Day 2, Part 1: Friday, May 16th, 2008
Glasgow, Montana to Rapid City, South Dakota

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I had decided to stay in Glasgow because it was one of the few towns of any size whatsoever in eastern Montana. West of--and smaller than--Williston, North Dakota, I figured that it would be a mostly forgotten place, a time capsule of small-town culture in the middle of a High Plains nowhere. Just the sort of thing I loved to see on a long-distance road trip.

As soon as I walked into the lobby of my chosen hotel for the night, though--the creatively named Campbell Lodge--I could tell that something was amiss. Even though it was well past midnight, there was a large group of men hanging around the undersized lobby, watching baseball highlights on ESPN. Most were clad in camouflage and they all bore a rather unsettling resemblance to Larry, the Cable Guy. No one was at the front desk.

I picked up an old phone marked "after hours" on the wall and waited until someone responded. The voice of a teenage girl came back to me from the other end. She told me that they "had no rooms for the night".

I told her that I had a reservation.

She explained that they had bumped my reservation because they "needed the room", but would I care for a smoking room?

I told her that would be fine.

When she arrived at the front desk, she apologetically informed me that they had held me reservation until 8 o'clock that night--just about the time I was talking to the policeman in Alberta--before giving it to someone else.

"We didn't think you were going to make it," she said.


I would later find out from her that the state softball tournament was taking place in town that weekend. Amused by my own bad luck, I took a picture the next morning of the "No Vacancy" sign in front of the hotel, wondering when the last time was that anybody had seen such a thing in eastern Montana.

I then spent a couple of minutes walking around Glasgow's "downtown", picking up a few courthouse pictures along the way.

Here's me, next to the official trash can of Valley County.

From Glasgow, I drove south, towards the Black Hills, through some of the emptiest territory Montana has to offer. On my way there, I passed by Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River. Displaying all of the bureaucratic optimism of a New Deal project, the dam was the only sign of civilization for miles around.

Stretching out for miles behind the dam--in an endless sea of dusty, open plains--were the backed up waters of the Missouri River, in the form of Fort Peck Lake.

From Fort Peck, I drove south for more than 100 miles without passing through a single town. For awhile, I passed the time by listening to the Glasgow radio station--chuckling as they read bios, between songs, for each graduating senior from Glasgow High ("Bobby likes sports, and hunting, and hanging out with his friends"). Eventually, it too faded away, leaving me by myself to drift through the silence and desolation of the eastern Montana badlands.

This is where the deer and the antelope play.

Around noon time, I crossed paths with the remote county seat of Jordan, in Garfield County. I wanted to come here because this place had made news back in 1996, when a group of disgruntled ranchers calling themselves the "Montana Freemen" declared themselves independent of the United States of America and attempted to form their own country, called "Justus Township". They took over this courthouse building by force and declared it the capital of their newly founded nation.

Still gunshy after the Waco disaster in 1993, the federal government hesitated to assist the local law enforcement agents in reigning in the Freemen. Ultimately, though, the FBI moved in, surrounded the Freemen at an even *more* remote ranch, 30 miles northwest of Jordan, and forced them to capitulate after an 81-day standoff.


The story made big news, back in the day, but it has been all but forgotten now. The town of Jordan itself, I discovered, looked like it was happy to go back to being completely ignored. There was only one paved street in the entire town; all of the other roads consisted of nothing but dirt.

I took a few pictures of its courthouse and main street and then went back on my way.

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