Tourists and Transplants: Montana History Series, #7

By Greg Strandberg

Explore Montana history from 1990 to 2020 in this first modern history of the state. Learn about the tourists that flocked to the state, many of whom eventually transplanted here. Meet the politicians that governed and represented through deregulation, foreign wars, and economic hardship. Discover the stories of common people overcoming everyday odds to make it in the Treasure State. Enjoy all that the Big Sky has to offer in this historical work.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Strandberg
• Release date: Mar 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393566649

Greg Strandberg

Greg Strandberg was born and raised in Helena, Montana. He graduated from the University of Montana in 2008 with a BA in History.When the American economy began to collapse Greg quickly moved to China, where he became a slave for the English language industry. After five years of that nonsense he returned to Montana in June, 2013.When not writing his blogs, novels, or web content for others, Greg enjoys reading, hiking, biking, and spending time with his wife and young son.

Book preview

Tourists & Transplants

A History of Montana, Volume Seven

Greg Strandberg

Copyright © 2021 Big Sky Words

D2D Edition, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover Image: Elk in Lake McDonald, by Charlie M. Russell, 1906

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I – The 1990s

1: Celebrities Rush In

2: Running into Trouble

3: Train Kept a Rollin’

4: Our Faltering Railroads

5: Infrastructure Breaks Down

6: Conrad Burns Goes to Washington

7: The Travails of Stan Stephens

8: The Call that Changed Montana

9: Marc Racicot’s Rise

10: Montana Politics in the 1990s

11: Mining’s Fate

12: Losing a Seat

13: The Deregulation of Montana Power

14: A Changing Legislature

15: NAFTA Comes to Town

16: The Rise of Montana Trucking

17: The Yellowstone Pipeline’s Troubled History

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Part II – The 2000s

18: Schweitzer Charges In

19: Election 2000

20: The Mess in Florida

21: Twin Towers and Twin Wars

22: Fading Towns, Fading Memories

23: Back at the Ranch

24: Montana’s Meth Problem

25: The Hardworking Highway Patrol

26: All Locked Up

27: Marijuana Gets the Green Light

28: Aging with Dignity

29: Montana Politics in the 2000s

30: The 2008 Financial Crash

31: The Wages of Decline

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Part III – The 2010s

32: Tourists Flock to Montana

33: Montana Politics in the 2010s

34: A Train Wreck

35: Filling Max’s Shoes

36: Going High-Tech

37: The Rise of Greg Gianforte

38: Dirty Business at the Yellowstone Club

39: The Ignored and Forgotten Tribes

40: Trump Steals the Spotlight

41: The High Price of Higher Education

42: Education Gets Dumbed-Down

43: The Childcare Crisis

44: The Quagmire

45: Cracks in Society

46: A Changing Media

47: The Covid-19 Pandemic

48: The 2020 Election

Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

In 1990, Montana had just over 799,000 people. By 2020, the state had over a million. Two hundred thousand new people in the span of thirty years, more than 75,000 than had arrived over the previous thirty. 

Who were they, where did they come from...and what did they want?

We know from birth and death records that most of the new arrivals were transplants. The average number of births each year in the state over the course of the 2010s was 12,000 per year, while the average number of deaths was closer to 10,000. Over the course of a decade, therefore, we can expect just 20,000 new Montanans to come via the delivery room, while the other 70,000 or so most likely arrive via the interstate or the airport.

Whether they were just visiting or coming here to live permanently, Montanans were wondering more and more about these new arrivals as the 20th-century came to a close and the 21st began. They asked the questions more and more as the 2010s drew to an end; as so many people transplanted themselves here from other states in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic.

We’ll ask those questions too, as this history unfolds. It’s the final volume of this 7-volume series, one that started eight years ago. Tourists and transplants are the main characters this time, though by no means the only ones. We’ll explore the political personalities that set the policies and procedures, as well as the ne’er-do-wells and malcontents that tried to get around them.

Most of all, this history will try to paint a picture of what Montana was like from 1990 to 2020, with the ultimate goal that it’ll help future generations assume the greatness of those years, while avoiding the mistakes.

