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A few years ago, I was photographing at a local high school track meet. I met two girls who told me they were the last graduating class at their high school — there weren’t enough students to keep it open.
I immediately became curious. Why was their school’s student population dwindling? What was it like to be in such a small group of graduates? What were they hoping to do next in life? That’s how this recent project about three of Montana’s smallest graduating classes began.
Over the last five months and many miles on the road, I traveled across Montana to understand what it means to be in a class of three, two and one. The focus of my project came down to the experiences of students from Lima, Rapelje and Willow Creek — six students altogether who are getting ready to leave what is often the only school building and home they’ve ever known. I photographed and interviewed these students as they’re on the verge of entering the future and deciding who they want to become.
Kalen Martinell helps round up newborn calves and their mothers on the Martinell family ranch March 8, 2026, in Dell. Martinell will attend Montana State University in the fall of 2026 to study agricultural business and hopes to return to run the family ranch one day. He worries there won’t be a school in Lima for his future children.
Their insights and reflections stuck with me. They told me about their senior class trips, special school traditions and what it’s like to have your parent as your teacher. In Lima, graduating seniors Gus, Kalen and Luke said they all love their hometown school, but after experiencing several threats of closure during their time there, they don’t know if there will be a school for future generations to attend. The next closest school is in Dillon, an hour away.
In Rapelje, one student reflected on how her Future Farmers of America teacher encouraged and uplifted her to become the leader she is today. In Willow Creek, the lone graduating senior said the thing she’ll miss the most is being known by other students and teachers. One wise Lima senior simply recommended avoiding dating anyone in a small school.
As the summer gets underway, all of these students are preparing for what’s to come. I hope you’ll enjoy glimpsing these images of them on the precipice.
— Lauren Miller
Following Up
It’s been a few months since we’ve written about the boiling feud in Laurel over the state’s proposed psychiatric facility to treat and rehabilitate people in the criminal justice system. While our attention has been drawn elsewhere, the local opposition to the facility has not died down — concerns over the process, land acquisition, impacts on municipal services and the proximity to an elementary school remain front and center in local discourses.
Most recently, members of the group we profiled in April, Laurel C.A.R.E.D., are irate about the June announcement that the state has purchased a large plot of land that abuts Laurel’s city limits, the proposed site for the new facility. The price tag? $4.25 million.
The purchase doesn’t mean the facility’s fate is sealed and delivered, though. The Laurel City Council is currently under a moratorium on annexing any new land into the city limits, a move that would allow the state to tap into the city’s water and sewer systems to support the new facility. Local opponents pushed for the annexation freeze, which is set to expire near the end of July.
But questions still linger about whether the state would have to seek annexation to make the facility viable. Reporting by the Billings Gazette highlighted one part of a 275-page environmental assessment prepared by the state that indicated that it would “consent to annexation if the City of Laurel desires it.” But city staff and locals don’t foresee how a facility could proceed without officially tapping into the city infrastructure.
New tensions seem to crop up every day. Some locals have floated a potential lawsuit over the facility, while officials from the Gianforte administration (and Gov. Greg Gianforte himself) continue to double down on how the psychiatric facility would meet statewide mental health care needs.
“Individuals on the current 87-person waitlist are being held in county jails without adequate psychiatric care, leading to clinical deterioration, increased suicide risk and prolonged institutionalization,” the state’s environmental assessment stated. “Access to timely forensic psychiatric services is foundational to both individual health outcomes and community public safety.”
Local residents pushing back against the facility maintain they are not opposing the purpose of the psychiatric care. The way the state went about selecting Laurel and the physical site itself, however, is what they continue to have an issue with.
— Mara Silvers
News of the News 📰
The Daniels County Leader will close next month after no one stepped in to buy the century-old family newspaper based in northeastern Montana. The weekly will publish its last issue July 30.
The paper has four employees, including married owners Burl and Roz Bowler. Each of the four serves in a variety of roles, according to Burl, who affectionately described the jobs as “a variety of drudgery.”
The newspaper’s print circulation is about 900. About 500 of those are in Daniels County, home to about 1,600 people, which mainly produces wheat and legumes. Only about 100 people are signed up for the Leader’s digital-only edition, which includes subscribers in Denmark and Brazil.
The Leader has never missed an issue under the Bowler family’s ownership, despite three major fires. The first blaze occurred in 1926, when a communist group — sympathizers of Plentywood’s newspaper amid its feud with the Leader — set fire to the Leader’s building. During Burl’s father, Larry Bowler’s tenure, lightning started another fire. In 2006, when a fire started in a coal furnace, Burl salvaged the printing press from the wreckage and rebuilt it.
Burl Bowler, now 71, started working at the Leader when he was 6. He swept floors and shoveled coal into the furnace.
“Every once in a while, I still wake up thinking about, ‘Did I fill the coal furnace or not?’” Burl said in an interview with MTFP.
