This week on The Big Why, we’re exploring Montana’s 56 counties. A listener from Billings wants to know how they got their shapes. Finding the answer led MTPR's Austin Amestoy down a rabbit hole where he found a saga of boom and bust, backroom dealing and an unlikely folk hero.
Austin Amestoy: Welcome to the Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I’m your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We’ll answer your questions — large or small — about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans for Montana, this is The Big Why.
MTPR producer Nick Mott is back with me this week to dig into yet another obscure era of Montana history. Hi Nick!
Nick Mott: Hello Austin. Leave it to our listeners to keep sending us back in time. What are we talking about this go-round?
Austin Amestoy: This time, we’re exploring Montana’s 56 counties. A listener from Billings wanted to know how they got their shapes.
Nick Mott: I admit, it’s not something I’ve thought much about before!
Austin Amestoy: Neither had I, Nick. But then I fell down the rabbit hole of Montana’s early political history – as we have a couple of times on this show – and man, the story of the state’s counties is quite the saga. It’s one of boom and bust, back-room scheming, and it even created a folk hero many Montanans have probably never heard of.
That rabbit hole started with a Google search that led me to perhaps one of the most knowledgeable authorities on counties in the nation
Peggy Tuck Sinko: My name is Peggy Tuck Sinko. I’m here in Oak Park, Illinois.
Austin Amestoy: Sinko was an editor on “The Montana Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.” She spent years compiling the history of Montana’s counties, and more than a dozen other states’, for the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Nick Mott: I had no idea such a book even existed. It sounds like she’s exactly the kind of expert we need to answer this question!
Austin Amestoy: Indeed, she was. But before we go too much further down the rabbit hole, I think it’s probably important to talk about why counties exist in the first place. Any guesses, Nick?
Nick Mott: In a big state like Montana, we have lots of land, not very many people, so you've got to provide services somehow, right?
Austin Amestoy: Exactly. It’s all about services. States are too big to handle all resident needs, and cities are sometimes too small. Counties fill in the gaps, paving roads, offering ambulance and fire responses, holding elections and collecting taxes.
So, Nick, any idea which county holds the honor of being Montana’s first?
Nick Mott: I'm going to guess based on our statewide system of license plates, that maybe number one is first. I think that's Butte-Silver Bow.
Austin Amestoy: That's a good guess, but it’s actually Missoula County! Leaders of Washington Territory created it in 1860. Four years later, after Montana Territory was born, the entire region was split into seven more counties.
Nick Mott: So only eight total counties in this whole state we now call Montana state? Why were counties so huge back then?
Austin Amestoy: It all comes down to population. Counties have to have governance, courts, law enforcement and so on — you have to have at least a few hundred people living in one to make it worth it.
Sinko says the story of county creation in the early United States is one of cutting up the pie.
Peggy Sinko: You create a big county, and then you start chopping it down.
Nick Mott: I guess this is where we start getting into the meat of those county boundaries.
Austin Amestoy: That's right, Nick. But it is important to note here that county boundaries, much like states, were drawn with no regard to the Indigenous people who lived within them. But as counties slowly subdivided and shrank, so too did the reservations Indigenous people were forced onto.
During Montana’s gold rush in the mid and late 1800s, thousands of white settlers flocked into the state’s mountainous southwest corner. More people meant more need for services — and that led to a problem.
Peggy Sinko: They live on one side of the mountain range, and they find it very inconvenient to go to the county seat on the other side of the mountain range.
Nick Mott: Right, that makes sense. This is back when everyone’s getting around by horse. Mountain passes and such are no fun at all.
Austin Amestoy: No, they weren't, Nick. And we see county-splitting and subdividing begin during this period largely to make services easier for communities to access. This is a main reason southwest Montana has smaller, denser counties than the rest of the state.
Nick Mott: But how do these settlers decide where to draw those county line?
Austin Amestoy: Let's talk about two broad methods for this: straight and squiggly.
