2 days Ago
BOZEMAN – It's been six years since I took the fateful left turn off US 287 on an explorer's whim, having little idea where the pastoral paved road to the semi-ghost town of Radersburg was leading me literally — and zero idea what was coming figuratively. The literal answer, eight miles later: A dusty collection of weathered and renovated frontier buildings, where the drive from one end of town and back, perhaps two football fields long, revealed nary a single one of the 60 or so souls who now call Reuben Rader’s 1865 mining settlement home. One of Seabiscuit's most famous jockeys spent much of his early life on a ranch outside of Babb.
The unexpected figurative result: A "gee-whiz!" Montana adventure that continues to this day. For it was on my way out of Radersburg — after discovering it was the birthplace of “Queen of Hollywood” Myrna Loy, was once a bustling stage stop that greeted President Ulysses S. Grant and, most notable for our purposes here, blessed us with a briefly tenured Major League Baseball pitcher named Cecil Elba “Larry” Duff — that an enduring idea was hatched.
If Radersburg could have its Larry Duff, after all, what of Alder and Alzada, Zortman and Zurich, East Glacier and Southern Cross, Saint Marie and Saint Xavier, Two Dot and Four Buttes? We called the result “Montana Greats: From A (Absarokee) to Z (Zurich), The Greatest Athletes From 264 Montana Communities”. Such a natural. After all, sports bind our communities, large and sma.
