Library hosting 'Homestead Dreams' Monday

Press release

The Havre-Hill County Library will host Montana Conversations program “Homestead Dreams: From High Hopes to Lingering Legacy” with storyteller Hal Stearns Monday.

The program will be at the Havre-Hill County Library at 7 pm. The presentation is free and open to the public.

Hal Stearns describes the American West’s last great agricultural land rush and what followed, illustrating his talk with a myriad of signs left on the landscape. Montana has always been a state marked by boom and bust — the fur trade, cattle on the open range, the gold and silver, coal and oil rushes. But no moment in our history has left a mark quite like that of the “honyocker” or homesteader. Thousands trekked west at the beginning of the 20th century in search of a dream. The agrarian paradise worked for a time but then came drought and depression.

Stearns, a 34-year educator, taught high school students in Montana and Germany and graduate students at the University of Montana. He was honored as Montana’s teacher of the year and outstanding U.S. history teacher. He was also a Keizio Koho Scholar to Japan, two-time National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow and Wake Forest University Center for Law Related Education Scholar. His Bachelor of Arts is from Notre Dame and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Montana.

In the military, he served in the Montana National Guard for 35 years in a number of command positions. He retired as a brigadier general.

He has served on many boards, including Humanities Montana, Montana Coal Board, Nebraska and Montana Lewis and Clark commissions, the National Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Board and Nebraska’s Wayne State College Board.

Today, Stearns is an instructor for the University of Montana’s Lifelong Learning Institute and Humanities Montana. He has a particularly fond interest in sharing his passion for Montana and the West and education with community members, students, teachers and administrators. He has led tours coast to coast and lectured in over 40 states, Germany, England, Japan, Korea and Brazil.

For more information, people can call the Havre-Hill County Library at 265-2123.

Funding for the Montana Conversations program is provided by Humanities Montana through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Montana’s Cultural Trust, and private donations.