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MONTANA
MONTANA is Big Sky country. The nickname
is no empty cliché: the entire state is blessed
with a huge blue roof that both dwarfs the beautiful
countryside and complements it perfectly. A magnificent
northernmost cap for the US Rockies, this is a
region of snowcapped summits, turbulent rivers,
spectacular glacial valleys, heavily wooded forests
and sparkling blue lakes, at their most dramatic
in Glacier National Park.
By contrast, the eastern two-thirds is high prairie:
sun-parched in summer and wracked by icy blizzards
each winter. Preconceptions of a desolate land
populated by cowpokes are soon shattered: each
of Montana's small cities has its own proud identity.
The university and sawmill community of Missoula,
for example, possesses a high-culture feel absent
from the heavily Irish, copper-mining town and
union stronghold of Butte, while elegant state
capital Helena still harks back to its prosperous
gold mining years, and Bozeman, just to the south,
is one of the hippest mountain towns in the US.
The fur trappers and gold miners who were the
first whites to brave this inhospitable terrain
soon moved on, but as white settlers invaded Native
American hunting grounds, conflict was inevitable.
A key plank of army strategy was to starve the
Native Americans into submission: "For the sake
of a lasting peace let them [professional hunters]
kill, skin and sell until the buffalo are exterminated.
Then your prairies can be covered by the speckled
cow and the festive cowboy," declared General
Philip Sheridan. By the late 1870s the buffalo
were almost gone, and most of Montana had been
cleared for settlement.
The speckled cow and festive cowboy were not in
for an easy time. The horrendous winter of 1886
wiped out many herds, and the "sodbusters" who
planted wheat in the wake of bankrupt ranchers
often fared little better. Plagues of grasshoppers,
droughts, falling wheat prices and erosion of
the topsoil caused farms to fail everywhere in
the 1920s, during which time Montana was the only
state to record a population decline. Wheat has
since made a revival, and now, with lumbering
and coal mining, forms the base of Montana's economy.
Tourism is currently the state's second biggest
earner, though, apart from skiing, the harsh climate
generally restricts the season to the months between
June and September.
MONTANA – largely rebuilt in concrete – is a drably
modern town with a revolutionary tradition. Originally
called Kutlovitsa, the town was known as Mihailovgrad
for much of the postwar period in memory of local
revolutionary Hristo Mihailov, a leader of the
Communist uprising of September 1923. Socialist
historians always overestimated the importance
of the revolt – a short-lived farce that never
enjoyed popular support – but the way in which
the right-wing Tsankov regime put the uprising
down, massacring 30,000 Bulgarians within a couple
of weeks, ensured that it was remembered as one
of the most bloodily heroic episodes in Bulgarian
history. After a local referendum in 1993 the
town was renamed, ostensibly because a Roman settlement
called Montana existed here in the first century
AD. Montana merits little more than a fleeting
visit, to use its onward transport connections
to more appealing destinations in the shadow of
the mountains, such as Chiprovtsi and Lopushanski
Monastery. If you've time to kill between buses
– the terminal is diagonally opposite the train
station – head through the fruit and veg market
next to the bus station to reach a park where
you'll find a small history museum (Istoricheski
muzei; Mon–Fri 9am–1pm & 2–5pm), housing Chiprovtsi
carpets and local costumes. Of the latter, several
belong to the Karakachani, Greek-speaking nomadic
herders common throughout the western Balkan Range
until the 1950s, when a combination of settled
lifestyles and intermarriage with local Bulgarians
hastened their disappearance as a distinct group
(although they're still very much in evidence
in eastern Bulgaria). There are plenty of cafés
a block south of the train and bus stations on
Montana's flowerbedded, fountain-splashed main
square, where you'll also find a brace of hotels:
the high-rise Zhitomir (tel 096/29186; US$18–36),
which has comfortable but characterless ensuite
rooms; and the slightly snazzier Ogosta, ul. Peyu
Yavorov 1 (tel 096/42338; US$36–60), which has
the edge in terms of comfort and service.
Eastern Montana
Before ranchers and farmers settled the flat prairie
of eastern Montana, it was prime buffalo territory:
one early traveler waited three nights while a
massive herd crossed his path. Native Americans
fought hard to hold onto their land; the crushing
defeats they inflicted on the US Army include
the legendary victory at Little Bighorn. The eastern
Montana plains are intermittently broken by mountains,
of which the most impressive are the icy Beartooth
Range, crammed between the town of Red Lodge and
Yellowstone. Don't expect much from the region's
towns; most are lazy farm-supply centers, and
Billings, Montana's largest city with a population
of over 90,000, doesn't have a great deal to offer.
Western Montana
The western third of Montana sees the state at
its best – from Big Timber westwards, I-90 squeezes
between dramatic mountain ranges, making an exhilarating
approach to Yellowstone country, replete with
outdoor opportunities and bustling communities.
The only mining camps to grow into substantial
permanent settlements were state capital Helena
and craggy Butte, which made its money from copper.
Between them they conjure up more of a feel for
the rambunctious times, the lust for profit and
the post-bust hardships of the era than all the
hyped-up ghost towns in the Rockies combined.
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