Global Mysteries

The homestead boom in Montana really began in 1906 when the word got out that Montana was a farmer’s paradise. By 1918, more than 100,000 immigrants had flooded into the state. Forty thousand of them filed homesteader’s claims making Montana the most homesteaded state in the Union. When the dry season came a few years later, there was a mass exodus and within seven years, 70,000 people had left the state.

In my novel, “Murder in a Teacup,” my main character’s grandfather stuck it out in Montana and bought land for practically nothing. He ran cattle on the open range and earned a fortune.