Distinctly Montana Magazine

16 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 3 - 2 4 "O N A WINTER DAY IN 1947 JOHN QUIGLEY, BY STRENGTH AND AWKWARDNESS AND A KNOWL- EDGE OF LEVERAGE, set a boulder on the Continental Divide just above Helena, Montana, and named it Frontier Town." So begins A. B. Guthrie Jr.'s essay, "One Man's Folly." In 1954, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guthrie Jr., author of The Big Sky, The Way West, and the screenwriter of Shane, was hanging out with his buddy, Montana movie star George Mont- gomery. Guthrie was in Helena for a Pacific Northwest history conference, and Montgomery insisted that Guthrie see Frontier Town, a one-of-a-kind attraction perched atop the Continental Divide. There, amidst the 43 rooms of a hand-built, authentic Western town complete with fort, chapel, jail, museum, cabins, gift shop, a large dining hall that seated as many as 300, and a large bar constructed out of a single mammoth piece of wood, whatever Guthrie's expectations had been, they were exceeded. "You approach Frontier Town as you would approach an old-time fort. It fronts you with blockhouses and palisades and strong swinging gates... end to end the logs would reach twen- ty-five miles," he wrote with admiration in "One Man's Folly." In short, "it's wonderful," as he told the Helena Independent. "I'll never go past that intersection without stopping." That intersection, by the way, encountered some controver- sy, because in the 1950s, thousands of drivers along Highway 12 were introduced to Frontier Town by an astonishing tab- leau: a big metal grizzly attacking a robotic dog and his pros- pector-owner. But before they saw it, they heard it, a four- or five-second audio loop of a dog barking that echoed through the Rockies. It was so loud that the Montana Highway Commission and the Bureau of Public Roads fought to have it removed. Those official bodies notwithstanding, no one could resist the statue, in which the dog appeared to jump up and bravely de- by JOSEPH SHELTON photos courtesy of TAEGAN WALKER FRONTIER TOWN RONTIER TOWN Remembering Remembering

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