Event Detail

This event has already taken place! Please make sure you are in the correct year. ×
Jul
12
Thursday
Jul
12
Thu
Education :: Lecture also Special Events :: Community Event
Montana Conversations with John Clayton
7:00 PM (America/Denver)
Heritage Hall at Historic Fort Missoula
Montana Conversations with John Clayton Description:
The Northern Rockies Heritage Center will host the Montana Conversations program “The 1988 Yellowstone Fires: Humanities Implications” with John Clayton on Thursday, July 12, 2018. The program will be at Heritage Hall at 7:00 pm. The presentation is free and open to the public. Funding for the Montana Conversations program is provided by Humanities Montana through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Montana’s Cultural Trust, and private donations.

To many people in Montana, the 1988 Yellowstone fires felt like a watershed event. In the almost three decades since that memorable summer, we’ve learned a lot about fire ecology and wildfire management. But did the fires change the way people think about America’s iconic landscape and first national park? What did they mean for the culture at large? Clayton reviews the events of the summer and leads an exploration of how Yellowstone is tied to American cultural identity.

Clayton is a freelancer who writes about the history and culture of the American West. His books include The Cowboy Girl and Stories of Montana’s Enduring Frontier. He is a "Rural Route" columnist for The Montana Quarterly, a history columnist for Magic (City) Magazine in Billings, and the 2016 Visiting Writer in Residence at Montana State University-Billings. He is nearing completion of a new book, Wonderlandscape a cultural history of Yellowstone National Park. As a Resident Fellow at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, in 2014-15, he studied media coverage of the 1988 Yellowstone fires. This program is based on that research.

Light refreshments will be served. Heritage Hall is ADA Accessible.
Age Group: All Ages
Venue: Heritage Hall at Historic Fort Missoula
Address: 3255 Fort Missoula Road Missoula, MT 59804
Phone: 406-728-3662