Montana Vacation and Travel Ideas for Literary Tours

Old Trail Museum
823 North Main
Choteau, MT 59422
Website: http://www.russell.visitmt.com/listings/487.htm
Email: otm@3rivers.net
Phone: (406) 466-5332

Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. (1901 Ã?¢?? 1991), who published as A.B. Guthrie, was an American novelist and historian.  His novel The Way West won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1950.  He is also well known for his novel The Big Sky, an epic about the 1830 journey of a group of pioneers from St. Louis to modern-day Montana.  The book became a bestseller, and eventually a Hollywood film based on the book was produced.  Several of GuthrieÃ?¢??s other books were also the basis for films, including The Kentuckian and The Way West.  In addition, Guthrie wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for the movie Shane, based on George StevensÃ?¢??s novel by the same name. 

Guthrie began his career as a journalist, writing novels on the side.  With his success as a novelist, he left journalism, and moved from Lexington, Kentucky, to Montana, where he had spent much of his boyhood.  The Old Trail Museum in Choteau, Montana, features an exhibit dedicated to Guthrie, which showcases his fascination with the Old West.  Guthrie lived west of Choteau, in a home with a view of the Rocky Mountain Front.  The museum also includes extensive displays of dinosaur bones and fossils, and is a stop on MontanaÃ?¢??s Dinosaur Trail.

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