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I first heard archaeologist Scott Dersam talk at a presentation put on by a local museum near my home in Livingston.
Even then, the sheer pace of his presentation left me mentally exhausted. But it was clear he was finding some remarkable things up high in the Beartooth Mountains: maybe the highest- and oldest-known sites where Clovis people once lived in the country. The Clovis were likely not the first to live in the Americas, but they were the first to leave a widespread trace. Dersam’s findings, from what I could gather, could upend what we know about where these ancient peoples lived, and even the how and when glaciers covered the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I was deeply intrigued.
I kept that talk in the back of my mind, along with a thousand questions for Dersam. Months later, I followed my gut and reached out. We connected for coffee and eventually a beer as I tried to get a grasp of his findings. Finally, I tagged along on my first trip with him. I’m not allowed to identify the specifics of any areas he surveys. But the trip was remarkable. That day, Dersam had already found a couple of Folsom artifacts — points from a culture just a tiny bit more recent than Clovis — that could be once-in-a-career for even dedicated archaeologists.
Then we went walking near a stream. Gopher holes and grizzly digs upturned the earth. And everywhere I looked, obsidian and other materials like chert that had been knapped from stone tools erupted from the soil. I stood in the creek and found glints of more flakes and artifacts. Dersam found what appeared to be a petrified, ancient mammal bone — something big enough to be a mammoth or maybe bison antiquus (he’s still waiting on lab tests for the ID).
After that excursion, Dersam invited me along on his annual trip to the Beartooths, where his paradigm-shattering findings were occurring. I couldn’t wait. You can read the story for more on what we found and why it matters.
I spent four days poring over the earth for artifacts, talking with Dersam and several other undergrad and graduate students. I was immersed in archaeology. (It’s worth noting that we leave the vast majority of what we find in place, where we found it on the soil.)
One day, I went on a hike on my own to summit a nearby mountain before meeting up with a crew surveying for new sites. It felt like a test of my newfound archaeological spidey sense after my time in the field. One particular area there, it seemed to me, might also yield new sites Dersam could be interested in. On my way back, I started to search. And, as I shouted to make any nearby grizzly bears aware of my presence, I came across one, single flake — a tiny shard of rock clearly hammered off a stone tool by human hands. Archaeologists call this “debitage.” Nothing much — but for my personal journey into the world of archaeology, it felt like a monumental find.
Suddenly, after that trip, as I was talking with Indigenous people and archaeologists alike about Dersam’s findings in the Beartooths, I was looking at the earth around me in an entirely new way. If you look closely enough, traces of the past are everywhere.
— Nick Mott
Glad You Asked 🙋🏻
Montana Free Press published an article last week about an ammunition manufacturer, Brixtel Defense, which opened a Glendive facility in January 2024 with aspirations to create 350 jobs by 2028. Two years later, the building sits empty.
Rep. Sherry Essmann, R-Billings, referenced the article last week in an email she sent to every state legislator, according to a copy shared with MTFP. She also cc’ed Gov. Greg Gianforte.
“Now Glendive is left with empty promises, an ugly empty building, potential employees displaced and a Governor and HB329 bill sponsor with a lot of egg on their faces,” Essmann wrote.
Based on the title of House Bill 329, “Make the Montana ammunition act permanent,” it appears to target businesses like Brixtel. The bill, after all, offers substantial tax breaks to qualifying companies.
But Brixtel didn’t qualify.
Rep. Ed Byrne, R-Kalispell, sponsored HB 329 in 2025. It expanded a bill introduced in 2015 by Matt Rosendale when he was a Glendive legislator and before Montana voters sent him to Congress. Rosendale’s legislation offered tax breaks for manufacturers of specific ammunition components, including propellants, primers and cartridge cases.
Byrne’s 2025 law expanded the tax breaks, but not the range of eligible companies.
Brixtel Defense didn’t qualify for the tax breaks in either Rosendale’s or Byrne’s bill because it didn’t fill that niche, Byrne told MTFP. The company produced common calibers of ammunition in Glendive, but not the components used to make ammunition.
According to the Montana Department of Revenue, no company has ever claimed the tax breaks allowed in HB 329.
