"...more romance, tragedy and vigorous life than many a city a hundred times its size and ten times its age." - Historian Hiram M. Chittenden Deep in the heart of Blackfoot country on the Upper Missouri River, trade relations opened cautiously in 1831. A series of trading posts and clashes followed. By 1846, Fort Benton had become the center of commerce with Indigenous tribes, including the Blackfoot who dubbed it "many houses to the South." Drawing settlers from eastern states, the head of steamboat navigation became known as "the world's innermost port." As a result, the fort became a multicultural melting pot and home to the "Bloodiest Block in the West." Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life dramatic sagas of a rapidly developing frontier, from vigilante X. Beidler to the Marias and Ophir Massacres.

Fort Benton, the head of navigation on the Missouri River, is known as the "Birthplace of Montana." Its history spans every era in Montana's development. Founded in 1846 as a fur-trading post, it is Montana's oldest continuous settlement. Arrival of the first steamboats and completion of the Mullan Road in 1860 heralded the steamboat era, bringing gold seekers, merchant princes, scoundrels, soldiers, North West Mounted Police, and eventually women and children to the wild frontier. Then came the railroads, open-range ranching, and homesteaders by the thousands. Today Fort Benton serves the agricultural Golden Triangle and presents its colorful history through cultural tourism.

Reliability, devotion and faithfulness: endearing qualities shared between people and their canine companions. Shep is the true story of a dog that became an inspiration to people around the world. Following the death of his owner in 1936, Shep watched as his body was placed on a train and shipped east. For more than five years, through rain and snow, Shep met every incoming train with hopes that he would see the man who had cared for him. Even today, people visit Fort Benton, Montana, to stand at the grave of a dog whose actions remind us of the true meaning of loyalty and heart.Sneed B. Collard III is the author of more than 45 books for young people including The Prairie Builders, The Forest in the Clouds, Butterfly Count and B is for Big Sky Country: A Montana Alphabet. Sneed lives in Missoula, Montana. Joanna Yardley has illustrated a number of award-winning children's books. This is her third book with Sleeping Bear Press. She is the illustrator of B is for Big Sky Country: A Montana Alphabet and P is for Peace Garden: A North Dakota Alphabet. Jo lives in Missoula, Montana along with her husband and son.

Beyond the wide Missouri lay the prairie—“the biggest clearing on the Almighty’s footstool.” And every few hundred miles, holding to the rivers and wooded bottoms, were the outposts of the white civilization—the military forts of the U.S. Army. Father, mother and comforter to the settlers, trading points for the trappers and buffalo hunters, rallying points for the scouts. Awaiting the reader of this sentimental journey into the days of “Boots and Saddles,” are the graphic stories of battles against Indians and boredom. A military man, author Hart has the feel of these men who did the fighting and their places of conflict and refuge. He recounts the Bloody Bozeman outrage, Red Cloud’s War of 1866-68, and the pre-Civil War fights that seasoned lieutenants for the stars of Union and Confederate generals. It is a thrilling experience to read of the forts that opened the West for the stages, river boats and wagon trains...of those that protected the white man from the Indians and others that protected Indians from the whites...of those “hog and hominy” forts that gave solace to settlers who waited for the Indian attacks that never came...of the places called “Hog Ranches” that provided soldiers with entertainment lacking at Army posts...and of those forts George Armstrong Custer called home. With all this there are portraits, in both word and photograph, of the many famous generals who rode this frontier of history: Sherman, Sheridan, Crook, Custer, Harney, Sully, Connor, Mackenzie, Howard, Miles, Terry, Carrington, de Trobriand, Gibbon and Canby.

Between 1910 and 1922, seventeen Montana communities built libraries with money given to them by the era's richest man, Andrew Carnegie. Fifteen of those libraries stand today, and their story is compellingly told here by architectural historian Kate Hampton. Just as he did in Hand Raised: The Barns of Montana, photographer Tom Ferris provides stunning detail of both the classic and unusual architectural elements of these iconic buildings. Hand-drawn architectural renderings and other historical images combine to create a detailed portrait of Carnegie's rich legacy in Montana. All book proceeds benefit Montana historic preservation!

Although fast-disappearing, Montana's historic bridges are an integral and often overlooked part of Montana's landscape. This book tells the stories of those bridges and how they shaped the development of the Treasure State from the early horse-and-buggy days to the car culture of the post-World War II era.