Is This The Dirty Little Secret in Montana’s History?

This may be one of the wildest things I have ever learned about Montana. 

There are plenty of wild facts about Montana that a lot of folks don't know about. If you think about it, Montana has been around for about 133 years, and a lot has happened within that time. There is one event in Montana's history that I was surprised I had never heard about, and it's a little bit of a dirty secret. 

Get our free mobile app

Montana is filled with ranchers, farmers, tech entrepreneurs, small business owners, and more. We might not all agree on certain things, but we love the state we live in. During a certain time in Montana's history, that wasn't the case. 

If you didn't know, back in the 1930s, a part of Montana, along with portions of North and South Dakota and Wyoming, tried to secede and create their own state.

Farmers and ranchers were fed up with the Democratic leadership in Montana and resented FDR's New Deal, so they tried to establish a new state within the U.S. This state was appropriately called Absaroka because of its location in the Absaroka Mountain Range. 

The idea gained quite a bit of momentum for a while. This region held its own beauty pageants and even made their own license plates that said Absaroka, and claimed to be the 49th state. This proposal was twenty years before Hawaii and Alaska became part of the United States. 

So why didn't Absaroka become a state? Well, in 1939 when the second World War broke out, we had almost every American helping with the war effort; there wasn't much time to focus on creating a new state. 

@sebastiank22 Wow I never knew this😱#greenscreen #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #viral #trending #featureme #tiktok #facts ♬ Blade Runner 2049 - Synthwave Goose

Credit: SebastianK22 via TikTok

When you think about it, having a new state proposed in the 1930s isn't all that crazy. During the early 1900's, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico all were given statehood. So the United States was still figuring it out, and the landscape was changing. 

It seems like a wild idea now, but back then, a new state was probably not a big deal to most people. 

Montana's history is wild, and I love it.