Native Americans considered Montana their promised land. This vast region, which they called the Land of the Shining Mountains, was the hunting ground for great herds of buffalo--their mainstay for meat, hides, and the bones used to fashion tools and utensils. Before the wanton slaughter of the animals for sport, the northern wilderness was broken only by the trails of trappers and explorers, with a small scattering of fur-trading posts, Army forts, and mission settlements.
Lewis and Clark may have found gold in the Bitterroot River during their expedition in 1805. Missionaries, though aware of the metal's existence, kept silent in an effort to shield their Indian converts from a rush of larcenous prospectors. By 1852 Gold Creek was discovered by a trapper whose fur trade had nearly dried up. The first big gold strike came ten years later. Almost overnight, towns sprang up as prospectors poured into Bannack, Virginia City, and Last Chance Gulch (now Helena). Supply depots for the miners grew into thriving communities. In the lawless mining areas volunteer lawmen, called vigilantes, dispensed justice--often at the end of a rope. On the plains the United States Army struggled to keep peace between the Native Americans and a steady stream of American Civil War refugees who came to seek their fortunes in farming. Big-game hunting brought the first tourists to Montana in the 1880s.
While mining has been outstripped by manufacturing in economic importance, agriculture and tourism remain primary sources of income in Montana. Irrigation projects and insecticides have helped eliminate the twin hazards of drought and grasshoppers that made the life of the early farmer a constant gamble. The carefully bred Angus and Herefords on today's ranges bear little resemblance to the stray cattle from trail drives that made up the first Montana herds. Montana is one of the great wheat and barley-producing states and a national leader in the mining of gold, copper, silver, lead, zinc, platinum, and palladium. Montana's vast ranges graze more sheep than all but a few states. The headwaters of the Missouri River and the huge Fort Peck Dam, one of the world's largest earth-fill dams, are in Montana.
Montana's name comes from the Latin and Spanish words for mountain. The most popular nicknames are the Treasure State and the Bonanza State, in reference to its great wealth of minerals, forests, and grazing lands. The nickname Land of the Shining Mountains is from an Indian term for the Rockies. The phrase Big Sky Country originated in a book title by A.B. Guthrie, who grew up in Choteau.
One of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains states, Montana is bounded on the north by three Canadian provinces--Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. On the west and southwest is Idaho, with the Bitterroot Range and the Continental Divide forming part of the boundary. Wyoming is to the south. North Dakota and South Dakota lie to the east. The Treasure State's greatest east-west distance is 556 miles (895 kilometers). Its greatest north-south distance is 322 miles (518 kilometers) in the west, 280 miles (451 kilometers) in the east. The total area is 147,046 square miles (380,847 square kilometers), including 1,658 square miles (4,294 square kilometers) of inland water surface.