Part I – The 1990s

Montana’s population in 1990 was 799,824, a growth rate of just 1.7% from 1980. People just stopped coming to the state during the 1980s. Aside from the big growth years of 1981-2 – which saw a combined 1.3% growth rate – the final years of the decade saw the state lose 1.8% of its population, or more than 22,000 people.

That all began to turn around in the 1990s, in no small part because wages started to rise. In 1990, the per capita income for Americans was around $14,300, but in Montana it was a little over $15,400. Another factor was the massive number of tourists flocking to the state.

Over time, many any of them relocated here for good, effectively becoming transplants. Aside from that, many chose to make Montana a second-home destination, where they might stay for half the year, a few months, or as little as a couple weeks, even less. A lot of these people were just regular citizens, although with a lot more money than the average Montanan. But increasingly, they were famous celebrities that had discovered Montana...and how anonymous it made them feel.

1: Celebrities Rush In

It’s no secret that famous movie stars, musical legends, professional sports stars, titans of media, and figures of infamy have all settled in Montana. They did so at some point, but when? When did famous celebrities start coming to the state, and how did the locals feel about that?

The internet can only take you so far with that question, and if you want to get to the bottom of things you have to go to the archives. But even the Montana Historical Society Research Center can only take you so far. No, the locals know best, and I’m thankful so many from so many parts of Montana have told me of their famous neighbors over the years.

Here’s the story of how the famous discovered Montana and called it home, either part-time or permanently. They were some of the first to transplant themselves here during this period of the state’s history, and their stories to friends and neighbors back home – as well as an adoring public in numerous media appearances – made it clear to countless others that life under the Big Sky was something to try.

Celebrities First Come to Montana

The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the summer of 1915 on a ranch near White Sulphur Springs, which set the stage for his short story ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.’

Earnest Hemingway was heading up to Billings with John Dos Pasos in late-1930 for a hunting trip. They were coming from Northern Wyoming when their car went off the road between Park City and Laurel. Hemingway’s arm was fractured and he spent two months in St. Vincent Hospital in Billings, passing time by listening to the radio, getting to know a Mexican gambler who was also a patient, and talking with a nun. This led him to write a story called The Gambler, the Nun and the Radio, which was eventually changed to Give Us A Prescription, Doctor, when it appeared in Scribners Magazine in May 1933.

Comedian Red Skelton visited Flathead Lake a lot during World War II, but once he bought the wrong kind of hunting license and got caught. The comedian was given a stiff fine and had his gun taken away. That caused Skelton to leave the Flathead Valley with a bad taste in his mouth, and he never returned.

John Elway, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback for the Denver Broncos, actually grew up in Missoula. In fact, Elway was the oldest quarterback to ever win a Super Bowl, at the age of 38. His dad, Jack Elway, was a coach for the University of Montana Grizzlies for a time during the late-60s or early-70s and even coached at Washington State in Pullman as well. John Elway was a student at Lewis and Clark Elementary in Missoula during those years.

Celebrities in the 1970s

Movie stars have been coming to Chico Hot Springs, a celebrity hangout in Paradise Valley, since 1974 when the film Rancho Deluxe was shot nearby. That starred Sam Waterston and Jeff Bridges, and that’s where Bridges met his wife, Sue, who was a hostess there. He’s been living near Livingston for over 40 years.

Not all Montana visits fare so well. Hank Williams, Jr. fell off Ajax Mountain in Big Hole Country and was in critical condition in 1975. He recuperated at Missoula Community Medical Center and in 1983 came back to Missoula to help dedicate a new emergency center.

One celebrity that has had a lasting impact on the state was actually born here. The Huntley-Brinkley Report ran on NBC for 16 years beginning in October 1956 and during that time Chet Huntley gained a reputation for honesty, fairness, and great reporting.

Huntley was born in Cardwell on December 10, 1911 and attended Montana State College (as MSU was then known) until transferring to the University of Washington which he graduated from in 1934 with a degree in both speech and drama. From there he got work in Seattle radio and moved around a bit, working his way up to NBC in 1955.

