The Wpa Guide to 1930s Montana. This item is unavailable.The Wpa Guide to 1930s Montana

First published in 1939, this nostalgic guide includes chapters on Montana's natural setting, history, economy, and cultural life as of half a century ago, plus separate entries for Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula--which at the time boasted four hotels and five-cent bus fares. There then follow, in the WPA Guide tradition, 18 tours that crisscross the state and point out not only natural splendors along the way but also such noteworthy historic sites as Custer Battlefield, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Boothill Cemetery in Virginia City, and the site of the "holing-up" shanty of Calamity Jane. Fourteen additional tours--four for roads, ten for trails--guide readers through Glacier National Park.

The first Montana guidebook, published in 1865, described only one route: the Mullan Military Wagon Road, completed in 1862. The WPA Guide, published in 1939 offered considerably more coverage of the Big Sky Country; today that guidebook remains a nostalgic vade mecum for motorists, as well as a convivial browse for history bluffs.