Burl explained his family’s decision to look for a buyer in an article the Leader published in April, which reported that “Roz and I have painted ourselves into a corner and done a poor job of figuring a way out.”
Burl said his publication faced growing competition from Facebook for readers and advertisers. He anticipates the social media platform will become the community’s primary news source, which he bemoaned.
“A friend of mine told me, ‘We read it on Facebook, and we find out if it’s true in the Leader,’” Burl said.
The couple couldn’t find a buyer, so in the most recent issue, the Bowlers published a story announcing the paper’s closure next month. Burl said, despite the drudgery, he isn’t looking forward to the last day.
“It’s heartbreaking for me,” he said.
— Zeke Lloyd
3 Questions For
Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament has partnered with various communities across Montana to build skateparks and a new short film, “Paving The Way,” follows skaters at one of
those parks on the Flathead Reservation. MTFP spoke with film director Keelan Williams and producer Ivan MacDonald about the film, how it was made and what it really says about skateboarding. Their responses were edited for length and clarity.
MTFP: How did the idea for this film come about?
Williams: I’ve been aware of Jeff Ament’s work on reservations across Montana and in rural and isolated places across the West, building these parks for a number of years. … I had the privilege and the honor of volunteering to help out at the grand openings of some of these parks over the last five plus years, 10 plus years. And seeing the work that these parks require and then also the impact they had in the community and how inspiring it was to see these kids so lit up immediately by the fact that there’s this, like, rollercoaster in their town was life-changing in some ways. I think it was clear to me, and I think it’s clear to everyone who visits these parks, how much they mean to these kids. … These young people are so incredibly bright and full of life, and these parks offer all of them an outlet to shine, and I just wanted to try to point the camera there.
MTFP: One of the themes I really liked in the film was the idea that skateboarding is art. For me, it wasn’t something I’d considered before, but then hearing the young people in the film meditate on it really resonated. Did you two have that thesis going in, or is that something that emerged as you were doing the reporting and filming? And what do you think of this art component in skateboarding?
MacDonald: I don’t really know a skater person that didn’t have some sort of connection to some sort of creative outlet, whether it was music or art or fashion, some really cool outlets. … There are kind of interesting parallels with people who just gravitate towards that space. Because, I mean, the whole idea of skating has this specific aesthetic world that it lives in.
MTFP: The film is about a skatepark, but it’s also so much more than a skatepark. What role does the skatepark play for the young people featured in the film?
Williams: It becomes clearer to me how the need for creative spaces, the need for places for young people to relate to one another and express themselves, is never more than right now. Kids talk about trying to get a trick right. I am not a skater … and so I can’t really speak to how kids feel about it, but they spoke about how they feel about it. And I have definitely seen the parallels between making things and the kind of spirit behind that; the interest in expressing yourself seems apparent to me. One thing that was important to me in making this film, and to us on the team, was that we showcase kids who aren’t professional skaters. If you watch any skate movie or any skate video, all you ever see is people flying three feet in the air and landing the most incredible tricks you’ve ever seen. And I was really interested in shining a little bit of light on people who are trying, falling down, getting back up and getting better.
“Paving The Way” is premiering at film festivals nationwide and will soon be available online.
— Nora Mabie
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
• Who’s going to bankroll the U.S. Senate campaign of Alani Bankhead?
• Montana’s population is still growing, but as reporter Jacob Olness explains, that growth is tailing off in some of the major cities.
• The labor details remain short as a massive data center proposed in Broadview gains union backing.
On Our Radar
Nick — If you thought getting a huckleberry scone, ham and gruyere croissant or orange pecan sticky bun at Bozeman’s Wild Crumb bakery already required a lot of time in line, just wait. The northside favorite this week won a prestigious James Beard Award, “the Oscars of food,” as the nation’s outstanding bakery. Not to worry — your patience will be rewarded.
Zeke — I was doing research for my contribution to this week’s Lowdown and stumbled on this heartwarming 10-minute documentary about the century-old Daniels County Leader.
Katie — Although I don’t have my own garden, I still get to enjoy some freshly grown fruits and vegetables thanks to my parents. With a bundle of asparagus arriving today (thanks, Mom), I plan to make this one-pot pasta dish from Half Baked Harvest. The lemon and basil sauce makes it taste extra fresh and summery.
Matt — Try as I might to listen to music of my own choosing, I’ve become very, very familiar with the soundtracks for the Disney show SuperKitties thanks to my toddler. Within that fog, I’ve come to appreciate Lenny Pearce’s club remixes of various SuperKitties’ standards.
JoVonne — America’s 250th birthday is just around the corner, and I have seen many events planned to celebrate this milestone. But as an Indigenous person, I also think about the country’s independence alongside its relationship to Native peoples, tribal history and resilience. ICT News (formerly Indian Country Today) is hosting a free virtual seminar July 2 that examines America’s history and its birthday through an Indigenous lens. I think I’ll check it out.
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Lowdown is edited by Nick Ehli, with additional copy editing by Mara Silvers.