Welcome to the Ismay (a.k.a. Joe) Montana Picture Tour

Ismay, Montana has three claims to fame.  Ismay is Montana’s smallest incorporated city.  The community entire population of 22 people, voted in 1993, to change the towns’ name to Joe, Montana. The change was part of a Kansas City  radio publicity stunt to mark the trade of four-time Super Bowl champion Joe Montana from the San Francisco 49ers to the Kansas City Chiefs. The publicity and merchandise sales really helped the town. By 2001, they had made enough money to fund the construction of a community center and fire hall plus a new fire truck. Way to Go Ismay!

Finally, the town of Ismays’ most important claim to fame is the the beautiful wide open spaces you can find during a visit in June.

Town History Walk

Ismay is unique because you can get an idea of Ismay, Montana’s history just by walking around town.  The community has carefully placed signs marking what business or residence occupied each lot along the block.  We accidentally deleted the pictures of all the signs shot during our first visit but was able to photograph a couple of the wooden signs in the golden light of a June sunset on our third visit.

Mildred Montana

The best part of bouncing down a gravel road in Eastern Montana is you never know what you might see as the sun sinks below the western horizon. You can always be sure to see wildlife (see the turkey picture below) but stumbling across a ghost town came as a surprise.  We had assumed the town would be occupied because it appeared on the map.

Mildred Montana History

The Milwaukee Railroad town of Mildred is on O’Fallon Creek 20 miles southeast of Terry, Montana. The station was named for a daughter of a Milwaukee Railroad official. Mildred was a thriving little town on the Old Yellowstone Trail with many tourists traveling through. The town hall was the scene of wrestling matches, basketball games, spelling bees, and dances. A cyclone carried away most of the building but left the piano unharmed and sheet music still in place on it. Children from the Lacomb and Whitney areas came to school by train each day. When the highway was changed, the town lost population. During the drought years, the country folk left and business places had to close. (from Cheney’s Names on the Face of Montana, Mountain Press Publishing Company)

The Yellowstone Trail

In 1912, a group of small town businessmen in South Dakota undertook an ambitious project to create a useful automobile route, the Yellowstone Trail, across America. This was at a time when roads weren’t marked, there were few maps and dirt was the usual road surface.   See the Yellowstone Trail in Montana Map.