Arts & Event

Over the course of 17 years, Trampled by Turtles has developed from a group of rock musicians playing local shows across Minnesota to one of the most influential Bluegrass bands in the country, releasing eight full-length albums along the way.

“The day was perfect. The sunshine took a conspicuous part in the proceedings.” The Missoula Brass Band played as “crowds of little ones in spring attire and those of mature years” poured out onto the school yard. It was Tuesday, May 18, 1887: Missoula’s first Arbor Day.

Professor Steven Gaskill's desire to equalize access to physical exercise drove him to his current project: revamping the M trail. It's no fleeting passion — he has spent the past 10 years creating memorial benches for influential UM faculty members, now totaling seven.

Imagine Missoula as the largest, most powerful and most influential city in America, dwarfing New York and Washington. The Missoula Weekly Gazette envisioned such a future in a front page article on March 18, 1891.

People attending the Missoula Farmers Market asked to wear a facemask, keep six feet physical distance, and send one person per household to shop.

StoryCorps, the national nonprofit organization dedicated to recording, preserving, and sharing the stories of people from all backgrounds and beliefs, will utilize a new virtual platform to record remote interviews in Montana from June 3 to July 3, 2020 as part of its Mobile Tour.

The obituary was published in newspapers across Montana in July 1888. Dan (no last name was given) died “on the range, between the Muddy and the Teton, at 8:15 a. m., while in pursuit of an antelope.” The cause of death was listed as “short windedness and too much obesity.”

A sophomore at UM and a member of the student senate, James Flanagan gave the University of Montana mixed marks for its handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Speaking only as a student, he said the adjustments haven't been easy for anyone.

With a does of perseverance born from necessity, Missoula's classrooms have moved to a digital platform over the past month. For Elizabeth Fessler, a middle school teacher in Missoula, the shift hasn't been perfect, but as time marches on, it's getting a little easier.

Local governments, historians, researchers and media outlets have begun archiving Missoula's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an event most agree will go down as a significant chapter in American history, not unlike the Spanish Flu of 1918.