Montana

Montana

Capital	Helena
Nickname	The Treasure State
Official Language	English
Governor	Brian Schweitzer, D
Senator	Max Baucus, D (202) 224-2651 Contact
Senator	Jon Tester, D (202) 224-2644 Contact
Ratification of Constitution/or statehood	November 8, 1889 (41st)
Flag of Montana	Motto: "Oro y Plata" (gold and silver)

Montana is located in the Northwestern region of the United States and on November 8th, 1889 became the forty-first state to enter into the union. The capital of Montana is Helena and its largest city is Billings. The current governor of Montana is Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat.

Geography

The eastern 60% of the state is flat prairie and is slowly losing population, It is filled with cattle ranches, wheat farms, and oil and gas wells. The leading city is Billings, a medical and commercial center. The climate is especially harsh in the wintertime.

The western 40% is mountainous and is growing rapidly in population. Its economy is based on tourism and retirement centers, with Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park as prime attractions. The old copper mining industry that made Butte notorious has disappeared, and the logging industry is fading in importance. The very long border with Canada is becoming economically important, as oil from Alberta is brought by pipeline to refineries in Billings and to points as far south as Houston.

Energy

Montana is rich in fossil fuel resources and renewable energy potential. Its geologic basins hold more than one-fourth of the Nation’s estimated recoverable coal reserves. Montana’s eastern basins also hold large deposits of oil and gas. Rivers flowing from Montana’s Rocky Mountains offer substantial hydroelectric power resources. Montana contains considerable wind energy potential throughout the State. Strong environmental interests (based in the western part of the state where there is little energy) have largely blocked the mining of coal and gas and are trying to stop pipelines from Canada. They instead want biofuels and wind power, which have not been profitable.

The state is a leader in CO2 sequestration, and has signed agreements with Saskatchewan so that CO2 will be piped into the state and stored for thousands of years.

Montana’s population is only 1 million and so total energy demand is low. However, the State economy is energy intensive and per capita energy consumption is relatively high. The industrial sector, which includes the energy-intensive mining industry, dominates State energy consumption.

Petroleum

Montana typically accounts for roughly 2% of annual U.S. crude oil production. Production is concentrated in the Williston Basin, which covers eastern Montana and western North Dakota and contains two of the Nation’s 100 largest oil fields. Several pipelines carry Williston production south to Wyoming and east to Midwest markets. Refineries near Billings supply regional markets with petroleum products, using crude oil brought in primarily from Wyoming and Alberta, Canada. During the winter months, Montana requires oxygenated motor gasoline in the Missoula area but allows the use of conventional motor gasoline in the rest of the State.

Natural Gas

Montana produces minor quantities of natural gas. Although production is low, demand is lower, and Montana ships nearly one-half of its natural gas output to out-of-State markets. Several natural gas pipeline systems pass through the State, transporting Canadian supplies to Midwest markets. About three-fifths of Montana households use natural gas as their primary energy source for home heating.

Coal, Electricity, and Renewables

Montana typically accounts for roughly 4% of total annual U.S. coal production. The majority of Montana’s output is produced from several large surface mines in the Powder River Basin, which straddles the border between Montana and Wyoming. Just over one-fourth of Montana’s coal production is used for State electricity generation; Montana delivers the remainder to markets in more than 15 States. Minnesota and Michigan are the largest recipients of Montana coal.

Accounting for about two-thirds of State electricity generation, coal-fired power plants dominate the Montana electricity market. Hydroelectric power accounts for most of the remainder. Montana is among the leading hydroelectric power producers in the United States, and seven of the State’s 10 largest generating plants run on hydroelectric power. The State has also initiated programs to expand and enhance hydroelectric power capacity. With several operational wind farm projects in central Montana, just east of the Rockies, the State had 146 megawatts of wind power capacity at the end of 2006. High-voltage transmission lines connect Montana to other western electric power grids, allowing Montana to export large amounts of electricity to neighboring States

Water battles

Although western Montana has plenty of water, it is not always in the right place in the arid eastern half. The result has been extended controversy of state and local controls, the use of tens of thousands of private wells, the rights of Indian tribes, and the needs of oil refineries. The State Engineer's Office operated 18890-1964 but unable to control water regulation and insure dam safety. It faced varying climatic conditions, economic boom and bust, and political opposition. It never ultimately achieved the same regulatory authority of counterparts in other states. In 1965, the legislature abolished the Montana State Engineer's Office and incorporated it into the Montana Water Conservation.

