Archives

By Billie J Olson In 1912, the legendary “Cowboy Artist” Charles M. Russell walked into the newly opened Elks Lodge in Great Falls, Montana, with a rolled- up canvas under his arm. He tossed it [...]

By Billie J Olson In the dust of the 1993 Calgary Stampede, a museum director named Lynn walked into a booth to inspect the Calgary Stampede Trophy. There stood Jay Contway, a man whose hands [...]

Story & Photos By Billie J Olson In the quiet corners of Havre, Montana, sits a man who has spent nearly ninety years proving that mastery is not found in a crowded toolbox, but in a single, [...]

For thirty-four years, Dr. Richard “Dick” Lauritzen was a fixture of the Great Falls Clinic, navigating the high- stakes precision of general surgery. But when he retired in 1998, the man who [...]

By Suzanne Waring Portraiture addresses a person’s identity in an artistic form. It can be a painting, sculpture, photograph, or any other artistic media. Before photography was common, portraits [...]

By Suzanne Waring Portraiture has been part of Peter Reiss’s life since childhood. His grandfather was Winold Reiss, the famous artist who came to Browning, Montana, many summers from 1920-1948 [...]

Born in 1941, Betty Lorraine (Blair) Steele grew up training and riding horses. In her sophomore year of high school, and the two years following, Betty won the all-around at the district level [...]

William C. “Billy” Knorr was born on January 21, 1885, in Poplar. Billy’s father, Phillip Knorr, was a U.S. Army Union Soldier in the Civil War who moved west to Montana and met Billy’s mother, [...]

In 1969, at the Cohagen Bar in eastern Montana, two cowboys, Judd Twitchell and Bud Kramer, challenged one another to prove who could ride the rankest bucking horse. Others riders jumped on the [...]

Edmond Chester Solomon was born on December 28, 1929 in Havre. He came up the way many young boys did back then: no-nonsense, no-frills. Cowboy life wasn’t a choice; it was just life. Most of the [...]