Summer Speaker Series starts June 8

Missouri Headwaters State Park will begin its summer speaker series next month, with musicians, historians, and other guests at events celebrating Montana. The first event will occur on Saturday, June 8, with "Music from Rob Quist."

Each event will be held behind the park office starting at 7 p.m. These programs are free to Montana residents, but a $8 entrance fee applies at Montana state parks for all nonresident vehicles. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own chairs and insect repellent. S'mores will be served after each program.

Missouri Headwaters State Park is about 5 miles northeast of Three Forks on Trident Road. For more information about the park, please visit https://fwp.mt.gov/stateparks/missouri-headwaters or at 406-285-3610.

June 8: Music from Rob Quist

Rob Quist is an award-winning American singer, songwriter and published poet. He has toured nationally and internationally for more than five decades, releasing 15 albums of mostly original music.

Quist was the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for the Mission Mountain Wood Band and The Montana Band, and he later formed his own band: Rob Quist & Great Northern.

Join us for words and music from Quist as he kicks off our summer speaker series at Missouri Headwaters.

June 15: Cowboy music and authentic story telling from Philip Page

Philip Page is a singer, songwriter, working cowboy and saddle maker based in Dillon. He has traveled across the Intermountain West as a storyteller and has played his songs at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.

For more than 35 years, Page has taught horsemanship clinics across Montana. He currently runs Page Saddlery and Page Livestock, where he builds saddles for working cowboys, and trains and shows horses.

Through cowboy music and authentic storytelling, Page educates audiences about Montana's rich early history, including exploration, early European settlement, gold exploration, Montana's prominent figures, and the beauty of Montana's landscape.

June 22: Mary Jane Bradbury presents Calamity Jane and Dora DuFran

Mary Jane Bradbury is an historic interpreter and scholar who brings history to life for audiences of all ages. She is an artist in residence for the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls and the Montana Historical Society in Helena.

Join us as Bradbury presents an illustrative depiction of two prominent women of the American West-Calamity Jane and Dora DuFran-and how understanding these two women together sheds new light on life, entertainment, entrepreneurship and storytelling from the late 19th century.

June 29: Greg Smith presents "An Inconvenient Grizzly"

Greg Smith was a ranger naturalist and backcountry ranger in Glacier National Park for nearly 20 years. Now a Bozeman resident, Smith is a longtime believer in the power of education, teaching kids and adults as a storyteller, naturalist and historian.

By the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, tens of thousands of grizzly bears were estimated to have roamed the American West. European settlement would bring about a dramatic decline in grizzly bear numbers and a corresponding decrease in available habitat. Now as New West meets Old West, grizzly bear numbers are a focal point of debate. Join Smith in a biological, cultural and philosophical look at the grizzly bear in contemporary Montana.

REMAINING SCHEDULE

July 6: Buck Buchanan: - Montana Singer and Songwriter

July 13: Hasan Davis: The Journey of York (@Picnic Area)

July 20: Austin Harvey: Montana History before 1889

July 27: Matt Wemple: FWP Game Warden: Be Bear Aware

August 3: Chris La Trey: The Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians

August 10: Kevin Underwood: History and evolution of firearms in Montana through the 19th Century