24 hours in Glasgow: How America’s ‘middle of nowhere’ defies its isolation (2024)

Beneath the thin haze smothering northeast Montana on a recent sweltering July day, Glasgow sat defiantly, chiseled from the earth where the prairies drain into the Milk River.

The railroad cuts like a spine through Glasgow — the most distant town in America from any urban center — and helps you imagine that elsewhere, maybe somewhere far down the tracks, life might go on too. But here, life emanates from the town’s small downtown, where you won’t miss Candy Lagerquist’s cafe.

For beside it stands a street sign that reads “MIDDLE” and “NOWHERE,” a reference to the town’s unofficial motto. Or as Lagerquist calls Glasgow:

A little piece of heaven.

Sean Heavey runs a gallery next to the cafe. His photographs depict a not-so-heavenly Montana, a “land of extremes,” suddenly tempestuous and always harsh. In its residents, this place inspires a “tenacity to overcome,” he said.

This day, like all others, the people of Glasgow lived athwart the forces, primordial and novel, buffeting this middle of nowhere like the Montana winds. In the span of these 24 hours, the city grappled with its remoteness, worrying about the future of rural services but gushing about its tiny advances. It just got its first Starbucks. Until then, the nearest Frappuccino was 145 miles away in North Dakota.

Welcome to Glasgow, where nowhere means everything.

***

Early that Thursday afternoon, Lagerquist stopped by her storefront in the heart of Glasgow. She enjoys welcoming visitors to the place where she grew up and will never leave.

“I’m here forever,” she said.

Nearly three years ago, she took over The Loaded Toad, the downtown outpost now a decade old. It serves up coffee in the ultimate fixer-upper, a once-empty row of retail stores that Heavey had meticulously transformed.

A doorway connects Heavey’s gallery and the cafe. On one side an image shows lightning branching out of the clouds behind the Fort Peck Dam’s towering spillway gates. Walk to the other, and the orange-and-earth-toned walls evoke this seething land too, though the hanging Edison bulbs cast a warmer light on things.

A 2018 data analysis by The Washington Post used an Oxford University tool that mapped how long it takes to travel through any span of the world. The goal: Locate the town with at least 1,000 people in the contiguous 48 states where it takes the longest to travel — by land, at least — to any metropolitan area with more than 75,000 residents.

Glasgow won. This town sits more than four hours by road from Billings, Great Falls and to the north, Regina, Saskatchewan. Many residents took the title in stride.

Heavey and his friends put up a temporary “middle of nowhere” street sign, just as a crew rolled into town for a “NBC Nightly News” story about Glasgow’s distinction.

Eventually, though, the harshness got to it. As it often does.

“We’re the land of extremes, and so after the news came, the sign had a temporary little stand on it,” Heavey said. “We had a windstorm one night, and it blew over and broke.”

He mounted a permanent sign. The Loaded Toad, too, knows how Glasgow’s conditions and remoteness can challenge its proudest residents. Like an isolation tax, Lagerquist said higher freight charges lately have hit supplies. Cups, for one.

Not long after 1 p.m., Aidin Wilkowski walked into the cafe. He had returned for the summer from the University of Minnesota, where Glasgow’s 3,200 residents would fill less than half of freshman orientation.

He’s ready to go somewhere.

“This is my last summer here,” Wilkowski said. “And then I’m living in Minneapolis.”

Kylie Lagerquist, Candy Lagerquist’s daughter, helped work the counter. She, too, goes to college outside Montana.

She hasn’t decided if she will stay here. Fall and hockey await at the University of Utah. Though Glasgow beckons.

“Home will always be here,” she said.

***

Just one call.

At 2 p.m., things had so far reflected the tranquility around Kalu Jensen-Rogenes’ desk at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital. Potted succulents offered a verdant pop in her otherwise subdued office.

The day before did not go down so quietly.

