Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Kevin Toohill yearned to experience the wide-open vistas of the western U.S. Today, the avid outdoorsman lives with his family in Billings, Mont., where he runs Beartooth Mapping, a firm that sells customized topographic maps and other geographic products. Its Web site, MyTopo.com, allows consumers to customize maps by choosing the location, center, area, size, print finish and numerous other specifications. The company grosses between $2 million and $3 million annually.
We were driving through some of the most remote country in the United States, chasing a story that seemed hard to believe.
For the first time in decades, the hunting of the gray wolf is legal again in the United States. And that's a good thing for ranchers like Cindy Siddoway of Terreton, Idaho, whose sheep are threatened every day by wolves.
Former truck driver Robert Baxter died in December, a victim of leukemia. But the legal battle over his death -- and whether he had the right, along with his doctors, to hasten it -- continues.
President Obama on Friday took his push for a health care overhaul to traditionally conservative Montana, saying a bill to extend coverage to the uninsured while helping those already with coverage will pass this year.
Farmer Brown finally got hit by the real estate recession last year, well after its impact had been absorbed by his urban countrymen.
Extended unemployment benefits may be available for Americans who exhaust their standard jobless insurance -- but the programs, as well as who's included in government data, can be confusing.
A northwest Montana town where asbestos contamination has killed more than 200 people will get more than $130 million in cleanup and medical assistance from the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday.
Insurance agent David Conn received a postcard recently in his Hudson, Ohio, post office box: "Greetings from Montana."
A massive manhunt involving "every guy who ever wore a badge" in northeast Montana ended late Saturday after police located the man they say shot and killed a woman and wounded two others.
Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Kevin Toohill yearned to experience the wide-open vistas of the western U.S. Today, the avid outdoorsman lives with his family in Billings, Mont., where he runs Beartooth Mapping, a firm that sells customized topographic maps and other geographic products. Its Web site, MyTopo.com, allows consumers to customize maps by choosing the location, center, area, size, print finish and numerous other specifications. The company grosses between $2 million and $3 million annually.
We were driving through some of the most remote country in the United States, chasing a story that seemed hard to believe.
For the first time in decades, the hunting of the gray wolf is legal again in the United States. And that's a good thing for ranchers like Cindy Siddoway of Terreton, Idaho, whose sheep are threatened every day by wolves.
Former truck driver Robert Baxter died in December, a victim of leukemia. But the legal battle over his death -- and whether he had the right, along with his doctors, to hasten it -- continues.
President Obama on Friday took his push for a health care overhaul to traditionally conservative Montana, saying a bill to extend coverage to the uninsured while helping those already with coverage will pass this year.
Farmer Brown finally got hit by the real estate recession last year, well after its impact had been absorbed by his urban countrymen.
Extended unemployment benefits may be available for Americans who exhaust their standard jobless insurance -- but the programs, as well as who's included in government data, can be confusing.
A northwest Montana town where asbestos contamination has killed more than 200 people will get more than $130 million in cleanup and medical assistance from the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday.
Insurance agent David Conn received a postcard recently in his Hudson, Ohio, post office box: "Greetings from Montana."
A massive manhunt involving "every guy who ever wore a badge" in northeast Montana ended late Saturday after police located the man they say shot and killed a woman and wounded two others.
Call it the battle for Big Sky country.
The majestic grizzly bear, once king of the Western wilderness but threatened with extinction for a third of a century, has roared back in Montana
The summer before his red-shirt freshman season at Texas Tech in 2004, prized quarterback recruit Graham Harrell took a week-long working vacation. Already ensconced in workouts on the Tech campus, Harrell left to prepare for and play in the Oil Bowl -- the annual all-star football grudge match between Oklahoma and Texas high school seniors. "When Texas plays Oklahoma in college, half the Sooners roster is from Texas and vice versa," says Harrell. "With the summer all-star games, it's purely a state rivalry."
More than half of Yellowstone National Park's bison herd has died since last fall, forcing the government to suspend its annual slaughter program.
Some drivers would say that the United States is a crazy quilt of speed limits, with an emphasis on the "crazy."
As his Gulfstream IV roared off the Bozeman, Mont., tarmac one Sunday this past December, billionaire Tim Blixseth glanced out the window and looked down at the Yellowstone Club. The homeowners in this 13,600-acre enclave include Bill Gates, News Corp.'s Peter Chernin, and Barry Sternlicht, the founder of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. The club is the world's only totally private ski and golf resort, and it is Blixseth's vision of nirvana. It is also as self-made as its founder, who grew up poor in rural Oregon and "ate Spam five days a week" when he wasn't using his father's shotgun to kill wild game for dinner. Despite this starting point, Blixseth went on to become a timber baron and smooth operator who twice persuaded President Bill Clinton and the U.S. Congress to allow him to create the club out of the Montana wilderness.
Mary Blilie had been at Big Sky Resort in Montana for just one day but had already snapped more photos of her kids than she had in a long time.
