Marshall Swearingen

Recent Posts

Historic Boulder River ranger station opens for the summer

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Cabin

On the Friday before the Fourth of July, as the camper trailers started rolling by on the Boulder River Road where it turns to gravel about 30 miles south of Big Timber, Carl Ronneberg performed a decade-old ritual. At the Main Boulder Ranger Station, a log structure that’s one of the oldest Forest Service facilities in the country, he’d spent the morning sweeping the floor and tidying up. Then he went out, raised the American flag on a wooden pole and opened the station’s doors for another summer season. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Diversions, Montana, Big Timber, Boulder River, Carl Ronneberg, Harry Kaufman, U.S. Forest Service

Lottery: Hunting success begins with ‘luck of the draw’

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Deer

It will be months before hunters call bull elk out of the timber or track deer in the snowy dawn. But springtime in Montana defines the hunt with another kind of action. Just ask Hank Worsech, license bureau chief at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. “It looks like a bomb went off in here,” he jokes as we walk through the bowels of FW&P’s Helena headquarters. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Diversions, Elkhorn Mountains, Fish, Hank Worsech, Lorrie Harris, Neal Whitney, Wildlife & Parks

Colstrip: At the intersection of coal and climate change

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Drag

On a blustery December evening, Gene Wier and his grown son Bryan are wrenching on hand-built hot rods in their machine shop on the edge of Colstrip. There’s bright light, good grease smells, a football game on the TV. They tell me to come on in. When Gene ran for town council a few years back, he recalls, he was asked to sum up what makes this town of 2,300 residents unique. His answer cut to the basics: “We have a coal plant in our front yard, and a coal mine in our back yard.”

And like most people around here, he likes it that way. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, 'war on coal', Clean Power Act, Colstrip, Montana Power Company, Northern Cheyenne Tribe, NorthWestern Energy, Rosebud County

Bozeman group hoping to stop coal in its tracks

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Protest

A gray sky spits cold drizzle as a dozen protesters gather on a gritty road shoulder in north Bozeman. They take up signs—”COAL KILLS” one reads—and wave to passing traffic. But their attention is mostly on the railroad tracks a hundred feet away. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, Blue Skies Campaign, Montana Rail Link, Nick Engelfried, Otter Creek, Scott Black, Tongue River Railroad

Montana could lead the way on wind energy production

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Judith

First the television cameramen shuffle in. Then Gov. Steve Bullock, flanked by a couple of aides at the door, steps toward the stage. We’re in a conference room at Montana State University in Bozeman, and this is a moment that many at Wednesday’s Montana Wind Energy Forum have been waiting for, especially now that it’s the only thing between them and lunch. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, American Wind Energy Association, Anne Hedges, Environmental Protection Agency, Montana State University, Montana Wind Energy Forum, Renewable Northwest

Hydro project could power shift to renewable energy

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Schematic

Wind chills the bright May morning as we walk the grassy plateau of Gordon Butte, a 2-mile-wide plug of volcanic rock towering above the plains about three miles west of Martinsdale, in Meagher County. The snow-streaked Crazy Mountains pull our gaze south, but we’re heading north, to the butte’s sharp, timbered edge. My tour guide, Eli Bailey, a project manager with Bozeman-based Absaroka Energy, stops to point out where an 18-foot-diameter water conduit will be drilled deep into the butte and diagonally out its base. This part of the plateau, he says, will become an 80-acre reservoir. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, Absaroka Energy, Carl Borquist, Crazy Mountains, Eli Bailey, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, hydropower

Public access fights won in courthouses’ dusty corners

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Lea

LEWISTOWN—Boom! Bernard Lea hefts the book onto the table. It makes a world atlas look like a dimestore paperback. He uses both hands to open its tattered cover and leaf through the pages, which are yellowed with age. He finds the page he’s looking for, and locates a serpentine line squiggled in pencil, dotted with tiny numerical coordinates and other inscrutable text. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, Bernard Lea, Fergus County Courthouse, Jeremy Chapman, Montana Center for Investigative Reporting, Public Land/Water Access Association