AP photo by Jeff Robbins

By Talia Knudsen

The spring of 1996 reminded Montanans that no matter how remote, tranquil and out of the way the state is, trouble can brew underneath all the quiet.

 Montana became a double feature for the media that spring. News reporters hopped from one end of the state to the other to cover the Freemen standoff and the arrest of the Unabomber. Meanwhile, locals watched and braced themselves for what would happen next.

Montana first held the attention of the nation as the Freemen kept the FBI at bay near Jordan. The deaths of 84 people at a standoff in Waco, Texas, just three years before, and a fatal standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 were fresh memories.
The Freemen standoff began after local officials had endured relentless harassment from the Freemen — a handful of Montanans who claimed their ranch was a sovereign nation and that they obeyed God’s law only.

Law officials had been watching the Freemen for several months when they linked the group to forged documents used to obtain millions of dollars from banks around the country. The FBI surrounded the Freemen’s ranch in mid-March, determined to arrest the leaders peacefully.

The entire country watched and wondered if the sizeable cache of weapons at the Freemen ranch would cause the next Ruby Ridge or Waco. Montanans watched, too, wondering if their state would become home to the next bloody standoff.

“There was a lot of fear of these people at the time,” said Patricia Sullivan, now a reporter at The Washington Post who worked at the Missoulian newspaper in Missoula when the Freemen and other militia groups in Montana became active.
“They were armed to the teeth,” she said. They had also had a long history with local law officials.

Montana's other unabomber Isaac “Ike” Gravelle put the stolen revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. He’d rather die than go back to jail, he had told Helena lawmen. The hunt for “Montana’s First Unabomber” ended when he died at age 35 by his own hand. Montana Historical Society, Helena It all began during the summer of 1903. Gravelle had just finished his six-year-sentence at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. The hardened cattle rustler wasn’t the sharpest barb on the wire, but he and his cellmate, Harvey Whitten, had a plan to extort $25,000 from the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. Gravelle would send ransom letters to railroad officials upon his release from Deer Lodge, demanding the money. He would threaten to dynamite tunnels, tracks and trains, putting hundreds of lives at risk if the railroad company failed to deliver the loot. Northern Pacific did not take the demand seriously until Gravelle succeeded in blowing up the bridge over the Yellowstone River near Livingston. Thus, the hunt for the wily outlaw began. Lawmen followed a path of vandalism and destruction. But Gravelle wasn’t a penny richer when they caught up with him after a three-month chase. A year later, Gravelle escaped from the Helena jail, shot an officer who stood in his path and took his gun. Another plan gone bad, Gravelle shot himself with the stolen pistol rather than face life in prison. Gravelle’s destruction earned him the name “Montana’s First Unabomber” from the Montana Historical Society years later. - Talia Knudsen

Spring blossoms and green grass covered the state, and early summer rolled in before the Freemen surrendered in June, ending the longest standoff in modern U.S. history — 81 days. The remaining 16 members left the compound without a single shot being fired.

About 80 people were arrested and tried after the standoff ended.

While the country was counting the days of the Freemen standoff, the FBI was zeroing in on America’s Unabomber and preparing for his arrest in Lincoln. With a population of 1,100, Lincoln doesn’t even show up on some maps. But by the end of that summer, just about everyone in the United States knew where Lincoln, Mont., was. And everyone had heard of Ted Kaczynski, who had killed three people and injured an estimated 23 others with bombs over the previous 18 years.

Tom Laceky, a reporter for The Associated Press in Helena, was in Jordan covering the Freemen story when he heard about Kaczynski’s arrest. Just what we need, another big story, he thought.

 Laceky was at the courthouse in Helena where Kaczynski was taken after his arrest.

“I had never seen anything like it,” he said. The mobs in Jordan during the Freemen standoff were nothing compared to the mobs outside the courthouse in Helena.

Meanwhile, David Letterman was having a heyday with Montana and its anti-government, anti-technology crazies. Lincoln and Jordan weren’t just small towns somewhere in Montana, and Montana wasn’t a rustic out-of-the-way state near the Canadian border anymore. In the public’s mind, it was home to nuts and kooks.
While trying to stay out of the limelight, Montanans couldn’t help but wonder: Where did all these nuts come from and why did they choose to live here?

One possible reason is the state’s low population. “There’s nobody here to snoop around,” said Harry Fritz, professor of history at the University of Montana.
The population of Montana was 799,065 in 1990. With 145,552 square miles, that’s an average of 5.5 people per square mile. And many parts of Montana represent that calculation pretty closely. Garfield County, where the Freemen organized, is 4,848 square miles and home to a mere 1,279 people, according to the 2000 census. That’s about one person per four square miles.   
         
While Fritz might be on to something, David Walter, Montana Historical Society’s research historian, has another theory. Montanans respect each other’s privacy with a “let him be” attitude, he said, and the Montana philosophy is “the guy can be as weird as he wants to be as long as he doesn’t infringe on my rights.”

That philosophy is part of what brings people here, nuts or not. But with all this open space and privacy, is Montana home to more than its share of crazies, as 1996 implied? Is there something about the open spaces or long winters that drives people to anti-technology terrorism or hoarding caches of weapons and declaring themselves sovereign nations? Fritz doesn’t think so.

“There are more criminals in downtown Detroit than the whole state of Montana,” he said.

He might be right. Considering the population of Detroit was 951,270 in the 2000 census, there might be more people in downtown Detroit than the whole state of Montana. But according to the National Institute of Corrections, Montana has a lower-than-average crime rate overall.

Sullivan, who has worked as a reporter in both urban and rural areas, thinks the mentality of the Freemen and Kaczynski is not unusual. Montana is one of many places people go who want to be left alone, she said.

Montana got its share of bad publicity and disruption in 1996. But now that the dust has settled, it’s still a place people go — crazy or not — to get away from the world. The Unabomber and Freemen are now distant  memories, but they left us with an unforgettable lesson: You can run, but you can’t hide, not even in Montana.