When the show ended in July 1970 Huntley returned to Montana. An avid skier, he came up with the idea of a new ski resort and built it. The resort, called Big Sky, opened in December 1973 and has been popular with locals and people from around the world ever since. Huntley never got to see the place fully in action, however, dying just three days before its grand opening in March 1974, at the age of 62.

Chet Huntley, c 1973

Celebrities in the 1980s

Mel Gibson bought a 45,000 acre ranch of grasslands, rivers and foothills in 1988 around Absarokee and held onto the place for nearly twenty years before selling it in 2005. No one knows the selling price, but it’s figured it was $4-5 million. The sixteen staff members that Gibson brought on during that time were allowed to stay on under the new owners, a couple that’d been raising cattle in the state for years.

Keifer Sutherland had a ranch in the Whitefish area. He’d first got interested in the area in the 80s, and he and Julia Roberts would often use the place to escape from Hollywood. He then came up full-time while learning how to rope for the 1994 film The Cowboy Way. He got more serious about roping in 1998 and actually won a few roping championships. Known to drink, in 2003 he admitted to Men’s Journal magazine that he got a good licking in Montana once and still had part of a beer bottle stuck in my elbow.

Christopher Lloyd has been living on and off again in Montana since at least 1990, but came up here for good after his $11 million California home was destroyed by wildfires in 2011. He settled in the Bitterroot, somewhere around Darby.

In a December 1982 Montana Standard article called Famous folks from afar settle in Montana, reporter Steve Shirley tells us a bit more about Montana celebrities. The tidbits are short, but highlights include:

– Joe Robbie, proprietor of the Miami Dolphins pro football team, has a ranch near Ennis.

– Christopher Parkening, an internationally known classical guitarist, had a home in Bozeman.

– Colonel Robert Stevens had a ranch near Two Dot. He was former secretary of the Army and his family runs J.P. Stevens, the textile firm that’s had frequent squabbles with unions in recent years (it was the villain in the film ‘Norma Rae.’)

– Vang Pao, the Laotion guerrilla who fought communist troops with U.S. aid during the Vietnam War, has settled on a farm in the Bitterroot Valley.

– Michael Cimino, "who won an Oscar for ‘The Deer Hunter,’ has a place near Glacier National Park.

– Actor John McIntire, known from Wagon Train lived in northwest Montana in the isolated Yaak country with his wife Jeanette Nolan, who is known from the TV show Dirty Sally.

Celebrities in the 1990s

The New York Times had an article in March 1990, called Stars Stake a Piece of Big Sky Country in a Great Ranch Rush.

The piece was written by Jim Robbins and tells of the various movie stars coming to the state. Brook Shields has just bought a place nearby, he says of Big Timber, Mel Gibson has a spread to the east, and Ted Turner has two ranches to the west. He mentions that the Boulder River Valley is where most of the well-off have recently settled. The article really does a lot of name-dropping, as you can see:

Miss Shields is a recent addition to the valley. Michael Keaton has a place here. The novelist Tom McGuane has one on the West Fork of the Boulder River. So does Dave Grusin, the musician, and Robert D. Haas, chairman of Levi Strauss & Company, and owner of the Oakland A’s. Just north of Yellowstone National Park, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan have a house. Jeff Bridges is a neighbor. So is Peter Fonda.

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The author goes on to say that this area of Montana isn’t unique when it comes to the celebrity treatment:

In southwestern Montana celebrities have swarmed to the Bitterroot Valley. The musicians Huey Lewis and Hank Williams Jr., the investment broker Charles Schwab, the actor Christopher Lloyd and Russ Francis, formerly with the New England Patriots, are among those with spreads here.

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I call it the Aspenization of Montana, a rancher and writer by the name of Joel Bernstein said of the changes taking place back in 1990, when Big Timber had but 1,600 residents and the one restaurant and theatre were only open on the weekend. He’s worth quoting at length:

People come here and say they’re trying to escape places like California, but they’re not. They bring the world they come from with them. Since I’ve lived here I’ve seen more fences go up. You can’t do business with a handshake anymore. You’ve lost that sense of community.

