Montana
Talk looks at vanished Montana town that was once America's wickedest
Motorists heading up Interstate 90, west of St. Regis, will see no sign of Taft. But the former railroad boom town was once billed as America’s wickedest. Taft had no churches, no schools and only three residential homes, yet 10,000 men and 500 prostitutes once called Taft home. Taft burned to the ground three times and was rebuilt twice.
John Shontz, Helena lawyer and author, will tell the story of the short-lived town in a presentation April 15 in Kalispell. Everything associated with the “Wild West” happened in Taft — gunfights, murders, robberies, fights and just plain debauchery, he notes.
The town housed the construction crews pushing the Milwaukee Road across the Bitterroot Mountains. The 1906-10 railroad project was an engineering marvel of its time and included a 1.8-mile-long tunnel and multiple trestles. Much of the technology invented for the project is still used across the globe, says Shontz.
Life and safety meant nothing on this project as John D. and his brother William Rockefeller wanted the railroad built as fast as possible.
The presentation is the story of the people who built the railroad — from the board rooms of Manhattan to the thousands of immigrants who shoveled their way across and through the mountains.
Taft vanished in the historic 1910 forest fire, and the Milwaukee Road, which once served every major town in Montana except Kalispell and Helena, ran its last train through the state in 1980.
But its trestles and tunnels live on with the Route of the Hiawatha bike trail that is traversed by thousands of bicycle riders each summer.
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 2nd Ave. East in Kalispell. Cost is $5 for the general public, with members and youths under 16 admitted free.
Ye (the artist formerly known as Kanye West) is facing yet another lawsuit over allegations of unlicensed sampling — only this time, it’s centered on a video clip of the rapper’s infamous 2013 fight with paparazzi.
In a case filed Wednesday (July 15) in Los Angeles federal court, the celebrity news agency Bauer-Griffin claims that Ye, French Montana (Karim Kharbouch) and others used audio from the headline-grabbing incident in “Where They At,” released in 2024 off French’s Mac & Cheese 5.
The May 2013 video, which also features a pregnant Kim Kardashian, shows West charging at a photographer outside a Los Angeles restaurant and shouting “don’t take no photos” and a string of profanities: “All of you m*therf*ckers stop it, man!”
The clip appears prominently in the intro to Montana’s song — a use that the lawsuit calls “blatant and willful” copyright infringement.
“Given Mr. Ye’s history of numerous confrontations with paparazzi, the video was highly newsworthy,” the agency’s lawyers write in legal documents obtained and first reported by Billboard. “Listeners immediately recognized the audio sample that begins the infringing record as being copied from the video.”
Ye has been sued over a dozen times for allegedly using unlicensed samples and interpolations in his music, including a high-profile battle with Donna Summer. In May, he lost a jury trial over using an uncleared sample in an early version of the Grammy-winning “Hurricane” from Donda. He had testified at trial that he’s “very generous” about giving credit and compensation when it’s due, but that “a lot of people try to take advantage of me.”
In Wednesday’s complaint, Bauer-Griffin says the creators of “Where They At” showed no such respect to its rights in the video of the paparazzi incident, using it despite being well aware that sound recordings must be licensed when any amount is directly sampled into a song.
“In the music industry, copyrights are prevalent and well understood,” lawyers for the agency write. “Every defendant knew that they needed to have but did not have permission to use the audio sample.”
Reps for both stars did not immediately return requests for comment. The lawsuit also names as defendants producers Dem Jointz (Dwayne Abernathy Jr.) and BoogzDaBeast (Jahmal Gwin), as well Gamma, the label that released the song, and its distribution unit Vydia.
The confrontation at issue in Wednesday’s lawsuit was one of two high-profile scuffles with paparazzi that year for the rapper, who was then still known as Kanye West. Two months later, he clashed with photographer Daniel Ramos outside of LAX, resulting in a civil assault lawsuit that the star eventually settled two years later on the eve of trial.
As many celebrities have learned over the years, simply appearing in a photo or video does not give someone any legal rights to it. Ownership of such material is always retained by the creator — an inconvenient fact that has sparked lawsuits against Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus and Dua Lipa.
It’s unclear who filmed the May 2013 incident, which happened outside a Beverly Hills restaurant minutes after the star had also been filmed accidentally banging his head into a signpost while trying to avoid other photographers. But the rights to the footage have been owned by Bauer-Griffin from the beginning: When TMZ first posted it at the time, it came with a watermark crediting the agency.
“The infringing record has been widely distributed on various streaming platforms, in flagrant violation of plaintiff’s exclusive rights under copyright laws,” Bauer-Griffin’s attorneys write. “Plaintiff brings these claims to vindicate those rights.”
Governor’s Office
HELENA, Mont. – Governor Greg Gianforte today announced Montana ranks in the top ten states with the highest year-over-year job growth rates.
“Montana continues to rank as one of the best states to start or grow a business, earn a competitive wage, and secure a good-paying job,” Gov. Gianforte said. “As we continue to reform our regulatory environment to support job creators and cut taxes to give money back to the hardworking Montanans who earned it, we see the results of conservative policies at work as the Treasure State ranks in the top ten states with the strongest job growth.”
According to a report by Stat Ranker, which compared all 50 states based on year-over-year growth in total nonfarm payroll employment between February 2025 and February 2026, Montana ranked ninth in the nation for both jobs added and overall job growth adding more than 2,100 jobs over the year, representing a 0.4 percent job growth rate.
Last week, the governor attended the groundbreaking for Janicki Industries in Great Falls to celebrate the aerospace manufacturers’ investment expected to create more than 2,000 jobs over the next ten years and the ribbon cutting for Amazon’s sixth delivery station in Montana that brings the company’s total employment in the state to over 800.
Last month, the governor announced Montana was ranked in the top five states with the fastest-growing economies since 2021. The report from Visual Capitalist found that between 2021 and 2025, Montana’s GDP grew 16.1 percent while the national average in the same time period was 10.8 percent. When it comes to wage growth, Montana ranks third in the nation for fastest wage growth and is only one of two states in the nation where wage growth has outpaced inflation since 2020. The average wage earned by Montana workers reached $60,037 in 2024.
Earlier this year, Gov. Gianforte also announced Montana’s fiscal health surged into the top ten states nationally under his leadership, rising from 22nd in 2021 to 8th in 2025. Since taking office, the governor has paid off the state’s general obligation debt, making Montana debt-free in 2023 and saving Montanans $40 million over a period of two years.
Montana also consistently ranks in the top fifteen states with the lowest unemployment rates. Last month, the governor announced Montana’s unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4 percent in May, lower than the national unemployment rate which remained at 4.3 percent.
The full Stat Ranker report can be read here.
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