Bozeman Library

Extreme History Series

The Montana Origins of the Popular Western

Victoria Lamont presents on Bertha Bower’s influence on the popular western, her early writing about Montana cowboys, and factors that contributed to Bower’s erasure from American literary history.

Bertha Muzzy Bower was living in a drafty cabin on the outskirts of Big Sandy, Montana, when she started writing stories for popular magazines. It was the only way she could think of to get the money she needed to leave her unhappy marriage and gain her independence. She chose for her subject the antics and adventures of the cowboys who worked, along with her husband, for the McNamara and Marlow cattle operation in early-20th century Montana. After four years of rejections, her breakthrough came in 1904 when her first novel, Chip of the Flying U, launched Bower’s career as the first author to make a living writing popular westerns. Over the next four decades, Bower’s 68 novels would sell an estimated 2.5 million copies, and it was a rare issue of The Popular monthly magazine that did not include a Bower story. Despite her undeniable success, Bower’s contribution to the popular western is not well known. This talk will discuss Bower’s influence on the popular western with particular emphasis on her early writing about Montana cowboys, as well as the factors that contributed to Bower’s erasure from American literary history.

Victoria Lamont teaches American Literature and culture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and is a researcher of women writers of the American West. She is the author of Westerns: A Women’s History (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), and The Bower Atmosphere: A Biography of B.M. Bower (Bison Books, 2024). She and her partner live on a farm in southern Ontario along with a flock of sheep, numerous border collies, and a miniature dachshund.

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