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Many likely feel the same way as Bernstein. After all, there’s no way native Montanans can afford the land these movie stars are buying up, unless they left the state and made their money elsewhere. The ranches range in size from 500 to 10,000 acres or more, at prices that range anywhere from $250 to $1,000 an acre.

Much of the animosity that Montanans feel toward celebrities can be traced to Ted Turner.

Ted Turner in Montana

The business mogul and media tycoon bought up 128,000 square acres, or 200 square miles, a huge block of land, even by Montana standards. The reason for this was so he could fence it off and return it to native habitat for elk, buffalo, and other wildlife. Robbins describes what happened next:

"The foreman of the Turner ranch placed an advertisement in the local papers warning hunters off the property. ‘Turner ranches are patrolled and all violators will be prosecuted,’ the advertisement advised. ‘Know your boundaries.’

Sportsmen were incensed. In response, one rancher near Helena, Harvey Irby, placed an advertisement in response that read: ‘Attention. Ted Turner. You are positively the only one denied permission to hunt on my ranch!’

Mr. Turner, who refused to be interviewed about his Montana property, apologized for the advertisements in a letter to Mr. Irby, but the damage had been done."

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USA Weekend had a great report on Montana Celebrities in their May 1990 issue. The article was called Montana: The last best place and tells us the number of visitors to the main tourist attractions of Montana jumped 24% from 1985 to 1989. About 4.7 million people travelled to this state of 806,000 residents in 1988, the article says, and there was still plenty of elbow room.

During that time the state had 11 of the USA’s 100 best trout streams. According to the Bozeman Area Chamber of Commerce in 1990, an average square mile of land in Montana holds 3.3 deer, 1.2 elk or antelope (depending on where you happen to be), 896 keeper-size fish and five people.

That year a typical 2,500 square foot house on five acres goes for $100,000. Besides those great economic numbers, the article is a treasure-trove of Montana celebrity information. Here are some highlights:

– In Stevensville there’s the Lonesome Dove Riding, Drinking and Flying Saloon was owned by Russ Francis, former tight end for the San Francisco 49ers. Huey Lewis was a regular there.

– The Livingston Bar and Grill has been transformed from an old Western bar into a local hip hangout for Jeff Bridges, Michael Keaton, and Dennis and Randy Quaid.

– Pablo Elvira, a leading baritone for the New York Metropolitan Opera, has a house on 100 acres near Bozeman. He was from Puerto Rico originally and founded a local opera company, in his new Montana town. His wife was from there, and when he went to meet her parents he fell in love with the place.

The Helena Independent Record had a great article in December 1991 called Hollywood Montana. It lists a large map showing all the names of the celebrities around the state, and on the next page you get photos of all 40 that are profiled.

Hollywood Montana Article

Many came as a surprise to me, and highlights include:

– Hoyt Axton owns a home on seven acres near Victor.

– Carol Burnett, who owns property outside Whitefish, on The Big Mountain.

– Liz Claiborne owns a home in the Swan Valley and land near Canyon Creek.

– Glenn Close owns a farmhouse outside Bozeman, and is co-owner (with a sister) of a Bozeman coffee house.

– Emilio Estevez owns a home near Whitefish.

– Lon Hinkle is the touring pro for Eagle Bend of Bigfork, where he owns a home.

– Steve Howe owns property outside Kalispell.

– Jim Nabors owns a home outside Whitefish, on The Big Mountain.

– Jack Nicklaus owns a hunting lodge in the Noxon area and is building another near Essex.

– Charlie Sheen owns property in the Swan Valley along with basketball player Frank Brickowski, and 420 acres near, reportedly, Nirada, in Lake County.

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The Celebrity Impact on Montana Land Values

A September 1993 Baltimore Sun article called The last Best Place is the Hot Place gets into the problems that Montana celebrities bring:

"In Livingston, where much of ‘A River Runs Through It’ was filmed (because the real river in Norman Maclean's novella is polluted), land values have increased from $1,500 to $6,500 an acre in 10 years. A woman in the town's largest real-estate office tells me only land speculators are happy. ‘Nothing is moving,’ she says. ‘No one can afford to sell because no one can afford to buy.’

