Montana

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">The steamship clerk of Pig’s Eye, Minnesota, built a railroad empire from the Great Lakes to Puget Sound</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">Legend says the frontier was “hell on women,” but the ladies claim they had the time of their lives</span> </span></p>

<p><span class="deck"> As newlyweds in 1901 they were the first to climb the towering Montana peak, but when evidence of the feat surfaced after eighty-four years, nobody believed it</span> </p>

<p><span class="deck">Starting with a single, haunting battlefield image, an amateur photo detective managed to reconstruct a forgotten photographer’s life and uncover a treasure of Indian portraits.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Montana’s Flathead Valley has captivated tourists for more than a century.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Poisoned, ruined, and self-cannibalized, this city is still the grandest of all boomtowns.</span></p>

<p><span class="deck">Nourished by powerful rivers and an equally powerful sense of its past, a town of cowhands and poets and bikers and professors distills the whole history of the American West - its hope and rapacity, its calamities and triumphs. <span class="typestyle"> Fred Haefele</span> makes clear why our third annual <span class="typestyle"> American Heritage</span> Great American Place Award goes to… </span></p>