blackfoot-valley

is a part, from the physical character of the land and shaped by it, to human settlement of the area and its present economic and cultural character. Every writer has his own perspective. At one point in our story, to help put our own area in a world context as well, I have made a general comparison with the only large region elsewhere that is physically and climatically similar to both the mountainous part of Montana and the Great Plains, and therefore in certain respects culturally similar, too. The last section focuses on the Meyer Company Ranch and its develop- ment into a cattle raising and marketing enterprise emphasizing natural beef, perhaps a harbringer of a future turn in the food industry - a turning away from foods highly processed and adulterated with multiple artificial ingredients, that sometimes include natural ingredients used in an unnatural way. If this kind of turn should indeed materialize, Meyer will have led the way with respect to Beef - to Americans always a highly esteemed and nutritious food, although the cattle industry providing it has seen some rocky times in recent years. On a more personal note, this writer came to Montana in the summer of 1997. Although a Californian by birth and upbringing, my family has some background in Montana, my father having started his married life at Pompey’s Pillar some thirty miles east of Billings, running a business that led him into his lifelong career, banking. As for myself, besides California, I have lived in five other Western states from Arizona to Alaska. Most recently, before com- ing to Missoula, I had lived for a time in Bishop, California, and for many years preceding that in Ridgecrest, both on the arid inland side of the Sierra Nevada, with high mountains in view nearby. Before that, I had professored for sev- eral years in my field, geography, at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. So western Montana, though different from those earlier locales in a number of ways, also offered a number of similarities: climates more on the dry than hu- mid side; mountains; and above all, mostly located in regions of low population densities with expansive vistas in all directions. Montana calls it Big Sky. Other areas call it wide open spaces. Such qualities are becoming increasingly scarce in most of the United States. They are today most prevalent in Alaska, the Intermountain West, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Plains. The latter pair describe the two distinct regions of Montana in a nutshell. Although I commenced research on this writing project soon after coming to Missoula, having been engaged by Bob Meyer for this purpose, and almost immediately staying for short times on the Meyer Company Ranch to familiarize myself with it and interview some of the people in the area, for various reasons 4