Good morning, it’s Wednesday, May 26, 2021. On this date in 1864, in the brief and fraught respite between the gruesome battles at Spotsylvania Courthouse and Cold Harbor, Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation making Montana a U.S. territory. Statehood would come 25 years earlier.
In the ensuing decades, Montana has stamped itself as a special place in our national consciousness, celebrated in songs, novels, and movies as “the last best place,” a Lincoln-esque description coined in 1983 by naturalist Douglas H. Chadwick.
I’ve been to Montana many times, fished its rivers and streams, patronized its saloons, hiked its mountains, broke bread in that state with old friends and new. But I loved the place before I ever set foot in it, mainly because of its writers.