You’ll notice more straight lines in eastern Montana. Those are usually drawn along boundaries from the Public Land Survey System. That’s a massive grid; basically how the U.S. government divvied up the land it obtained. Those plots were often square, thus, more straight lines.
Nick Mott: Got it. So how about the squiggly boundaries?
Austin Amestoy: Those usually follow geographic features like rivers, lakes or mountain ranges.. Like Sinko said earlier, settlers didn’t want to have to cross a mountain to access their county services. Thus, we see more of those squiggly lines in western Montana.
So, counties were subdivided pretty regularly from those first eight Montana counties. But let’s pause for a second in 1910.
Nick Mott: Why there?
Austin Amestoy: Well, we still only had 28 counties at the time. You'll recall that we have 56 today. 1910 is when the late Montana historian Dave Walter says, “All hell broke loose.”
Nick Mott: I did not know county lines could inspire that kind of chaos. What happened?
Austin Amestoy: In just 10 years, Montana’s number of counties would nearly double to 54. This was known as the “county busting” era, as the large counties of the time were busted apart.
Nick Mott: Ooh, “busting” is such a dramatic term for what sounds like a bureaucratic process of dividing a county. What drove it?
Austin Amestoy: The state’s population swelled, and homesteaders wanted a cut of the tax money brought in by the railroad boom. Plus, Progressive politics at the time preached that governments needed to be closer to home.
But perhaps most importantly among these factors was, one man – a disheveled, rough-spoken Scotsman from northeastern Montana. He emerged to harness these trends and use them to create as many as 18 counties. Here’s how Dave Walter introduced him in an article he wrote:
“From the unbridled optimism of the homestead era also evolved a Montana phenomenon: Dan McKay, Professional County Buster!”
Nick Mott: Dan McKay must be the folk hero you promised me earlier. He's credited with creating 18 counties?
Austin Amestoy: The final number is disputed, Nick, because McKay was so prolific as a county buster. He was a county-busting desperado, riding from place to place on a huge horse and getting paid to help citizens split off into a new county of their own.
McKay seemed to be in it for the love of the game. Here’s a quote of his from his 1936 obituary read by a Scottish friend of the show, for maximum accuracy:
“If you never had the thrill of the hardest kind of a battle that can be fought without artillery, rifles and machine guns, you ought to get into a county splitting fight once. It will give you plenty of thrills.”
Austin Amestoy: Among the counties McKay helped create: Hill, Blaine, Toole, Sheridan and Philips.
Nick Mott: That is wild. When did this county busting boom end?
Austin Amestoy: Well, it hit the brakes hard by 1920, after the Legislature tightened the rules for citizen-created counties, and new counties began taking on debt. This is an issue we have even today. Lots of counties in the state are very rural and sparsely populated. Not a lot of people, not a lot of taxes. In fact, there’s been chatter every decade or so of consolidating Montana's counties to save tax dollars or cut red tape. But it never seems to go anywhere.
Nick Mott: Interesting. So rather than county busting, county building, or county consolidating. Why doesn't that movement gain any traction?
Austin Amestoy: Well, look at it this way, Nick. If Park County, where you live, and Gallatin counties merged, and Gallatin got to keep the name, wouldn’t you be a little peeved to see Park go?
Nick Mott: Yeah, there is something special about the identity of the place you're in. I mean, this is a pretty trivial detail but I'd be heartbroken to let go of my "49" license plate in favor of a "6".
Austin Amestoy: I suspect you would not be the only Montanan to say so, Nick. Even when consolidation comes with the promise of lower taxes, our attachment to our counties seems to be too much to overcome. As a writer for the Helena Independent Record put it back in 1960:
“The property taxpayer may be irate about his burden, but he will have to be a great deal angrier before he will give up his county seat.”
Nick Mott: What a fascinating glimpse into Montana history, Austin. Thank you so much for your reporting.
Austin Amestoy: You bet, Nick.
Now we want to know what makes you curious about Montana. Submit your questions below, or leave a message at 406-640-8933. Let's see what we can discover together! Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and help others find the show by sharing it and leaving a review.