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Montana celebrities will drive up land values, effectively pricing natives out of the market. They’ll tell all their friends on both coasts about it, and more will come flocking in. Trendy boutiques rise up on Montana main streets, with prices no Montanan could afford. Then these celebrity transplants harp on the environment, something that often leads to job losses for those that were born here. On top of it they never once publicly support local candidates or run for the legislature themselves. That might go against the whole reason they came here, to just get away from it all. Rarely will they look at the problems their arrival has brought.

Still, is this really the issue? The East Coast Baltimore Sun doesn’t think so, seeing their arrival as a benefit:

But it's not those outsiders who are the big problem under the Big Sky. The movie stars (who are fun to watch and seldom seen in winter) and the newcomers do little harm and generally help the economy. Because they've moved here for a better life, they insist on good schools and municipal services. If enough of them come, perhaps Montana will regain the second congressional seat it lost in the last round of reapportionment.

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More than two decades later, and that second House seat has not returned. Neither have the jobs that were lost before many of those celebrities even came. Oftentimes older Montanans want to blame their problems on those that are coming now, for this makes it easier to blame the real causes for their malaise.

"No, Montana's big problem is that it has always been a resource-exporting state with little clout in Washington and other places where natural resources are regulated. First its copper, then its coal, then its timber were taken away by outsiders. And companies like Anaconda (which literally removed part of the city of Butte to get to the copper beneath) did not replace their divots when they left the state. The result is scarred land, thousands of acres of cleared forests. (One of the largest timber companies is selling out now and leaving the state.) And there's heavy pressure to open more federally owned wilderness to loggers and miners.

Because Montana is so vast, it's easy to discount any damage that might have been done. A population equivalent to Baltimore, Towson and Parkville is squeezed into a state the size of Michigan, Illinois and Indiana combined. The Bozemans of Montana, even the stripped forestland, are like tiny splotches on a wall mural. More than 6 million people visited the state last year, but precious few found their way to out-of-the-way Ekalaka, Madoc, Yaak or Belt."

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No matter how you feel about Montana celebrities, they’ll keep coming to the popular areas of the state, avoiding those out-of-the way places. They’ll keep telling their friends about Montana, and more will come. I wish they’d get more active in politics and not just wile away their time here. Some do, but the vast majority do not. That’s a shame, but I doubt it’ll change anytime soon. Perhaps we’re luckier for it.

2: Running into Trouble

Kari Swenson was 23-years-old when she began working as a waitress at the Lone Mountain Ranch near Big Sky in the summer of 1984. A week later, her name would be known around the world.

She’d been born in Bozeman, her dad the head of the MSU physics department, her mom a registered nurse. Through hard work and dedication, she became an international biathlon sensation. The sport combines cross country skiing with rifle shooting. Kari had taken it up three years before, after mastering the sport of whitewater canoeing. In 1983 she headed to France for the first ever women’s world championships, where her skiing and marksmanship proved her the best American woman in the sport. The following spring she finished up her biology degree in Bozeman, with the hope of one day becoming a veterinarian. But first she’d take the summer off, enjoying all the Big Sky country had to offer. She had no idea it’d go so terribly wrong.

See the source image

Kari Swenson, c 1984

No doubt a large part of Kari’s decision to stay around Big Sky that summer were the miles and miles of old logging roads that dotted the area, ideal spots for her to keep her body in shape for the many winter competitions that lay ahead. She particularly liked the Ulerys Lake region above Chet Huntley’s Big Sky vacation resort. Her boss at the ranch had seen a grizzly bear in the area the day before, and Kari was eager to spot the animal as well. On July 15, she headed out. Instead of a bear, however, she spotted two sleeping bags. Before she could react, two men appeared from behind the trees, both looking like "something out of the movie Deliverance."

One was Don Nichols, a 53-year-old that was lean and bearded with his hair going grey. He despised the mundane routines of everyday life, considering himself a latter-day Jim Bridger, a man that lived on his own terms away from all the ‘crazies’ out there. He’d been born in Kansas, moved with his parents to Montana during the Depression, and eventually became a metallurgical assayer. Described as a quiet, literate man, he didn’t much care for towns.