In 2024, one local official in Glendive saw HB 329’s predecessor, Rosendale’s law from 2015, as a potential carrot for Brixtel. But Jason Stuart, the then-executive director of the local development council, told MTFP recently that the legislation was ultimately “pretty useless.”
“It just did nothing,” Stuart said. “It was essentially one of those deals where they did something that sounded good on paper, but the reality of it was it just did nothing.”
— Zeke Lloyd
Say Again? 🤔
In the not-too-distant future, taxis cruising through Montana could be driverless. At least, if Joshua Rhines gets his way.
Rhines’ Missoula company, CubCloud AI, recently applied to become Montana’s first Tesla cybercab fleet operator. CubCloud builds AI tools to run on hardware it owns and operates in Missoula.
Rhines told Montana Free Press this week that he has been excited about the robotaxi concept and that it can provide more affordable transportation than a rideshare like Uber. Rhines said he and several of his employees drive Teslas and are comfortable with the cars’ self-driving technology. CubCloud would first use the service for its employees and clients before rolling it out to the broader community, he said.
“Montana passed a law last year saying we want to be a showcase for this technology. Somebody from Montana should be the one to prove it works here, on our roads and in our winters,” Rhines said in a press release. “We will be the first ones riding in these cars, and we will know they work before we ask anyone else to trust them.”
The bill allowing autonomous vehicles on the state’s roadways, Senate Bill 67, also gave rulemaking authority to the state Department of Transportation and the Department of Justice to potentially restrict the vehicles. That rulemaking process is starting this fall, with a meeting planned for Oct. 26, said Charity Burns, MDT’s public information officer. Proposed rules will eventually go out for public comment, she said.
Rhines said he’s confident in the vehicles’ ability to deal with wildlife, but winter roads might be more challenging.
“It’s come a long way in the last few years,” he said. “I’m confident we can get it figured out with Tesla.”
The Tesla program is new, and its robotaxis are currently being offered in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, according to Tesla’s website. Other driverless robotaxi services, primarily Waymo, are concentrated in southern states and California, according to Business Insider.
If approved by Tesla, the state and federal governments, the “CubCab” service would start in Missoula, Rhines said. The company is also looking for partnerships to provide the service in Bozeman, he said. Ideally, the service would then expand to Billings, Butte, Great Falls, Kalispell and then rural parts of the state, Rhines said. Some areas would need more electric vehicle charging infrastructure to make it work, he said. CubCloud is looking for partners like airports, hotels, resorts, hospitals, colleges, businesses, cities and tribal governments to help expand the service.
It’s unclear how long the approval process will take, but Rhines said he hopes to get the vehicles on the road next year.
— Katie Fairbanks
For the Record 📣
President Donald Trump signed executive orders this week addressing wolves, mandatory country-of-origin labeling and the meat-processing industry, all with the promise of helping America’s ranchers. The orders came about two weeks after the president reduced tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of ground beef, a move that Montana-based agricultural economists told Montana Free Press was unlikely to benefit the state’s ranchers.
One of Trump’s orders last week would make it easier for ranchers to protect their herds from wolves. The administration will also recommend that gray and Mexican wolves be removed or downlisted from the Endangered Species List and that federal authorities consider how ranchers are compensated for livestock lost to predators.
The same executive order tasked the USDA with conducting a new evaluation of mandatory country-of-origin labeling, a policy that would require beef products to carry a label indicating where the meat was raised and slaughtered.
When the U.S. previously enforced mandatory country-of-origin labeling in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Ted Schroeder, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, co-authored a paper on the policy’s economic impact.
Schroeder found people were not willing to pay a premium for American beef to offset the added costs of ensuring it was accurately labeled, ultimately undercutting ranchers’ bottom line. Schroeder told MTFP this week that he doesn’t anticipate that the economic calculation has changed.
The other executive order targets the meatpacking industry, directing the USDA, among other things, to make it easier for ranchers to process their own products.
Schroeder said he believes these executive orders might indicate that the Trump administration will pursue some of these policies in the future, but he also acknowledged that policy “seems harder and harder to predict than it used to be.”
William Milton, a cattle rancher near Roundup, told MTFP he appreciated that the recent executive orders drew attention to rancher-related issues. But he also said he hopes Congress will ultimately consider and pass permanent, bipartisan policies
“The issue of healthy, family ranch culture should be addressed in Congress in collaboration with the administration, and the complexity of these issues cannot be effectively addressed through executive orders.”
