Great Falls and Bozeman.

Geographic center of population of Montana is in sparsely populated Meagher County, in the town of White Sulphur Springs.

Montana has a larger Native American population, both numerically and as a percentage, than most U S states.

Hutterites, an Anabaptist sect originally from Switzerland, settled here, and today Montana is second only to South Dakota in U S Hutterite population, with several colonies spread across the state.

Only the state of Alaska had a higher percentage with Alaska having roughly 14 percent of its population over 18 being veterans and Montana having roughly 12 percent of its population over 18 being veterans.

The University of Montana "was the first to establish dual admission agreements with all of the tribal colleges and as such it was the first institution in the nation to actively facilitate student transfer from the tribal colleges.

Montana is a relative hub of beer microbrewing, ranking third in the nation in number of craft breweries per capita in 2011.

Montana has no sales tax*, and household goods are exempt from property taxes.

In 1985, the Montana Legislature passed a law allowing towns with fewer than 5, 500 residents and unincorporated communities with fewer than 2, 500 to levy a resort tax if more than half the community's income came from tourism.

Montana Territory was formed on April 26, 1864, when the U S passed the Organic Act.

Montana's was a 25-year-old woman who had traveled to Virginia City via wagon train in 1865.

Montana's referred to Butte throughout the rest of her career and remains a controversial figure there for her mixture of criticism and love for Butte and its people.

Evelyn Cameron, a naturalist and photographer from Terry documented early 20th-century life on the Montana prairie, taking startlingly clear pictures of everything around her: cowboys, sheepherders, weddings, river crossings, freight wagons, people working, badlands, eagles, coyotes and wolves.

Many notable Montana authors have documented or been inspired by life in Montana in both fiction and non-fiction works.

Baseball is the minor-league sport with the longest heritage in the state and Montana is home to three independent teams, all members of the Pioneer League: the Billings Mustangs, Great Falls Voyagers, and Missoula Osprey.

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Montana allows the smallest—"Class C"—high schools to utilize six-man football teams, dramatized in the independent 2002 film The Slaughter Rule.

Montana provides year-round outdoor recreation opportunities for residents and visitors.

Montana has been a destination for its world-class trout fisheries since the 1930s.

Montana is the home of the Federation of Fly Fishers and hosts many of the organization's annual conclaves.

Robert Redford's 1992 film of Norman Mclean's novel, A River Runs Through It, was filmed in Montana and brought national attention to fly fishing and the state.

Montana has millions of acres open to cross-country skiing on nine of its national forests and in Glacier National Park.

Montana is ranked as the least obese state in the U S, at 19.

Montana's largest circulating daily city newspapers are the Billings Gazette, Great Falls Tribune (26, 733), and Missoulian (25, 439).

Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport is the busiest airport in the state of Montana, surpassing Billings Logan International Airport in the spring of 2013.

Montana voters amended the 1889 constitution 37 times between 1889 and 1972.

In 1916, Montana became the first state to elect a woman, Progressive Republican Jeannette Rankin, to Congress.

In 1971, Montana voters approved the call for a state constitutional convention.

Montana has three branches of state government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

From statehood in 1889 until 1913, Montana was represented in the United States House of Representatives by a single representative, elected at-large.

Montana received a second representative in 1913, following the 1910 census and reapportionment.

Montana is well known for having bribed his way into the U S Senate.

Three former Montana politicians have been named judges on the U S District Court: Charles Nelson Pray, James F Battin (who served in the U S House of Representatives from 1961 to 1969), and Paul G Hatfield (who served as an appointed U S Senator in 1978).

Montana has a history of voters splitting their tickets and filling elected offices with individuals from both parties.

Montana has voted for the Republican nominee in all but two presidential elections since 1952.

The Montana Senate is, as of 2021, controlled by Republicans 31 to 19, and the House of Representatives is currently 67 to 33.

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Montana has only one representative in the U S House, having lost its second district in the 1990 census reapportionment.

Montana's population grew at about the national average during the 2000s, but it failed to regain its second seat in 2010.