Montana has been fighting Wyoming for a century over control of unappropriated water in the Tongue and Powder Rivers. Both rivers originate in northeastern Wyoming and flow northward and ultimately drain into the Yellowstone River in Montana. The arguments between Wyoming and Montana water users have been contentious and of long duration. Creation of the Yellowstone River Compact Commission in 1943 failed to resolve disputes over allocation of water. In the 1970s the Montana’s Northern Cheyenne Indian tribe claimed a portion of unappropriated Tongue water, further complicating the issues. Agreements that were reached often failed to be ratified by one or the other state legislature. In 2007 the state of Montana sued Wyoming in the US Supreme Court over loss of water. After almost a century of failed compromises and continuing debate, the allocation issue remains unresolved.

State government

Governor Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, elected in 2004 and reelected in 2008

The challenge of the 1960s was to modernize outmoded policies in state government, especially regarding prison reform, the state's budgeting and auditing procedures, public school oversight, improving state land development and investments, and the evolution of a more efficient, streamlined state government.

History

Law and order

In early 1864 in southwestern Montana a group of law-abiding citizens, responding to the increasing lawlessness plaguing the gold-mining towns in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, formed a vigilante society and hanged 21 accused criminals.

Gangs of cattle thieves and individual rustlers threatened law and order in the late 19th century. Ranchers starting in the 1870s organized Stockmen's associations to fight back. A minority of stockmen organized into vigilante groups to protect their stock, but most stockmen worked with the legislature to create a stock commission that could oversee their interests. After 11 years of lobbying stockmen finally succeeded in getting a protective law. By working within the legislative process, stockmen transformed themselves and their frontier from a place characterized by isolation and violence to one of organization and law.

George Bourquin (1863-1958), as the federal judge in Montana handed down more than 250 decisions between 1912 and 1937. Ideologically conservative, Bourquin also preserved civil liberties in his decisions. Bourquin's basic faith in democracy and the Constitution, his progressivism, and his Puritan suspicion of a fundamental 'sinful behavior' helped him chart a principled and reasoned course between extreme positions. Bourquin protected the rights of labor unions and 'radicals' during World War I and the postwar Red Scare despite hostility. He also had great concern for the civil rights of Indians and attempted to protect them from government excess in cases like 'Scheer' v. 'Moody et al.,' in which he criticized the federal government's Indian policy.

National Guard

The Montana National Guard was established in 1887. The 1st Montana Volunteer Regiment, as the Montana National Guard was known during the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection. Arriving in the Philippines shortly after the Spanish surrendered in August 1898, the regiment participated in guarding Spanish prisoners of war in Cavite, securing Manila from Filipinos angry with the transfer of their country from Spain to the United States, assaulting Caloocan, and taking the provisional capital of Malolos. The performance of this and other National Guard troops in America's first overseas operation convinced the military of its value to national defense.

The Montana National Guard, officially designated the 163d Regiment of the 41st Infantry Division, fought in New Guinea from December 1942 to July 1944. They also participated in the Philippines campaign. Many of the guardsmen joined the Guard in the 1930s to earn money during the Great Depression, and most never imagined being involved in the horrors of jungle combat. Disease took nearly as great a toll on the men as the Japanese did.

In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, over 80% of the Montana Guardsmen and women have been deployed overseas at one time or another.

1880-1929

About 5000 Montanans died in the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed more than 20 million people worldwide, and 675,000 Americans.

Farming

Beginning in 1905 the Great Northern Railway in cooperation with the US Department of Agriculture, the Montana Experiment Station, and the Dryland Farming Congress promoted dryland farming in Montana in order to increase its freight traffic. During 1910-13 the Great Northern launched its own program of demonstration farms, which stimulated settlement (during 1909-10 acreage in homesteads quadrupled in Montana) through their impressive production rates for winter wheat, barley, and other grains.

Small business

Between the Civil War and World War II, small businessmen - merchants, farmers, mine owners, manufacturers, and bankers - represented the backbone of Montana's economy. Success rested upon their ability to diversify their interests into new economic activities and new products. Typical were the Isaac G. Baker Co. and the T. C. Power and Brother Co., which emphasized high-volume sales, product guarantees, and expanded merchandise lines to create statewide department stores. The Strain Brothers specialized in mail-order business and the F. A. Buttrey Co. introduced unique sales gimmicks. Likewise, John P. Barnes, Leander S. Woodbury, and A. C. Edwards demonstrated their entrepreneurial skills in mining, manufacturing and banking, respectively.