While the Bush Administration continues to drags its feet on climate change, Montana has figured out 54 economy-boosting ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
A huge avalanche at Whitefish Mountain Resort killed two backcountry skiers and searchers combed the slide area for other possible victims
With help from the NRA, nearly 50 Senators are pushing to end a two-decade-old rule forbidding people from openly carrying firearms in most national parks
In the euphoric aftermath following Carroll (Mont.) College's 17-9 win over the University of Sioux Falls last Saturday in the NAIA football championship, AP photographer John Russell snapped a photo of Carroll junior linebacker Brandon Day celebrating on mud-caked Jim Carroll Stadium in Savannah, Tenn. That image appears on the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated as part of our PICTURES OF THE YEAR issue. Day, 21, tells SI.com's Richard Deitsch what it means to be a Carroll football player and what he was feeling when Russell took his photograph. Russell also gives us the story behind the picture from his perspective.
Forget gifts for under the tree, this holiday season give something that goes under the sea.
One summer, maybe 20 years ago, I was vacationing with my family, and on one particular lazy afternoon I was sitting around outside the cottage we were renting, watching some ants. They were engaged in the project of dragging the body of a beetle back to their nest or wherever they lived.
For Michelle Williams, Brooklyn may not be her home state of Montana, or even her old TV stomping grounds of Dawson's Creek, but it does offer something she enjoys: the simple life.
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 17, 1998 issue of Sports Illustrated.
A 35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets, hospital officials said.
When filmmaker Peter Rosten's midlife crisis hit, he didn't buy a Porsche or start dating a 25-year-old. Instead he moved to a small town in Montana and began teaching high school kids how to make movies.
One of the fun things about writing the Mailbag each week is you never know which portion will touch the biggest nerve. Last week, it was a seemingly innocuous, buried-on-page-three question from a reader named Jeff in Atlanta wondering why Georgia coach Mark Richt isn't catching any heat for failing to reach the national title game.
On a Friday a few months ago 23-year-old Ashley Kroon wrote a letter to the editor of the Bozeman (Mont.) Daily Chronicle . She had been writing letters to the newspaper since high school -- over the closing of a youth center, or urging people to vote -- and she knows how to make her point. She banged this one out in 30 minutes on her lunch break.
The dog days of summer bring arid conditions and heat, creating conditions ripe for wildfires in some areas. With many fires cropping up in the West, I-Reporters have been photographing the flames in their area.
(Editor's Note: This is a reprint of a story first published by SI.com in March 2007)
Because of global warming, whitebark pine trees are dying. And that is threatening the food supply of grizzly bears
Editor's note: We asked SI.com writers to share their memories from the best game they've ever seen. Here are their stories:
The green economy is booming, but you don't have to build a solar power station to get a piece of the action. There's literally a land rush on as renewable-energy companies look to secure locations for wind farms and solar arrays. If you move fast, you may be able to buy and flip the rights to the downtown rooftops and rural ridges that renewable-energy developers regard as prime real estate. There are two plays in this game, wind and solar, and each has its own rules.
Bill Walsh sits at a lacquered wooden table, the 18th hole of the pristine Sharon Heights Golf and Country Club behind him, another blood transfusion and another long, draining day at Stanford Hospital in his immediate future. The Hall of Fame coach is talking about the end of his life -- the "final stage," as he calls it -- and, at 75, sounds as prepared and unruffled as a man battling leukemia can be. But is he completely without regret? Walsh closes his eyes and furrows his brow, the wrinkles on his prominent forehead becoming more pronounced. Something is bothering him, something apart from the disease that has left him so vulnerable: a decision he made 18 years ago that he wishes he could take back.
Issue date: November 29, 1999
Montana's Republican Sen. Conrad Burns on Thursday conceded the race to Democratic state Sen. Jon Tester, a spokesman for Burns said.
A Democratic takeover of the Senate is appearing more and more likely after an ongoing canvass of votes in the Senate race in Virginia produced no significant changes, sources told CNN late Wednesday.
Democrats are projected to pick up four GOP-held seats but must win the two remaining undecided races to gain control of the Senate.
More than 140 years ago, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, uttered a famous piece of advice to an advice-seeker: "Go West, young man." Democrats seem to be heeding that advice as they look to expand their electoral base.
Montana doesn't have much to do with Washington D.C. -- or at least Republican Sen. Conrad Burns doesn't want his constituency to think so.
Four more years in the classroom should be looking pretty good to high school graduates if future salary is important to them, according to new Census data released Thursday.
"I don't want to own every ranch," Ted Turner once said. "I just want to own the ranch next door."
From the time he was a kid digging holes in his backyard, paleontologist John "Jack" Horner knew what he wanted to be when he grew up.
With the mid-term congressional elections less than four months away, U.S. Senate hopefuls in key races nationwide are keeping pace with -- and sometimes outraising -- their incumbent opponents in the all-important contest for campaign cash, according to fundraising records filed recently with the Federal Election Commission.
Tim Blixseth is, you might say, a bit fanatical about privacy. The timber baron and self-made billionaire flies on a private jet. He skis on a private mountain at the Yellowstone Club, a members-on...
These are the rankings and average scores for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in the GMAC Insurance driving test.
