Russell Country

The Voyage of Discovery reached Great Falls, Montana, yesterday. The Lewis and Clark expedition reached this same series of forbidding obstacles to navigation in June 1805 and spent a month portaging around them. A century later, the city that grew up around the falls was the home to artist and writer, Charles M. Russell, one of the finest interpreters of the landscape of the American West, its Indian inhabitants, and the cowboy.

Russell was born in 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri, and developed a fascination with the West as a young boy. It never left him. When his parents sent him to boarding school in New Jersey to overcome his obsession, he merely filled his notebooks with sketches of cowboys and Indians until his parents relented and sent him to the frontier with a trusted friend. As a participant-observer, Russell's interpretations developed depth and detail and by 1910 he was well-known among art circles from coast to coast. When he died in 1926, he left a legacy of thousands of illustrations, paintings, sculptures, letters and other material, much of it displayed today at the Charles M. Russell Museum in Great Falls. Within the museum, visitors can see the nature of the Northern Rockies and High Plains and the full range of those who lived and worked in this beautiful and challenging place. One can see and feel the full range of Russell, the man, from serious to whimsical.

In the last century, any boy or girl who has played "cowboys and Indians," enjoyed stories, illustrations, films and televisions programs with western themes has linked to Russell. He is an illustration of the reality and mythology of a man who has lived his dream and planted the seeds for others to follow in their own way. And for citizens of the United States, he is a national treasure. For Big Sky Montana, he is a beloved favorite son.