Montana
Talk looks at historic places in Montana
Montana has more than 1,100 places and buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In a presentation Monday, Feb. 19, local author Michael Ober will give an intimate look at those he picked as the top 50. While there are the usual mansions, the selection also includes log cabins, barns, mines, jails, forest fire lookouts, bridges and geological features.
Ober visited and photographed the sites for his book, Montana Historic Places. Each has a story, providing a unique look at the back roads and hidden history of Montana.
There is Lookout Cave in Phillips County, with its ancient drawings, and Citadel Rock, a prominent landmark on the Missouri River. Lewistown has a former B-17 airfield, with its concrete structure for locking up the top secret Norden bombsights between training flights.
The Washington Monument could sit inside the Anaconda Smokestack and it is said a small car could drive around the 585-foot top.
Dave’s Texaco is a preserved gas station in downtown Chinook, with the original glass-topped pumps. The DeSmet tour boat has carried tourists on Lake McDonald for more than 90 years and is stored over the winter in a boat house with its own historic designation.
A third-generation Montanan, Ober is the former director of the Flathead Valley Community College library. He also worked for more than 40 years as a seasonal ranger in Glacier National Park.
The talk is the monthly presentation of the Northwest Montana Westerners, a local history group. It starts at 7 p.m. on the second floor of the Northwest Montana History Museum, at 124 Second Ave. East in Kalispell. The cost is $5 for the general public, with members and youths under 16 admitted free.
For many Montanans living in rural communities, accessing specialized healthcare isn’t as simple as booking an appointment. It can mean hours on the road to cities like Great Falls. But a growing outreach effort from health care like Benefis Health System is changing that reality by bringing providers directly to patients.
Brianna Juneau reports – watch the video here:
Providers travel to bring specialty care to Montana communities
Instead of requiring long-distance travel, Benefis doctors and advanced practice providers are hitting the road, delivering care in towns across North Central Montana. The goal: reduce barriers to access and ensure patients receive timely treatment closer to home.
“In this geographic area, sometimes some of the more medically complex children are seen by pediatricians,” said pediatrician Rachel Amthor. “It can be an opportunity to try to reach some children with medical complexity who do live in a rural area.”
That access can be especially impactful for young patients. In some communities, clinics are located near schools, allowing children to attend appointments without missing an entire day of class.
“There’s very much a community atmosphere with the clinic,” Amthor said. “I’ll have some patients walk from school during the day to come to their checkup and then walk back. They don’t have to miss a lot of school because everything is so close.”
But for many adults, particularly those working in agriculture, traveling for care can be a major obstacle.
“They either have to arrange transportation or they don’t drive at all—it’s an ordeal,” said Elizabeth O’Connor, a cardiothoracic nurse practitioner. “Some of our patients travel for a whole day to get here and back, or they have to spend the night. A lot of farmers and ranchers just can’t leave their property for that long.”
By bringing services into rural towns, providers can catch health issues earlier and make critical adjustments before conditions worsen.
“We’re able to make some simple adjustments in their medications that may prevent heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, admissions,” O’Connor said. “Providing access can certainly improve—if not longevity—the quality of their life.”
Benefis’ outreach clinics now serve a wide range of communities, offering specialty care that would otherwise require travel:
Choteau: Cardiology, OBGYN, Podiatry, Pediatrics
Fort Benton: Pediatrics, Cardiology, Podiatry, Dietician/Nutrition services, Diabetes Education, Functional Medicine and Hormone Replacement Therapy
Conrad: Cardiology
Cut Bank: Women’s Health
Havre: Nephrology and Neurology
Rocky Boy: Women’s Health and Nephrology
Shelby: Orthopedics
White Sulphur Springs: Women’s health
Lewistown: Orthopedics and Dermatology
Browning: Nephrology
Many of these services are critical for managing chronic conditions, ranging from heart disease to kidney disorders, where consistent follow-up care can significantly impact outcomes.
For providers like Amthor, the outreach effort is deeply personal.
“I became a pediatrician because I wanted to treat kids in underserved areas,” she said. “I was not expecting to be working in rural Montana, but that has been different and very good.”
As the program continues to grow, Benefis leaders say they hope to expand services even further, reaching more communities and reducing healthcare disparities across the state.
In places where distance has long defined access, these traveling clinics are helping ensure that quality care is no longer out of reach, but right down the road.
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