Great Falls author Jerry Clark discusses his new book, published in September by the University of Utah Press. While "Supplying Custer" focuses on a historical archaeology project on the Yellowstone River, the historical context is broadly drawn around the challenges of supplying a 19th-century army and more specifically on the logistical issues of the 1876 Sioux War. (Presence of the Past Program Series, Jan. 8, 2015)

The Pekin Noodle Parlor is a lone survivor of Butte's once-thriving Chinese community.

James C. Adams's stone barn has been a landmark in Cascade County since 1885.

The Lower Rattlesnake Historic District is one of Missoula's best kept secrets.

Author Richard W. Etulain discusses his new book, "The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane." Scores of dime novels and movie and TV Westerns have portrayed this original Wild West woman as an adventuresome, gun-toting hellion. Although Calamity Jane has probably been written about more than any other woman of the nineteenth-century American West, fiction and legend have largely obscured the facts of her life. This lively, concise, and exhaustively researched biography traces the real person from the Missouri farm where she was born in 1856 through the development of her notorious persona as a Wild West heroine. www.montanahistoricalsociety.org

Since 1927, Sidney's J.C. Penney store--one of the oldest in the state--has been a commercial mainstay through good times and bad. David Kruger discusses the origins and growth of the Penney stores from their start in Wyoming to their spread throughout the nation. He shows how Penney's "Golden Rule" of "doing unto others" led to its incredible success. Kruger was born in Baker, raised in Fallon County, and hold graduate degrees from Kansas State University and University of Missouri. He is the agricultural research librarian at the University of Wyoming. Presented at the 2013 Montana History Conference in Sidney.

Tough Trip Through Paradise 1878-1879, edited by Ben Stein from the memoirs of mountain man Andrew Garcia, has remained in print since its first publication in 1967. In that time, however, little information about the original manuscript has been available, and certain questions about the veracity of Garcia's story have remained unanswered.

In this presentation on February 14, 2013, Kathryn Kramer, processing archivist to the Ben Stein research collection (MC 376, Montana Historical Society Research Center), reveals information gleaned from the process of preparing Garcia and Stein's manuscripts and personal papers for public access, and explores alternative theories about Garcia's life and Stein's interpretation of the manuscript.

Montana's cattle industry has been no stranger to the boom-and-bust cycle. Montana Historical Society museum technician Vic Reiman discusses the development of ranching in Montana from its beginnings in the 1850s—focusing on the less familiar types of cattle that populated Montana before the Texas Longhorns arrived in the 1880s—through the Hard Winter of 1886-1887 which spelled the end of the open-range era.

During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the federal airway division installed a series of beacons across the country to guide pilots across dark skies. Today, Montana is the only state that still maintains these beacons, and the historic towers can still be spotted--day and night--throughout the western mountains.

Presented by Kate Hampton at the Montana Historical Society on April 4, 2013.

Presented by Dr. Ellen Baumler at the Montana Historical Society on March 6, 2013.