According to UM Professor Harry Fritz, the most important decade in Montana’s history was the 1880's, and the single most significant event of those years was the coming of the railroads to the state in the year 1881. The other major occurrences that affected and shaped the state we have today were: the discovery of copper in Butte in 1882, the growth of the timber industry (thanks to the railroads and the Butte mines), the end of the open-range cattle business by way of the brutal winter of 1886/1887, a rapid growth of population and of course the gaining of statehood in 1889.