50 Fun Facts About Montana

What is the capital of Montana?

It has been the capital since 1875, after two earlier mining towns.

Which is Montana's most populous city?

It is the only Montana city with more than 100,000 people; Missoula, Great Falls and Bozeman top 50,000.

Montana is the fourth-largest state by area, after Alaska, Texas and which other?

It is slightly bigger than Japan or Germany, and the largest landlocked state.

Montana's official state motto is in Spanish. What is it?

It means gold and silver, a nod to the mining boom that built the state.

Which of these is NOT one of Montana's nicknames?

Montana has no official nickname; The Silver State belongs to Nevada.

Montana became a state on November 8 of which year?

Grover Cleveland signed an omnibus bill admitting Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington together.

Which three Canadian provinces border Montana?

Its US neighbours are Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Montana's state animal is which creature, of which the state has the largest population in the lower 48?

Montana counts 117 mammal species in all, and five federally endangered ones including the black-footed ferret.

What is Montana's state flower?

The Bitterroot Mountains, one of the longest continuous ranges in the Rockies, share the name and divide Montana from Idaho.

Montana's state bird is which songbird?

The state also has an official butterfly, the mourning cloak, and an official grass, bluebunch wheatgrass.

Montana is one of the few states with an official state fossil. What is it?

The Hell Creek Formation in the northeast is a major dinosaur source, made famous by palaeontologist Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies.

Which two gemstones are official symbols of Montana?

Montana's official soil, if you were wondering, is called Scobey.

Montana's state fish is which trout?

The state has drawn fly fishers since the 1930s and is home to the Federation of Fly Fishers.

Montana's state tree is which pine?

Forests cover about a quarter of the state.

Montana's highest point, Granite Peak, lies in which mountain range?

The Beartooths, in the south-central part of the state, are technically part of the Central Rockies.

Water flowing off Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park can reach how many oceans?

Its rivers feed the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, which counts if you treat Hudson Bay as part of the Arctic.

Which body of water in Montana is the largest natural freshwater one in the western United States?

Fort Peck is the state's largest reservoir, held back by the second-largest earthen dam in the country.

The Missouri River is formed at Three Forks by the Jefferson, the Madison and which third river?

From there it flows north to Great Falls before turning east across the plains to Fort Peck.

What distinction does the Yellowstone River, which crosses Montana, hold in the lower 48?

It rises in Wyoming, enters Montana at Gardiner and joins the Missouri just over the North Dakota line.

All Montana rivers west of the Continental Divide drain into which great river?

The Clark Fork rises near Butte and picks up the Blackfoot, Bitterroot and Flathead on its way to Idaho.

Glacier National Park is paired with which Canadian park as the first International Peace Park?

Together they became a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1976 and a World Heritage Site in 1995.

Which railway built Glacier National Park's Swiss-style hotels and chalets in the 1910s?

Louis Hill's company wanted to sell the park as America's Switzerland; its transcontinental line is known as the Hi-Line.

Glacier National Park is known by what nickname?

The park has more than 130 named lakes and over 1,000 plant species.

How many of Yellowstone National Park's five entrances are in Montana?

The park itself lies mainly in Wyoming, with slivers in Montana and Idaho.

Which president signed the act creating Yellowstone, the world's first national park, in 1872?

Yellowstone Lake sits on top of the largest supervolcano caldera on the continent.

Custer's Last Stand at the Little Bighorn was fought in Montana in which year?

The Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho, inspired by Sitting Bull's visions and led by Crazy Horse and Gall, wiped out five companies of the 7th Cavalry.

The Lakota and other Plains peoples know the Little Bighorn fight by what name?

US losses were 268 dead; Custer died along with two brothers, a nephew and a brother-in-law.

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in Congress, did what in both 1917 and 1941?

In 1941 hers was the only vote against war with Japan, and she needed police protection afterwards.

Butte earned what nickname during its early-20th-century copper boom?

In 1910 alone it was North America's biggest copper producer; its labour militancy also earned it the title Gibraltar of Unionism.

What were the industrialists who fought over Butte's mineral wealth, like William Clark and Marcus Daly, known as?

Daly's Anaconda Copper Mining Company went on to dominate Montana politics for decades.

The upper Clark Fork River, rising at Butte, holds what unwanted national distinction?

Butte's mines produced more than $48 billion in ore and left the Berkeley Pit behind.

Montana's first territorial capital, in 1864, was which gold camp?

The capital moved to Virginia City in 1865 and to Helena in 1875.

The richest gold placer diggings in Montana were found at Alder Gulch, where which town sprang up?

The first Montana gold had been found at Gold Creek in 1852, and the rush began in earnest in 1862.

Montana is one of only five states with no what?

Household goods are also exempt from property tax, though livestock and farm machinery are not.

Which 1855 agreement set the boundaries for the Salish, Pend d'Oreille and Kootenai in western Montana?

It was negotiated by Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens and ratified in 1859.

Malmstrom Air Force Base near Great Falls became home in 1959 to which new weapon?

The base had hosted Strategic Air Command since 1953.

The University of Montana and Montana State University play in which athletic league?

Their rivalry dates to the early 20th century.

Roughly what share of Montana's population is Native American, the sixth-highest percentage of any state?

Native Americans form a majority in three of Montana's 56 counties: Big Horn, Glacier and Roosevelt.

Most of Montana came under American control through which 1803 deal?

Lewis and Clark explored it soon after; a tiny corner in the northeast drains to Hudson Bay and was outside the purchase.

Which rail line across the top of Montana, completed in 1893, is nicknamed the Hi-Line?

It is the northernmost transcontinental railway in the United States.

What is the state's official ballad called?

The state also has an official song, simply "Montana", and even an official lullaby.

The Hell Creek Formation in northeast Montana is famous for what?

Jack Horner's finds there put the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman on the map.

Which Montana senator was the longest-serving Senate majority leader in US history?

Another early Montana senator, Copper King William A. Clark, is remembered mainly for bribing his way into the seat.

Which painter, nicknamed 'the cowboy artist', has a museum complex devoted to him in Great Falls?

He produced more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans and Western landscapes, many set in Montana and Alberta.

Bozeman was once called the national capital of which crop, celebrated at a carnival from 1906 to 1916?

The festival was revived in 1977 as an arts event and has grown into one of Montana's largest three-day festivals.

Fort Peck Reservoir on the Missouri is held back by the world's largest dam of which type?

It is also the second-largest earthen dam in the world, and Fort Peck is the largest reservoir in the state.

Which Missoula skier won Olympic gold in freestyle aerials at the 1998 Winter Games?

He competed in four Olympics in all and won 13 World Cup titles.

Which airport overtook Billings Logan in 2013 to become Montana's busiest?

Bozeman is also home to Montana State University and the Museum of the Rockies, where Jack Horner made his dinosaur finds famous.

In which year was gold discovered in Montana, ending the fur trade's run as its main economic activity?

The rush that followed, plus the Homestead Acts of 1862, drew settlers in numbers that led to statehood in 1889.

Roughly how many named lakes and reservoirs does Montana have?

They include Lake McDonald and St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park and Whitefish Lake in the Flathead Valley.