At three times the size of Pennsylvania, with a county bigger than the whole state of Connecticut, Montana is a large place, once described as "bounded on the west by the Japan current, on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by Price's Army, and on the east by the Day of Judgement."

Clark C. Spence is a Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a former Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim fellow.