Articles and Essays
Writer. Journalist. Storyteller
John Clayton has published articles and essays in Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, Newsweek, Salon, National Parks Traveler, Mountain Journal, Horizon Air, High Desert Journal, Nieman Storyboard, Montana Magazine, and High Country News, among others.
Articles and Essays
John Clayton has published articles and essays in such magazines as Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, Horizon Air, Montana Magazine, and High Country News. His occasional columns on the American West have appeared in dozens of Western newspapers through the High Country News "Writers on the Range" series.
Previous stories
The Glidden Auto Tour, famous in its day, made its final run along Montana’s barely passable Hi-Line Route. In Montana Quarterly (fall 2022):
The nine-day Glidden Tour of 1913 was the first automobile-based planned road trip through Montana. Discomforts and mechanical problems limited participants to an average of only 178 miles per day.
But the Glidden Tour glitters because it was the first Montana event to see the road trip as a destination itself, rather than a mere journey. And one surprise is how wrong its vision was of how road-tripping should work.
[Paywalled. Please subscribe!]
When touring was tough
In Big Sky Journal (summer 2022): The Mountain West in the 2020s has been characterized by increasing crowds. In 2021, Montana’s Flathead County grew by 3.5 percent and Billings was briefly ranked as the top emerging market in the entire nation. By February 2022, the median value of a single-family home in Montana’s Gallatin Valley was $896,000. In 2021, Yellowstone National Park’s 4.9 million visits represented the most ever and a 44 percent increase over 2011; Glacier’s 3.1 million visits were a 63 percent increase. In many areas, restaurants, campsites, and trails are oversubscribed.
This sudden influx has historical precedent. An early-1900s trend, often summarized by the catchphrase See America First, brought waves of tourists and transplants who defined the region’s culture and economy for decades. If we’re wondering what happens next, we could start by looking at what happened then.
See America First
In Montana Quarterly (fall 2021): Like the horse, railroad, tractor, and cellphone, the all-electric vehicle (EV) is a technology that will transform life in Montana. We are about to see how that transition will play out.
“Electric pickup trucks like the F-150 Lightning will be a game-changer,” says Kyla Maki, who works on electric vehicle and alternative fuels for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. In May, Ford announced the 2022 release of an all-electric version of America’s most popular pickup truck, starting at about $40,000.
With up to $7,500 in federal tax credits, the truck could have cost parity with gas-powered pickups. In early reviews, Motor Trend said that it will also have improved ride and handling, going from zero to 60 in 4.4 seconds. The only question, then, will be the question hanging over the entire EV sector in a vast, sparsely-populated state.
How will you charge it?
[Unavailable online. Please subscribe!]
Montana's electric vehicle frontier
The "Named Highway Trilogy"
I wrote about the very first automobile roads, which had names instead of numbers. And I did it as a trilogy, because much great art, like "The Naked Gun," comes in trilogies.
-
We meet the granddaddy of named roads, and investigate its curious recent Wyoming resurgence.
-
Going very deep on named roads, this episode, like The Naked Gun 2½, is arguably the funniest of the three, and the most relevant to today’s politics.
-
A Grand Unifying Theory of named roads: all roads lead to Yellowstone.
Dashiell Hammett's Montana
In Montana Quarterly (summer 2021): A literary giant, Dashiell Hammett invented the American private detective novel. His books The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man became legendary movies. Some say his stripped-down style surpassed even Hemingway in defining both American prose and American masculinity. And his first novel was set in Butte...
[Continue reading at the Montana Quarterly site]
_.jpg)
Essay: "A place no longer special"
Why does Yellowstone lap over into Montana?
The ultimate Yellowstone
bear story
THINK Journal
(Winter/Spring 2020)
Big Sky Journal
(late winter 2020)
Big Sky Journal
(summer 2020)
_trailer_3.jpg)
a humorous essay for
Points in Case
(July 2019)
a humorous essay for
Points in Case
(August 2019)
More previous work
Previous work
Additional work
Ansel Adams in Yellowstone
Big Sky Journal
(Summer 2016))
