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D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 6
Come Together
in Lewistown
LewistownHotels.com
Funding Provided By Lewistown Hoteliers TBID
216 7th Avenue S
Lewistown, MT
406-535-5411
TheCalvertHotel.com
520 E Main
Lewistown, MT
406-535-5496
B-Bmotel.com
102 Wendell
Lewistown, MT
406-707-4541
Super8.com
211 E Main
Lewistown, MT
406-535-8721
YogoInn.com
the fabricated legend of "Montana Frank" McCray, a small-
time Wild West show performer who claimed, among oth-
er things, to have been a Buffalo Bill scout, a Pony Express
rider, and a friend of kings. Almost none of it was true. The
episode becomes a meditation on the very American hunger
for legends and the men who manufacture them.
Elsewhere in the season: the daredevils who competed to
be the first to fly over the Continental Divide, and the price
some of them paid for the attempt. Missoula's turbulent
1960s, when the city's first hippies faced beatings, raids, and
a sheriff who kept a list of suspected drug users—and built
something lasting anyway. The strange comedy of a nine-
teenth-century entrepreneur who tried to pass off a petri-
fied man as the body of a territorial governor and took the
whole operation to New York City. The heartbreak of Long
George Francis, the season's emotional centerpiece. And
Frank Lloyd Wright's forgotten commission for a utopian
apple orchard colony in the Bitterroot Valley—the invest-
ment bubble that swallowed it, and the 2018 demolition of
his last standing Montana building.
The episodes run between twelve and twenty-two minutes,
long enough to develop a real narrative and short enough to
fit a commute or a walk, and will be made available monthly,
or sooner if the show gets popular or if the editor gets better
at making it.
The show is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
It turns out these stories were always meant to be heard out
loud.
TORIES
S
THE SHOW IS BUILT AROUND
THE SAME CONVICTION THAT
ANIMATES EVERY ISSUE OF
DISTINCTLY MONTANA:
THAT MONTANA IS MORE DRAMATIC,
STRANGE, HEARTBREAKING,
AND FUNNY THAN ANY SINGLE IMAGE
OF THE STATE CAN CAPTURE.