The other was Don’s son, Danny. He was 19-years-old, had dropped out of high school after his junior year, and quickly began to have run-ins with the law. His parents had gotten divorced when he was just 6-years-old, and it was shortly after that when his dad began taking him out for extended stays in the mountains. After dropping out of high school, that became a more permanent way of life for him, just like his father...though he might have been growing tired of it. The two had been out there in the wilderness for nearly a year, leaving civilization behind the previous August. They’d stay up in the forested mountains as long as they could before the snow forced them down to the valleys, which still contained at least six feet of snow. They lived in caves or dugouts and ate deer, ground squirrels and birds they trapped with wire nooses.

It was a hard way to live, and Don knew his son was gnawing at the bit, ready for a change. But Don didn’t want his son to leave, didn’t want to be left out there alone. What if he could find a way to make Danny stay? Don knew of another self-styled mountain man living up near Kalispell, 300 miles to the north. He was also a loner like Don, and he’d reportedly found himself a ‘hippie gal’ who fit right into his solitary way of life. Spotting Kari running there on that old logging road, Don got an idea. What if I made that woman Danny’s wife? Surely he’d stay then, right? He acted on that thought, kidnapping Kari.

She figured that Danny was a bit apprehensive about the whole kidnapping plan, but that Don was not. He’d made his decision about what kind of life he wanted to lead. At the same time, he seemed quite sick. Kari mentions how he had to go off into the trees several times to throw-up, and that he had to stop and rest several times while the two of them were dragging Kari to their camp. But that didn’t mean Danny was any better. Once when Don was off being sick, she asked Danny if he planned to let her go. After thinking for a moment, Danny said, No, you’re too pretty. I’m gonna keep you.

Kari didn’t show up back at the ranch to work in the dining room that night, and the worry alarms went off. Surely the grizzly got her, many thought, for what else could it be? She couldn’t get lost in that country, not with her knowledge, her coworkers agreed. On top of that, the light was rapidly dying, and all knew the temperatures – even in summer – could quickly drop so high up in the mountains. Kari had only been wearing shorts, a T-shirt and a windbreaker, so the concern was real. They called Kari’s parents as well as the sheriff, and a search was soon happening on foot and in the air.

The search began on a Sunday and continued on into Monday, with twenty-six on the team. Several of the men were armed, thinking of the grizzly that was spotted in the area two days before. The large group broke into smaller pairs, and the men began to fan out. Two of them – 30-year-old Jim Schwalbe and the older Alan Goldstein – made their way north past Ulerys Lake and to a high ridge, whereupon they began to bushwalk their way toward a logging road they thought Kari might have used. It was tough going, through lodgepole country, soggy and mosquito-ridden, with blown-down trees every few steps.

The men separated to make the going easier, and while Jim was making his way down a small creek he heard a gunshot, followed by a girl’s scream, and then the sound of two men talking quickly. I was thinking someone might have shot at what they thought was a bear and hit a girl instead, Jim recounted.

The reality was something different. Moments before, both Don and Danny Nichols had heard the two searchers above them in the bushes, cutting their way towards them. Danny had panicked, probably reaching for his .22-caliber rifle when it accidentally fired. The bullet struck Kari in the upper-right chest two inches above her collarbone, whereupon it pierced her lung before exiting ten inches lower out of her back, just barely missing her spine and liver.

That’s when Jim saw the two mountain men whose voices he’d heard, each of them armed. Don spotted the young man there in the creek there looking at them too, and called out, You got a gun? Jim replied that he did not, and at that point Kari began to scream, I’m shot, help me! That’s when Jim realized this wasn’t some accidental situation involving hunters or hikers, but a real serious problem of life and death. His fears were confirmed when he got a closer look at Kari, sitting in a sleeping bag, chained around her waist to a tree. Next to her was what Jim judged to be a young kid, one who looked on the verge of tears as he kept muttering, Oh God, I didn’t mean to shoot her.

