Watch historic footage of Montana life saved by Montana Historical Society

HELENA — A 1926 rodeo in Rosebud County. A Blackfeet medicine woman thanking the Sun God for the recovery of her grandson from polio. The building of Fort Peck Dam. Vintage airplanes in flight.

The Montana Historical Society's new Moving Image Archive is bringing back to light (and to YouTube) historic films, and they're a rare look into life in days of Montana gone by.

One of the most popular newly digitized films is "Montana and the Sky," a 1952 film sponsored by the Montana Aeronautics Commission.

It's a fascinating look at life in the state 66 years ago. The film takes viewers into Butte mines, to ranches where travel is done by horse and plane, to high pastures of sheep, to a rodeo and to airports, to Cut Bank oil fields and smoke jumpers' patrol in forests.

Part of the film is a nostalgic defining of what Montana is. "Montana is forest and mountains, calm and quiet, movement and color ...."

Among the gems is "The Land of the Pink Snow," a 1960 travelogue exploration of the Beartooth Mountains. The film follows a pack trip to a remote lake.

Along the way the men and boys on the trek see Grasshopper Glacier at 11,000 feet with an extinct species of locust captured in the snow. They step through pink snow that "smells and tastes like watermelon" from algae (and learn tasting the snow is not a good idea).

"Here are tons of grasshoppers encased in the ancient ice, in seams sometimes a foot thick."

A 1956 film, produced by the Montana Office of Public Instruction and the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, follows a Blackfeet medicine woman through a ceremony in Heart Butte thanking the Sun God for the recovery of her grandson from polio.

The film shows a purification ritual inside a sweat lodge, dancing and stick games, as well as the building of a medicine lodge and ceremony within.

Some of the films are silent, such as a five-minute feature on the Rosebud County Fair and Rodeo in 1926. Oddly enough, a 1950s film from a historic Havre music festival — MUSIC festival — is silent.

Kelly Burton is the film archivist. He's been cataloging films, digitizing them and transferring them to chemically neutral containers in new climate-controlled film archive space in the MHS's basement, work made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation.

He watches the films for a quick summary and does minor repairs. There are 8,200 items in the collection and "there's surprises in most of them," he said.

Even in the historic films of highways being repaired, there are things worth seeing, he said.

Burton is working on a grant to restore films from the Marcus Daly family, 11 reels of 28 mm film showing them golfing off the front steps of the Daly Mansion in Hamilton, swimming, riding go-carts and more.

"28 mm film was a weird gauge for rich person home movies in the 1919-1920," Burton said.

The archive is unique in the state and a new collecting focus for the Montana Historical Society.

The Montana Historical Society has a YouTube channel and playlist of digitized films.

At 1:30 p.m., Saturday, March 10 Burton will present "Reel History: Moving Images from Montana’s Past" at the Montana Historical Society.

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