About

Charles M. Russell (1864–1926) came to Montana as a teen cowhand and never left its stories. After years on the Judith Basin ranges, he turned trail memories into art—most famously “Waiting for a Chinook,” his searing record of the hard winter of 1886–87. In 1896 he married Nancy Cooper, and the couple settled in Great Falls the next year. There, in a modest home and log studio he built in 1903, Russell painted and sculpted the vanishing open range—tribal life, working cowboys, and the changing West—while Nancy deftly guided his career.

 

Great Falls became the heartbeat of Russell’s world: friends and neighbors sat for portraits, visiting writers and collectors passed through the studio, and Western art radiated from Central Avenue to the wider nation. Today the C.M. Russell Museum, his preserved home, and studio anchor the city’s cultural identity, drawing visitors who come to stand where the “cowboy artist” worked. Russell didn’t just document Montana; he gave Great Falls an enduring voice and placed it on the map as a guardian of the American West.