Jim’s eyes quickly darted back to the older mountain man, who now had his gun on him. At the same time, Alan was quickly coming down the hill toward the camp, having heard the gunshot as well. Jim yelled at him to help, whereupon Don’s eyes flashed upward to the new arrival. Alan and Don’s eyes locked. Alan saw the rifle in the older man’s hands, saw it aimed at Jim. Without hesitating, Alan reached into his pack and pulled out his pistol and quickly darted over to a tree to take cover.

Drop your guns, you’re surrounded by two hundred men! Alan yelled down to the two mountain men, holding his pistol up but not pointing it at anyone. But down below in the camp, Don didn’t listen, and switched his aim from Jim to Alan. Jim rushed forth, thinking he could grab the rifle, so close was he. Both Danny and Kari yelled, ‘No,’ but it was too late – Don fired, striking Alan just above his mouth and killing him instantly.

Jim managed to rush to Alan, saw that he was dead, and realized fully just what kind of danger he was in. Down in the camp, Don was yelling for Danny to shut up and get the chain off Kari. Jim decided it was his best chance to get out of there so started rushing back up the hill. He ran for over a mile before he encountered another group of searchers. They headed back toward the campsite, but Jim couldn’t locate it. After four hours, a helicopter was brought in. Jim went up in it, spotted a glint of light off Alan’s daypack and the camp was located. As suspected, the two mountain man were long gone, with no trace of where they went. Kari, however, was still there. In the four hours since she’d been shot, she managed to go through Alan’s pack, found a candy bar and some lemonade, and used his sleeping bag to keep warm. With her vision beginning to blur, she lay as still as she could so as not to aggravate her wound.

Eighteen hours after being kidnapped, the helicopter airlifted her to the hospital in Bozeman where she was soon in stable condition. Out in the woods and the mountains, the search continued. It went on for a week, on foot and in the air, with an 11-man SWAT team from Billings tagging along. They found nothing.

After eight days in the hospital, Kari was released. The search went on for months but was finally called off as winter took hold. No one knew where the Nichols had gone. It turns out they made it further into the Madison Range, staying out of reach of law enforcement for five months. Then on December 13, Madison County sheriff and former bronco buster, Johnny France, got a tip of where the Nichols’ camp might be. He got on his snowmobile, drove it to within half a mile of where the men were supposed to be, then strode the rest of the way on foot. Seen any coyotes lately? he asked nonchalantly before pulling out his gun and identifying himself as the sheriff. The Nichols’ surrendered without a shot.

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Dan Nichols after arrest in December 1984

The two men were brought to court a short time later, and it was decided they’d be tried separately. Marc Racicot would serve as the prosecutor in the two Virginia City trials. The story of the kidnapping had made international headlines, and Racicot soon had his name in the papers each day around the state, and the world. The trials lasted for months, with the younger Dan Nichols convicted to 20-years in May for kidnapping and misdemeanor assault. Don was convicted in September to 85-years for kidnapping, murder, and aggravated assault.

Danny was released in 1991. Five years later he finally found the wife that his dad always wanted him to have. The marriage didn’t last. By the early-2010s, Danny was in trouble again, this time for trying to sell marijuana at a rock concert. He didn’t show up for his pretrial hearing, and many figured he’d once again headed out into the mountains. He was eventually caught, pled guilty in federal court, and was sentenced to four years and a $280,000 fine.

Don Nichols blamed Kari for the whole incident. If Kari had not been up at Ullery’s Lake in the manner she was, Goldstein wouldn’t have been killed by me, he wrote years after the events, trying to get a book published. That’s a fact and her subconscious mind will always tell her that.

Over the years his stance softened, and he’d eventually say that they only intimidated her into coming with them and that we were only going to keep her with us for a few days if it didn’t work out. He said that they treated her very humanely...in fact cordially, making it a point to say he never hit her. The chain involved was a real lightweight chain, he added. One end was fastened comfortably around her waist and the other end around a tree.

Kari viewed it differently, writing to the parole board one year:

I endured being grabbed by both wrists, hit in the face, thrown to the ground, chained to Dan, threatened with knives and guns, marched through the woods, secured like an animal to trees and spent a terrifying night chained next to Dan.

