Two programs aimed at 4th-12th grade students:

1. A Montana History poster contest for students 4-5th grades: $3,000

2. Three Montana history-themed student research prizes for students 6-12th grade: $1,500

Project Description:

In collaboration with National History Day in Montana (NHD MT)—an established academic program serving students 4-12th grades—the MT 250 Commission (MT 250) requests $4,500 to support programs to boost student engagement with Montana history through research, analysis, and presentation at local, state, and national levels.

Project Description:

“The Montana Tapestry: People and Places from 1776 to Today” will include six sets of pop-up banners with content on the people, places, resources, and structures that unite us as Montanans and Americans and give us common purpose as we look ahead to the next 250 years. This traveling interpretive exhibit commemorates the upcoming semiquincentennial, educates the public on lesser-known history, people and places of Montana, and highlights Montana's changing cultural, social and physical landscapes from 1776 to today. Six sets of banners and interpretive resources will travel throughout Montana State Parks visitors centers across each region of the state, delving into our unique past and sparking curiosity to help shape the next 250 years of our state.

Amount Requested: $22,000 to support high school CTE (Career and Technical Education) classes involvement in a Burma Shave Sign- inspired project.

Project Description:

MT 250 will work with nine exemplary construction-skills high schools, one in each of the MASS (MT Association of School Superintendents) regions, to purchase supplies locally and produce a nine slogan roadway sign sets which school reps will erect working with landowners in their county. Modeled after the successful 1950s Burma Shave signs that used a series of advertising slogans along roadways, the goal is to have at least one Montana 250 slogan erected in each county during the fall of 2025.

The Montana 250th Commission and the Montana Historical Society are hosting a year-along series of virtual events designed to build excitement around the United States's 250th birthday in 2026. "Montana Reads: The Treasure State's Book Club" is a monthly online book discussion that will cover exciting topics and figures from United States, Montana, and Tribal history.

Each month, a member of the Montana 250th Commission will lead a presentation and discussion on books that explore myriad aspects of our shared history - from the Founding Fathers to Montana statesmen and women, cultural traditions to amazing innovation. These monthly discussions will feature conversations around the books' central themes, seeking applications to current challenges and initiatives facing our state and nation. Montanans are encouraged to participate in any and all of these events that they find interesting, and where possible to read the book in advance.

The Montana 250th Commission is excited to share these stories with all Montanans and will be bringing in special guests where possible to further bring this history to life. Events will be held on Zoom each second Thursday of the month from 6:30 to 7:30pm.

Register via the links below.

Upcoming Book Club Events are:

Thur., Oct. 9 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate, by Marc Johnson

NOTE: Author Marc Johnson will join us live for this event

The U.S. Senate is so sharply polarized along partisan and ideological lines today that it’s easy to believe it was always this way. But in the turbulent 1960s, even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed. One key reason: two remarkable leaders who remain giants of the Senate—Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, the longest-serving majority leader in Senate history, so revered for his integrity, fairness, and modesty that the late Washington Post reporter David Broder called him “the greatest American I ever met.” The political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, is the lens through which Marc C. Johnson examines the Senate in that tumultuous time.

Working together, with the Democrat often ceding public leadership to his Republican counterpart, Mansfield and Dirksen passed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation, created Medicare, and helped bring about a foundational nuclear arms limitation treaty. The two leaders could not have been more different in personality and style: Mansfield, a laconic, soft-spoken, almost shy college history professor, and Dirksen, an aspiring actor known for his flamboyance and sense of humor, dubbed the “Wizard of Ooze” by reporters. Drawing on extensive Senate archives, Johnson explores the congressional careers of these iconic leaders, their intimate relationships with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and their own close professional friendship based on respect, candor, and mutual affection.

A study of politics but also an analysis of different approaches to leadership, this is a portrait of a U.S. Senate that no longer exists—one in which two leaders, while exercising partisan political responsibilities, could still come together to pass groundbreaking legislation—and a reminder of what is possible.

The discussion will be led by Deena Mansour, MT 250th Commission member and Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center and the University of Montana.


Thurs., Nov. 13 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics by H.W. Brands

NOTE: Author and historian H.W. Brands will join us live for this event

From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H.W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States.

To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. In Founding Partisans, master historian H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be.

The first party, the Federalists, formed around Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and their efforts to overthrow the Articles of Confederation and make the federal government more robust. Their opponents organized as the Antifederalists, who feared the corruption and encroachments on liberty that a strong central government would surely bring. The Antifederalists lost but regrouped under the new Constitution as the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, whose bruising contest against Federalist John Adams marked the climax of this turbulent chapter of American political history. 

The country’s first years unfolded in a contentious spiral of ugly elections and blatant violations of the Constitution. Still, peaceful transfers of power continued, and the nascent country made its way towards global dominance, against all odds. Founding Partisans is a powerful reminder that fierce partisanship is a problem as old as the republic.


Thurs., Dec. 11 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The Boston Massacre: A Family History, by Serena Zabin

NOTE: Author and historian Serena Zabin will join us live for this event

A dramatic, untold “people’s history” of the storied event that helped trigger the American Revolution.

The story of the Boston Massacre—when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death—is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.

Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs, and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution.

Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.

The discussion will be led by Dr. Emily Arendt, MT 250 Commission member.


Please email laura.marsh@mt.gov for any issues with registering and receiving the link for Book Club events.

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Previous Book Club Events:

Thur., Sept. 11 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, by Garrett Graff

Thur., July 10 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Part I: Turbulent Spirit, pages 1 - 250

Thur., Aug. 14 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Part II: American Hippocrates, pages 251 - 510