What lies in the basement?

Like many early settlers, this young woman's life and death were shrouded in mystery.

Where the "living history" exhibit isn't exactly alive.

The markers for this early interstate highway can still be seen today.

Dr. Rafael Chacón examines the ways in which World War I—the first time in which modern nation states used artistic propaganda as a weapon of war—proved to be a pivotal moment for the visual arts of the western world. The Great War also served as the backdrop for the clash of artistic ideologies, as it disrupted the radical image-making of the avant-garde and afforded academic realism one last chance in its official commemorative monuments. Chacón is a professor of Art History and Criticism at the University of Montana in Missoula and curator of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture’s World War I exhibit, Over There! Montanans in the Great War.

Of all the changes that took place in the Treasure State in the years following World War I, the most painful for some was Prohibition. Montana’s statewide ban began at 12:01 a.m. on December 31, 1918, well ahead of the national injunction. Steve Lozar shares the story of Prohibition’s impact on the Treasure State’s breweries and saloons. Lozar is an MHS trustee; member of the Salish, Kootenai, and Assiniboine tribes; great-grandson of an East Helena Prohibition-era “home brewer”; and proprietor of the Montana Beer Museum in Polson.

Among the great pleasures of research is the joy of discovery, learning things that startle you and make you reexamine your assumptions. MHS Historical Specialist Martha Kohl shares some of the surprises she encountered while working on the Montana Historical Society’s new website, Montana and the Great War.

Dr. Jeff Johnson examines speeches delivered by noted anarchist Emma Goldman in the Treasure State between 1908 and 1914. Goldman’s lectures focused on trade unionism, anarchism, the prison system, free speech, and the press. Her talks in Montana were received in myriad ways—Butte’s socialist mayor Lewis Duncan welcomed her while Helena officials deemed her “un-American” and halted a scheduled debate between Goldman and noted Montana socialist Ida Crouch-Hazlett. A graduate of Carroll College, Johnson is a professor of history and director of American Studies at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Historical Research Associates senior historian Ian Smith examines the impact of the federal government’s allotment and fee-patenting policies on the Flathead Indian Reservation. A product of the United States’ broader assimilationist agenda, the fee-patenting of Flathead allotments, which reached its peak in 1917, led to massive land loss by Salish and Kootenai tribal members before the policy was halted in 1934.

The World War I era in Montana was marked not only by combat in Europe and the Middle East but also by violence that sprang up here at home in response to rampant radical activity across the state. MHS senior manuscript archivist Rich Aarstad examines the reasons that Governor Samuel V. Stewart called a special session of the legislature in 1918 as the men and women of Montana went to war overseas, while on the home front, their families, friends, and neighbors went to war with each other.