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Don came up for parole every five years. During his 2012 request, nearly 200 letters were sent in opposing his release. Nichols’ crime still looms large for his victims and many in the Bozeman-area community, a publication in the UK wrote at the time. Five years later, however, he was released. He’d served 32 years for the kidnapping of Kari and the killing of her would-be rescuer, apologized for his crimes, and that was that – he was released, and during the same year that his son got out of federal prison for drug charges. Today Don lives in Great Falls.

Kari suffered diminished lung capacity because of her injury, but that didn’t stop her from winning a bronze medal two years later in the world biathlon championships in Norway. She retired from the sport, headed to veterinary school in Colorado, and settled into a small practice there. After five years she headed back to Bozeman, where she lives to this day.

3: Train Kept a Rollin’

Helena awoke with a jolt on February 2, 1989.

It was 27 degrees below zero. With the wind chill factored in it felt more like 60 below. It wasn’t the best weather to be sitting in a train going up a mountain pass. That’s what was happening, however, Train 121 going up Mullan Pass with 49 cars and a couple engines.

That kind of cold played havoc with Montana Rail Link’s automatic switches, which allowed trains to switch from one set of tracks to another without stopping. Frozen up as they were, however, the engineers had to stop the train at every switch and have men get out and switch them by hand.

That got real cold, real quick. The fact that the lead engine’s heater stopped working didn’t help matters, either. The men decided that on the next switch they’d get out, swap out the lead engine with one that had a working heater, and then couple the train back together and be on their way. It was a good plan, and would have worked too had the weather not been so cold that it caused the air to actually leak out of the air brakes.

The men had just disconnected the engines and without the air brakes holding them in place – or the handbrakes that the crew should have set – the other 49 cars began to roll backwards. There was no way to stop them.

The cars shot down from near the top of the 5,566-foot Mullan Pass, gaining speed as they went. Along Greenhorn Creek and then past St. Louis Gulch to Spring Gulch the cars went, racing to Birdseye several miles away.

The cars passed the small community and continued on toward Helena. They made it all the way to the Benton Avenue crossing, right beside the Benton Avenue Cemetery that’d been opened in 1870. It was right across the street from Carroll College, the private Catholic school that had opened in 1909. There, parked on the tracks, was a work train.

The 49 cars moving at 35 to 45 miles per hour plowed into it at 5:30 in the morning, causing a massive pile-up and subsequent fire. A total of 15 cars derailed. That might have been the end of it except for the train car full of hydrogen peroxide that exploded eighteen minutes later.

Flames shot 20 to 30 feet into the air while metal and other debris was shot a mile outward in all directions. Most of the windows in the college’s women’s dorm were broken. God wasn’t interested in taking them that day. Girls were saved from injury because most had moved their beds away from the windows due to the cold, and they’d also tucked in their curtains to keep out the cold, and these caught the exploding glass shards.

St. Charles Hall was shaken badly. The columns of the Cathedral of St. Helena were also damaged, even though they were a mile away. Over at the Lundy Center, the diverse collection of plants in Staggering Ox’s window were frozen instantly when the windows there were shattered. I walked over and touched a leaf, and it shattered like glass in my hand, one resident remembers. Every plant died. Plumbing pipes froze and burst. The frozen yogurt machine was ruined. Water heaters were destroyed. Glass shards everywhere.

Over on Ralph Street, 79-year-old Catherine DeBree was sleeping in her bedroom when a train axel sailed over St. Charles Hall and tore through the roof to land in her living room.

Miraculously, no one died. Power in Helena was disrupted and even 90 miles away in Great Falls they experienced some brownouts. In Helena none of the street or traffic lights worked and every business was dark. When firefighters got to the Civic Center station they had to wrestle open the automatic station door manually by pulling on a chain to raise it.

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Train wreckage in Helena, 1989

Neighborhoods within 2 miles of the massive wreck and explosion were evacuated, largely over concerns about toxic gasses coming off of the hydrogen peroxide tank that’d caused much of the explosion. Another tank full of isopropyl alcohol was also to blame.

More than 3,500 people had to leave their homes because of the