Feature photo: Garfield County consists of primarily open, working landscapes. Expanses like this highlight Eastern Montana in all of its glory. Photo courtesy of Dusty Olson. Leader says collaboration, diversity create strength, community After just a few minutes of conversation,...

At Fort Keogh, Dr. Lance Vermeire Finds Certain Range Fires Spark New Growth It’s been a long, harsh winter with record breaking snow, and now it’s a wet, late spring with terrible flooding. What’s next? A dry, hot summer with...

Our Top 5 Stories of 2017 As another year wraps up, we at Prairie Populist are looking back at 2017. Thanks so much to our readers for all of your support and feedback throughout this year. We tip our hats...

By Laura Nowlin  Through the vast spaces of central Montana flows the Musselshell River, connecting the mountains to the breaks and Martinsdale to the Missouri River.  To the casual observer it looks like a lazy, quiet stream, and the land...

The harsh reality of this year's hunting season in Eastern Montana Eastern Montana hunters don’t have the luxury of vast national forests covering the landscape. We rely on private landowners and smaller tracts of public land for our opportunities. In...

We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends It’s been a rough fire season for Montana. We’ve had more than 1,500 fires. And depending on the source, they’ve burned somewhere between 937 and 1,380 square miles. Basically, we’re...

The stories of a strong ranching community in Eastern Montana after the Lodgepole Fires Photographs and Writing by August Schield Just above the 47th parallel, directly east of the Musselshell River, the wide open prairie landscape of Garfield County has...

The Lodgepole Complex Fire is the state’s largest fire to date. As of Monday, July 31, it had spread to 270,723 acres. Fortunately, the fires are now over 93 percent contained. Unfortunately, the fight to recover is far from over....