The Conrad banking business flourished in north-central and northwestern Montana during 1880-1914. Local banks at Fort Benton, Great Falls, and Kalispell, owned and managed by the William and Charles Conrad families, helped to finance Montana's economic development through an intricate pattern of familial, friendship, and business ties. Correspondent linkages to large metropolitan banks sustained the relatively small country banks by assuring them access to capital. The Conrad banks were aggressive in penetrating new lending markets and making inroads into the local farming, ranching, merchant, and manufacturing sectors. The banks grew in reputation and stature as the region developed, but remained single-unit, family-based enterprises.

Women

The legal status of women in the 19th-century trans-Mississippi West has drawn the attention of numerous interpreters, whose analyses fall into three types: 1) the Frontier Theory inspired by Frederick Jackson Turner, which argues that the West was, among other things, a liberating experience for women and men; 2) the reactionists, who view the West as a place of drudgery for women, who reacted unfavorably to the isolation and the work in the West; and 3) those writers who claim the West had no effect on women's lives, that it was a static, neutral frontier. The history of Montana shows that the Turner thesis best explains the improvement in women's status in Montana and the achievement of suffrage in 1914.

Margery Jacoby was a typical Great Plains teacher at the turn of the 20th century. She began teaching in Montana at 15 with a first-class certificate gained by examination. She lacked formal training but attended summer school to improve her skills. She taught because her family needed the money, and she wanted independence and an opportunity to advance her own learning. The need for teachers in the West and the belief that women were natural teachers for the young also contributed to her entry. Like other Plains schoolmarms, Jacoby was a Westerner by birth and changed teaching jobs frequently. Unlike most, she was elected county superintendent of schools, served two terms, married and quit the profession. However, she never lost interest in the classroom and her daughters later became teachers.

Copper

The Anaconda Copper Company, founded in 1880 and based in Butte, dominated the world copper market and poured wealth into the state.

The company fortunes began to reverse when the Chilean government expropriated all of the Anaconda's highly profitable operations in Chile between 1969 and 1971. New management took over and executed tough belt-tightening measures that did little to stop the disintegration of the company. Help appeared to arrive in 1976 in the form of a merger with the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), but when the Anaconda's bottom line failed to respond to ARCO's inept management, ARCO shut down the company's operations in Montana. In 1985 the company's Montana assets were sold to a local businessman. What remains tpdau are Superfund cleanup operations rin by the EPA.

Journalism

The founding of the School of Journalism at the University of Montana showed the state was following national trends in the professionalization of journalism. However, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company began to dominate economic and political life in the state and, as a political strategy, purchased most of the state's daily newspapers. From the 1920s until 1959, journalists working at the newspapers could write nothing that undercut the company's business enterprises. Journalists were thus not allowed to develop and exercise their professional skills through their news judgment regarding certain business topics - lawyers and accountants made news judgments. This changed in 1959 with the purchase of the Anaconda newspapers by Lee Enterprises, a Midwestern newspaper group. Following its own traditions, Lee allowed the journalists to exercise their own editorial judgments. Don Anderson, a Montana native and Lee executive, led the way in this transformation of the state's journalists to professional status. Newspapers soon found themselves engaged in clashes with Anaconda over important issues and even taking more active roles in civic reform efforts. Lee has managed the newspapers over the years since with praise for their editorial independence but criticism of their financial frugality.

In 2005 Lee overextended itself by borrowing $1.5 billion to buy other papers, especially the biggest St. Louis newspaper. With the Recession of 2008 came drastic cutbacks in advertising revenue, and Lee is struggling to pay off its loans and is cutting staff.

Notable people from Montana

• Burton K. Wheeler, Democratic Senator
• Max Baucus, Democratic Senator is currently the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee
• Evel Knievel, a famous motorcycle daredevil, was from Butte.
• Charley Pride, perhaps the most successful black country musician of all time, grew up in Helena and Great Falls.
• Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Missoula, was the very first Congresswoman in the United States
• The freemen, a religious cult famous for an 81 day stand off with federal agents near Jordan.

Further reading

• Howard, Joseph Kinsey. Montana: High, Wide and Handsome (1943), a classic narrative that challenges romanticized views of the West and calls for increased emulation of Indians who supposedly lived in harmony with the environment of the northern Great Plains.