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Electric City

By: Steven Rinella

The 60,000 residents of Great Falls, Montana’s third largest city, are obviously living in the present, but to a visitor who’s checking the city out for the first time Great Falls comes across much like a tribute to the past. The Lewis and Clark expedition spent nearly a month in the area as they tried to make their way past the falls. Now the raging waterway has been beaten down and tamed by a series of enormous hydroelectric and flood control dams along the Missouri River, but that doesn’t stop visitors to Great Falls from feeling like they’re breathing the same air and walking on the same cactus tines as Lewis and Clark did all those years ago.

The city itself, including many historic structures and homes that are still in pristine condition, sits above the Missouri River and sprawls out onto the prairie. Along the waterfront there are some beautiful parks. You can visit the Sulphur Spring, where the expedition drew water for the ailing Sacagawea. There is also the West Bank Park, where Meriwether Lewis had to dodge a curious grizzly. Visitors need not worry about that now, though, as the large bears are long gone from the prairies and plains of central and eastern Montana, one of the many ecological travesties of the westward expansion that followed in the Corps of Discovery’s path.

Lewis and Clark don’t enjoy a historical monopoly of Great Falls, though, because that entire section of Montana’s north-central plains has been dubbed Russell Country. The famous Western painter, Charles M. Russell, moved from St. Louis to Montana in 1880 and adopted Great Falls as his home. He spent tremendous amounts of time in the local saloons until his young wife, Nancy Cooper, reigned in his drinking and vigorously promoted his work. His well-known paintings of mountain men, plainsman, Indians, and card games turned bloody shootouts can be found in the C.M. Russell Museum Complex. The C.M. Russell Auction of Original Western Art, held in mid-March, is one of the biggest galas on the Great Falls calendar. There sale has several separate venues, including a large Native American art sale. The world of Western art is buzzing during the week of the auction. The hotels and motels in Great Falls are booked solid and so many corporate jets coming in for the sale sometimes cause backups on the tarmac of the Great Falls airport.
Russell’s legacy permeates all across the art scene in Great Falls. The art museums that the Great Fall’s Chamber of Commerce lauds as “world class” are of the Western variety. The cowboy is a mystified creature in this region and suffers no lack of artistic attention. Much of it is serious work done by talented painters, sculptors, and photographers, but Great Falls is not about avant-garde image making.

The things that first put Great Falls on the map of the American conscious are buried now. Much of the Lewis and Clark trail in the Great Falls area is under the water of the Ryan Dam impoundment, and Russell’s body lies beneath the soil of the city, next to his wife in Highland Cemetery. And now, the things that put Great Falls on the global conscious are buried, too. The plains surrounding the city are home to much of the united State’s intercontinental ballistic missile defense system. There are 200 Minuteman III missiles under the wheat and rangeland of the Great Falls area. The actual missile sites are made visible to motorists in the area by small barbwire enclosures with antennae and giant concrete slabs that act as lids for the deep underground silos. It’s fascinating to look at the inconspicuous cluster of fencing and concrete at the earth’s surface as you try to comprehend the awesome power and technology that lies beneath. The weapons are maintained, operated, and defended by the troops of the 341st Space Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which sits on land crossed by Lewis and Clark as they portaged the falls. The base’s name is sort of deceptive, as Malmstrom is operated for the missile program and lacks the heavy air traffic usually associated with an active air base.

The economy of Great Falls is driven by the local military presence, which accounts for 35% of the cities economic base, and also by the business of oil and natural gas production and agriculture. The Great Falls area serves as Montana’s agricultural capital. Towering grain elevators marked with the General Mills and Pasta Montana logos set off the city’s views of the river, making an unusual urban skyline. The surrounding prairies have some of the most productive wheat and barley fields on the northern plains. The high grain output is thanks to irrigation projects along the Missouri River, as Great Falls gets only about 12 inches of rain a year. But it does get plenty of wind. Average wind speeds in the city are 13 miles an hour. Coupled with average January lows of 12 degrees Fahrenheit this makes for a chilly winter. These lows are offset nicely by the summer season, when high temperatures average in the mid-80s.

Culturally, Great Falls is a conservative city. There is some happening night life, good restaurants, and plenty of live music, but deep down it’s a working man’s town that gets an early start. This probably has a lot to do with the strong presence of the nearby military and agricultural communities, where the martini lunch is not a popular pastime.

Instead, Great Falls is about its own past, which it has brought brilliantly into the present. Just take the “historic” trolley around for a tour of the city’s historic sites and you’ll see first hand some truth in a popular joke about Montana: One of the most interesting things that ever happened to some of the places that Lewis and Clark discovered in Montana is that Lewis and Clark discovered them.

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