2 weeks Ago By INDEPENDENT RECORD
The 2024 Stephen Ambrose Memorial Lecture presents Missoula writer Peter Stark at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Helena library's large community room.
Stark's talk will focus on the push of the infant United States from the East Coast, over the Appalachians and into the Ohio Valley — the earliest days of the Western Movement. Both President George Washington and President Thomas Jefferson were instrumental in this earliest Western push. The talk will also touch on the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition and on John Jacob Astor's first American settlement on the Pacific.
It will include a reflection on how the War of 1812 did not change much on the East Coast, but dramatically altered geopolitics on the Ohio Valley frontier and the West Coast. A brief reception and book signing will follow. Copies of Stark's last three books will be available for sale.
His latest book, "Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh's and William Henry Harrison's Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation," was released in 2023. The event at 120 S. Last Chance Gulch is free and the public may attend.
The Lewis & Clark Library Foundation launched the first Ambrose Lecture in 2010 to honor the literary legacy of the late historian and writer Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002). His books include "Undaunted Courage," about the Lewis and Clark Expedition and "Band of Brothers," about World War II soldiers in E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne.
Ambrose had put down roots in Helena after taking his family on summer trips down the Missouri River. In 2010, Ambrose's family lent Ambrose's name to the foundation's memorial lecture series. Stark is an adventurer and historian.
Born in Wisconsin, he graduated from Dartmouth College. He worked briefly for The Missoulian in Montana. He set out to write adventure-travel articles about Greenland, Tibet and elsewhere for magazines such as Outside, Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, and others.
With his wife, choreographer and writer Amy Ragsdale, and their two children, the family lived for a year each in Mozambique and a remote region of Brazil. Based in Missoula, Stark now researches and writes historical accounts of early American explorers in wilderness settings and their contact with Indigenous peoples. To learn more about the Foundation's programs, visit and Facebook page at .
For more information, Contact Patti Borneman, executive assistant, Lewis & Clark Library Foundation, at or John Finn, director, Lewis & Clark Library, at . For more information on Stark, visit.