— Zeke Lloyd
Three Questions For
Northern Cheyenne artist Jordan Ann Craig’s work was featured at Daisy Chain Fields, an all-women music festival created and headlined by popstar Olivia Rodrigo Aug. 29. Craig’s installation, inspired by Northern Cheyenne beadwork, was printed and stretched to cover more than 200 feet of a chain-link fence at the event. Montana Free Press spoke with Craig about the festival and her art. The conversation is lightly edited for length and clarity.
MTFP: Your work was displayed at a major music festival. How did this come about?
Craig: I wasn’t expecting it. I get a lot of emails, but an email from a pretty famous pop star is quite unique for me. At the end of my first call with [Rodrigo’s] team, I asked how they stumbled upon my work, and they said that Olivia has her ways on the internet and found me and appreciated my practice and would love to bring me on board, which is pretty awesome. I guess she’s a fan of my work, which is so cool, and I’m a fan of hers.
MTFP: Can you tell me more about the piece?
Craig: We did a digital print, and I specifically made this design for the festival, literally pulling from their color palette. Then it was printed, and they installed it on their fence line to activate that part of the festival. It’s pretty cool to see some Plains designs out in a place like that … I designed this piece based off of a Cheyenne beaded pouch, and the idea of a lot of my work is that it can infinitely repeat.
MTFP: Can you tell me more about your work in general? What’s your process?
Craig: I am a proud enrolled member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and so a lot of my work is foundationally based on Cheyenne and Northern Cheyenne beadwork and quillwork. I’m often looking at different archival collections, different objects, parts of my culture that I take inspiration from. Part of the process is digitizing. So I make all my designs in Photoshop, that’s where the creativity happens behind my computer. I basically make a design, and then I translate it on stretch canvas. Then I use more analog techniques like rulers, tape and paint, and I build up the pattern based on my mock-up. That’s the process. It’s a lot of research, and then playing and tinkering on my computer and then a very rigorous translation onto canvas.
— Nora Mabie
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
• Planned Parenthood of Montana plans to add a clinic in Bozeman that will provide abortion services. The location would be the organization’s first in the city.
• In the waning days of his congressional career, Rep. Ryan Zinke has proposed legislation that would protect parts of the Blackfoot River watershed while opening other land in Montana to logging and motorized use.
• Gov. Greg Gianforte is pitching a flat income-tax rate that will likely come up before the 2027 Montana Legislature. Republicans are for it; Democrats say it will benefit only the wealthiest of state taxpayers.
On Our Radar
Nick E. — This story about how major league baseball is always on the lookout for the next Mickey Mantle is full of promise, regret and nostalgia. It’s also a beautiful piece of writing.
Ellis — We’re in that season where I delight in cooler mornings while simultaneously checking my tomatoes daily to make sure it didn’t get too cold last night. After a very touch-and-go start to the growing season, I finally have enough tomatoes to make some of my favorite summer recipes, and I’m rapid-fire cranking through tomato dishes while the weather allows them to keep growing. Frost, we love ya, but not yet. Give me a few more weeks, please. I especially love this tomato galette, which is a fancy word for savory tomato pie. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!
Jacob — We’ve found thousands of planets outside of our solar system, but we have never been able to actually see them. Instead, they are detected indirectly by the subtle effects they have on the stars they orbit. NASA’s recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aims to change that with a tool called a coronograph, which essentially creates a tiny artificial eclipse, blocking a star’s light so astronomers can photograph orbiting planets.
Zeke — British police are trying to track down 70,000 pints of stolen Guinness in northwest England, according to the Associated Press. It appears that beer thieves across the pond are refusing to be outdone by an American heist in mid-August involving about 1,600 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Mara — Fun fact: I’ve only ever bought one car in my life, and “bought” feels overly formal (my mom and I exchanged cash for the same beloved family clunker I drove in high school). It still drives, but I know that I’ll have to upgrade one day. How to buy a car is a different story, though. Luckily, Nerd Wallet has a guide for adults learning to adult, like me.
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Lowdown is edited by Nick Ehli.