What was montana before it became a state

Less than a year later, the Idaho territory followed, gaining statehood in July Read more about it! The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America. The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.

Search this Guide Search. This guide provides access to materials related to the "Northern West Territories to Statehood" in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.

Significantly, the creation of Idaho brought eastern and western Montana within a common boundary for the first time. Idaho Territory was a geographic impossibility. The massive ranges of the Rocky Mountains divided the territory in half, and a thousand miles separated Lewiston in the west from the far eastern extremities. With good reason, the Bannack-Virginia City miners believed that Lewiston — hundreds of miles away over endless, snow-clogged mountain passes — could never govern them properly.

The outrages of the Plummer Gang tended to prove their point. Miners began agitating for the creation of a new territory to be split from Idaho along the crests of the Rockies. Fortunately for their cause, Judge Sidney Edgerton, the newly appointed chief justice of Idaho, arrived at Bannack in September Edgerton, a former Ohio congressman, was unable to proceed to Lewiston because of the approach of winter.

He soon learned that the governor of Idaho had snubbed him by assigning him to the faraway judicial district Iying east of the divide. Edgerton personally knew the president and many congressmen, so the miners chose to send him to Washington, D. Malone, Richard R. Yet, in the end, the Indians could not hold out against the strength of the United States Army. Miners weren't the only early settlers in Montana. Cattle ranches began flourishing in western valleys during the s as demand for beef in the new mining communities increased.

After open-range cattle operations spread across the high plains, taking advantage of the free public-domain land. During the s railroads crossed Montana, and the territory became a state in Hardrock mining also began at this time.

Butte became famous when silver and copper were discovered. The Anaconda Copper Company, owned by Marcus Daly, became one of the world's largest copper mining companies and exercised inordinate influence in the state. Cattle and sheep ranches continued to take advantage of Montana's abundant grasslands. Passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act in brought tens of thousands of homestead farmers into the state looking for inexpensive land. Wheat farming was popular until an extended drought, and a drop in market prices after World War I, ruined many farmers.

The homestead "bust" forced many farmers to abandon Montana. Montana's post-World War I depression extended through the s and right into the Great Depression of the s. Then President Franklin D.