More than 1,000 inmates were added to the nation's prisons and jails each week from June 2004 to June 2005, according to a report issued Sunday by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Yellowstone got the hot springs, geysers, bison, more central location and crowds. That left Glacier -- tucked into Montana's temperate, remote northwest corner and spilling into Canada -- with majestic mountains, sapphire rivers and long, valley-filling lakes. In early summer, the vivid green bases of the mountains erupt in flowers every color of the rainbow.
If you go skiing in Vail this winter, you'll find more than 100 trails of deep white powder and cozy mountainside lodges. If you go skiing in Big Sky, Mont., you'll also find more than 100 trails o...
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake rumbled through southwest Montana late Monday, according to the National Earthquake Information Center Web site.
Each of the 50 states and and Washington D.C. in order of the number of auto fatalities among drivers aged 16 to 20 per 100,000 teen drivers, according the National Safety Council and the group End Needless Death on Our Roadways.
These are the average scores on a 20-question driver's test administered to more than 5,000 licensed drivers in a survey commissioned by the GMAC Insurance.
A man who worked as a painter on late-night talk show host David Letterman's Montana ranch has been charged with plotting to kidnap the entertainer's 16-month-old son and the baby's nanny, and seek a $5 million ransom.
Montana's Democratic governor thinks it "makes no sense" that the United States can import "cattle, hogs and logs" from Canada -- but not cheaper prescription drugs.
President Bush on Friday approved a bill that would extend the deductibility of donations made for tsunami disaster relief.
Congress on Thursday approved a bill that would extend the deductibility of donations made for tsunami disaster relief.
Start by skiing on Andesite. The back side is usually groomed into a perfect pack that naturally pulls long, sweeping turns out of your legs. Most runs there are blue and more than a mile long -- perfect for warming up or hiding from sour conditions on the upper mountain.
Democrat Brian Schweitzer will defeat Republican Bob Brown for the open governor's seat in Montana, becoming the first Democratic governor in that state in 20 years, CNN projects.
BEND, Ore. (CNN/Money) - Cowboy is cool.
Fifty-two people were injured when a deck collapsed at a Montana casino, authorities said Saturday, including four people with "life-threatening" injuries.
Big Beef was doing fine until disease felled a heifer. Will consumer anxiety cripple the industry?
A few months back, a friend of mine hosted a TV party to watch the Kentucky Derby. So I did what any fan of regional Americana would do for such an occasion: I baked a derby pie.
A few months back, a friend of mine hosted a TV party to watch the Kentucky Derby. So I did what any fan of regional Americana would do for such an occasion: I baked a derby pie.
1 Sleep above the waves
At the Minneapolis Grain Exchange on Sept. 9, in a crowded, octagonal trading pit that is just slightly larger than a very big Jacuzzi, the price of the December contract of hard red spring wheat h...
Some say you're more likely to see mountain goats than cars on the roads around Whitefish, Mont. This gateway town to magnificent Glacier National Park also abuts the longest designated wild river system in the U.S.
Ice cream tastes best on vacation. So now we present an industry first: FORTUNE's combination ice-cream sampler and travel planner. Simply select an ice cream, and then plan your holiday around you...
Everyone who sent me attack e-mail after I defended sport utility vehicles last October is no doubt laughing now. Soaring gasoline prices have jacked up the cost of filling the tank on my beloved F...
I'm sitting in the back of a battered, cluttered van parked at a North Dakota truck stop, playing cards with someone I met a week earlier. We both have the punchy, dazed look of people who've spent...
Stocks and funds are two ways to double your money in five years. But you can also get a two-for-one payoff by investing in objects you can actually touch, from fine art to kitschy collectibles to ...
BY THE SHORES of Flathead Lake, Lester Thurow -- economist, MIT professor, and ^ Montana native -- sat down and explained, in a video made a while back for the Missoula Economic Development Corp., ...
It is a bracing 19 degrees in Whitefish, Mont., and former Californians David and Dorrie Hipschman are having a very expensive day. The $350 windshield on Dorrie's 1987 Mazda station wagon has crac...
-- Dinosaur dig (406-994-2251). Spend a week at Egg Mountain near Choteau, Mont., searching for dinosaur fossils with paleontologists from the Museum of the Rockies. You sleep in Blackfeet tepees a...
With errors turning up in as many as one out of two credit reports, you might think it would be worth paying $19.50 or more to see what the three major credit bureaus have on you in their files. An...
LIVINGSTON, MONTANA -- It has not been an easy year for the Church Universal and Triumphant. The world didn't end last spring, as followers of the sect's charismatic leader had expected, and everyt...
Ah, to have $1,000 in your pocket! Whether the money arrived as a tax refund or graduation gift, or whether you scraped it together simply by saving, a cool thou has a way of turning a dull world i...
With 43 states and more than 700 cities and counties imposing income taxes on top of the federal government's take, it's more important than ever to know your total combined tax bracket. Then you c...
Almost 80% of MONEYsubscribers with school-age kids gave their local schools either an A or a B on a grading scale that ranged down to F in our poll. Still, if you want to check on your system, sch...
Taxpayers in 35 states may get more than they expected from the revised U.S. tax code. The unbidden surprise: higher state income taxes. The biggest losers, says the National Association of State B...
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