Montana Moments

While John Owen was under the care of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth at Helena, he had the opportunity to prove his title to the Fort...

John Owen came west as a sutler—or provisioner—for the army. He was in the Bitterroot Valley in 1850 when Jesuits closed St. Mary’s Mission ...

Orville .G. Willett was an army veteran, a state senator, and the person who suggested the name for Mineral County. He was also the victim o...

Early Roman Catholic institutions in Montana included missions, schools, and hospitals. Many Protestants saw a great need to balance things ...

Epidemics were a terrible danger in all mining camps. Not only were diseases and their causes not well understood, but miners were careless ...

Halloween is over, but I can't resist sharing one last ghost story. The Bonanza Inn in Virginia City dates to the mid-1860s. It was bu...

"Ma” Smith, a homesteading wife in Garfield County, was locally well known and greatly respected. She is a good example of women in iso...

Health was among the many reasons that people came west to the booming gold camps. They believed that the high mountain climate could cure t...

Epidemics were fairly commonplace throughout the nineteenth century and knew no social boundaries. Rich or poor, no person was immune. Typho...

The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, came to Montana in 1869 to pioneer health, education, and social services in many Montana com...

The Army Nurse Corps formed in 1901, and African American nurses served throughout all wars. However, they served as contract nurses and not...

Dr. Caroline McGill came to Butte in 1911 to work at the Murray Hospital, returned to Johns Hopkins to complete her medical degree, and turn...

In the summer of 1837, a smallpox epidemic spread from a steamboat as it lay docked at Fort Union. Although the federal government initiated...