Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/66/)
Ben Harman is planning to bring more good food and drink to Minnesota Avenue. Nearly four years after he and his wife, Krystal, opened the Fieldhouse restaurant at 2601 Minnesota Ave., Harman is preparing to convert the former Gym Jay space into the Annex Coffeehouse and Bakery. (more…) Continue Reading →
RED LODGE—A drug bust in Bearcreek in late January has opened a rift between the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office and the Red Lodge Police Department, and a city police officer involved in the raid has been relieved of his duties as a sheriff’s reserve deputy. (more…) Continue Reading →
UPDATE: Voting is now open on which student group is awarded a $10,000 follow-up grant from the Ford Blue Oval Network. To cast your vote, go here. A student group at Rocky Mountain College is looking to turn discarded glass into sustainable jobs. The Rocky Mountain College Enactus team, the school’s student-run business club, hopes the project will create jobs for some of the homeless people who use the Hub, the Mental Health Center’s drop-in site in downtown Billings. (more…) Continue Reading →
The Montana Mint has released a list of the top 16 athletes in Montana history and is asking fans to vote for their top four. On Feb. 12, the website will crown the “Mount Rushmore” of Montana sports. The Montana Mint, which says its simple mission is to “Bring the best of Montana to the Internet,” compiled its list of top 16 athletes after polling its fans through various social media platforms. (more…) Continue Reading →
Shea and Jill Dawson had been talking about opening a brewery for years. Shea, who works in finance and public affairs at the Phillips 66 refinery, worked in a handful of places for Phillips, mostly recently New Orleans, before they arrived in Billings a year and a half ago. (more…) Continue Reading →
Last Best News will be 2 years old Monday morning. We’re happy to report that Year Two was another good one. As I wrote on our first anniversary, we had 351,293 visits to the site in Year One, or just under 1,000 a day. In the past year, as of Saturday, we more than doubled that, with 708,672 visits, just under 2,000 a day. (more…) Continue Reading →
A few months before I launched Last Best News, I talked to David Crisp about a possible partnership. I was mostly joking, but only because I had no idea whether the online newspaper I was hoping to start could support one person, let alone two. I thought the possibility was worth mentioning, though, because I knew that if I ever reached the point of being able to expand, there was no one I’d rather work with. I had known David as an editor and reporter at the Billings Gazette in the mid-1990s, and he was so good at both jobs that it was a little daunting. (more…) Continue Reading →
The second annual Taste of Billings, featuring two nights of fine dining at the historic Billings Depot on Montana Avenue, is set for Friday and Saturday, Feb. 5 and 6. The Saturday night formal dinner will feature a seven-course meal, each plate paired with a wine. All proceeds will go to support the nonprofit Billings Depot. More information is available on the depot website. Continue Reading →
In the summer of 2013, when I was working on a story for the Montana Quarterly about the Shonkin Sag and Lost Lake, the Sag’s most spectacular geological feature, I was continually amazed at how little known they were. I made a point of asking every native Montanan I ran into, including a handful of native Montanans who also happened to be geologists, about the Shonkin Sag, located southeast of Great Falls. (more…) Continue Reading →
Somehow, Billings, even with all its problems, is seeming like a pretty decent place this morning. I decided this after reading the three most recent tweets (as of 9 a.m.) from the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal. Here, honest to God, were those three consecutive tweets:
♦ Rise in violent crime rate fueled by drug use. ♦ Closure of Rapid City High School a possibility in upcoming years. ♦ Fence proposed to keep homeless out of shopping area. Continue Reading →
