Hidden History of Great Falls with Ken Robison
More than steamboats and famous explorers, Great Falls’ history is colored with compelling episodes nearly lost to the ages. Historian Ken Robison will discuss his latest book, Hidden History of Great Falls at The History Museum & Research Center’s Ozark Club event room on Second Saturday, April 11. This free admission program begins at 1pm. Glacial Lake Great Falls changed the course of the Missouri River while carving fascinating geologic features like Lost Lake, the Big Sag and Lewis & Clark’s Slaughter River. Copper from Butte mines, Anaconda smelters and Great Falls refineries wired the world and helped win the World Wars.
Landless Indigenous peoples sought refuge on a hill called “57.” A local crusading editor became “Montana’s Conscience” and authored the revered Montana High, Wide, and Handsome. A Civil War monument was raised to honor The Blue and The Gray—the first in the nation to do so. Pathbreaking preservationists Charley and Sue Bovey created Old Town in Great Falls and saved acclaimed gold rush era Virginia City before historic preservation was cool. Award winning historian Ken Robison brings to life little-known accounts from a storied past.
Ken’s presentation will have a special focus on the story of Charles & Sue Bovey, a Montana story that began in Great Falls. Charles Bovey, son of a wealthy flour milling executive, and Rachel Sue Ford, daughter of one of Montana’s earliest pioneer ranchers, married and soon became Montana’s earliest and most successful historic preservationists—before preservation was cool. From sharing history through Old Town in Great Falls to saving and restoring Virginia City and recreating Nevada City, the Bovey’s became nationally famous for their successful preservation work and development of important heritage tourism.
With business savvy honed in the West’s rowdy mining camps, Marcus Daly rose from poor Irish immigrant to Gilded Age magnate. From the mines of Butte, Montana, to America’s largest smelter in a town he also named Anaconda, Daly’s Anaconda Copper Company made a fortune. He used it to build his dream—a Bitterroot Valley ranch and a horse racing empire that stretched from California to New York. Meanwhile, his gregarious and generous façade hid a sly manipulator, one locked in a battle for political dominance with rival copper king W.A. Clark. With detailed research and more than one hundred photographs, historian Brenda Wahler peels back the layers of a complex industrialist, revealing his historic influence and legacy.
Born in Great Falls and now living in Helena, Brenda Wahler is an attorney, author, independent historian, and horsewoman. She remembers when the Big Stack stood over Black Eagle and enjoys digging into the deeper stories that make up Montana’s complex history. She is the author of Marcus Daly’s Montana Empires: Copper Mining, Racehorses and Politics, Marcus Daly’s Road to Montana, and Montana Horse Racing: A History, all published by The History Press.
Perhaps more importantly, he discusses all which is required of a citizen in a democracy, while wondering the same thing Benjamin Franklin did at the end of the Constitutional Convention: could Americans keep their new representative democracy? Ray wants citizens to know that they can IF they realize, as Baron de Montesquieu did that ‘in a democracy a citizen is everything.’ Additionally, using his knowledge Ray will also do his best to address audience questions regarding the foundations of American government.
This free admission event will take place in The History Museum & Research Center’s Ozark Club event room on Second Saturday, February 14 at 1pm.
For nearly 40 years educator Ray Curtis has taught about American government to students ranging from middle school, Boy’s State, to AP Government to, most recently, university students at FVCC, UM, and Missoula College in classes anywhere from 10 to 125 students.
He is a James Madison Fellow (https://www.jamesmadison.gov/ ) with an MIS in American Constitutional history and education from the University of Montana.
