Montana’s tumultuous statehood year captured in new history

The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives will continue its Brown Bag Lunch series on Wednesday, November 29, with a presentation and book signing by Ken Egan Jr. entitled Montana 1889. The year Montana became a state comes alive in Ken Egan Jr.’s new book, a vivid description of the people and politics swirling through Montana during that crucial time. Insightful and compelling, Egan’s new book makes a worthy sequel to his Montana 1864, the highly acclaimed history about Montana’s territorial year.
Egan, executive director of Humanities Montana in Missoula, said he was struck by the changes between those years. “It was one of the most rapid and dramatic transformations of land and peoples in United States history,” Egan said.
Between 1864 and 1889, the buffalo were exterminated, the Indian wars ended, tribal nations were confined to reservations, cattle and sheep by the tens of thousands grazed the open range, Butte exploded into a city with electricity and millionaires, and multiple railroads connected Montana to the world.
Montana 1889 tells the many stories of this overwhelming transformation by entering into the lives, emotions, and decisions of Indians, miners, cowboys, women, and entrepreneurs who were cooperating and competing in the new state. Calling Egan’s book “the best kind of history,” Robert R. Swartout, Jr., professor emeritus of history at Carroll College in Helena, said Egan is “one of the most gifted Montana historians of our generation.”
The presentation will begin at noon and run about an hour at the Archives, 17 W. Quartz. Guests are encouraged to bring a sack lunch. Coffee and water will be provided. Brown Bag Lunches are held the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month. Upcoming lectures will focus topics of local interest. For more information, contact the Archives at 782-3280.