“We had three 911 calls at the very same time, which was quite difficult when you only have two ambulances,” said Jensen-Rogenes, who directs several of the hospital’s services, including emergency response.

One patient got stabilized on-site, she recalled. Things have a way of working out here, even when they test Glasgow’s small, 24-hour emergency crew.

Nine people — three full-timers who work weekdays, and the rest volunteers — operate out of Glasgow. Volunteerism has flagged, she said.

The hospital on the edge of Glasgow serves thousands of square miles. Tight-knit teams make responding to calls on the open road less lonely, and anyway, living here requires traveling far, all the time. Jensen-Rogenes would know.

Long before she donned an EMT’s navy-blue outfit, she grew up northeast of Glasgow, just below the northern U.S. border, in Flaxville. Many weekends, she crossed into Saskatchewan with her mother for groceries. The border guards waved both ways.

“It just felt like going to your next town over,” she said. Now her team covers similarly long distances, if just within American borders, to save lives. Patients greet her instead.

Weeks after treatment, they spot her in the grocery store. Then they give thanks.

“They don’t ever forget you.”

***

Almost everyone seemed to have shown up to one of Glasgow’s two grocery stores. At minimum, you’d have heard about what had happened inside the newly moved Albertsons.

Starbucks had come to town.

As the haze dissipated outside, Carlie Ellsworth waited for her coffee inside the Albertsons, one of northeast Montana’s largest stores. The Starbucks stand had apparently run out of cold brew, her favorite. A mocha Frappuccino would do.

Previously, both would have required driving two-and-a-half hours to Williston, North Dakota — a larger town, but not by much.

“Same old Glasgow,” she said. “Just exciting. Something new for people to try.”

For Glasgow, you could measure the event by the parked cars that spilled onto the nearby grass.

Albertsons had operated in a Glasgow-size space just down U.S. Route 2. Then the grocer fitted a former Shopko department store with a butcher counter, the Starbucks and rows of produce. This afternoon, on the relocated Albertsons’ first full day, Jameson Fercho strolled the floor that brings somewhere to nowhere.

The massive new space won’t change the town’s spirit, said Fercho, who manages the store. “I don’t think you can ever take the small-town feel out of Glasgow.”

***

The nursing home overlooks town, nestled in the hills as if it keeps vigilant watch of Glasgow’s goings-on every day. Perhaps it does, but there’s a whole town inside here too.

A few patriotic decorations festooned the long halls at Valley View Home, where many seniors have also thoroughly decorated their own rooms. Sunlight filtered through the wide windows of the memory care unit, while in another common area, some residents watched television together.

“I’ve been in medicine for 28 years now,” said Wes Thompson, who leads Valley View Home. “And this is the only facility that doesn’t feel like a facility. It doesn’t smell like a nursing home. It doesn’t give the vibe of a nursing home. You rarely see staff in a frantic panic.

“This place is special.”

This sort of place has also become harder to run and harder to find in northeast Montana.

Two years ago, the nursing home in Malta, an hour west of Glasgow, shuttered. Other nearby facilities, short-staffed, refuse to accept new residents, Thompson said. With the pending closure of The Ivy at Great Falls this summer, the state’s nursing home pinch has only grown.

This afternoon, Valley View Home had 46 residents. The number fluctuates. With staffing limits and many residents’ preference for private rooms, capacity stands at 65. The nonprofit nursing home sees a precarious future.

It all comes down to money. State Medicaid reimbursem*nts have increased, though not by enough, Thompson said. A local levy that has propped up operations will come up for a vote, which “doesn’t look good,” he added.

Running a nursing home so far from suppliers and medical specialists also runs up costs.

“We’re fortunate that we’re still open and viable right now,” Thompson said.

Late that afternoon, you could see a bluish expanse above Valley View Home. But not far beyond, a long, dark cloud rolled over the valley below.

***

Around 7 p.m., people trickled through the double doors under Valley Cinemas’ hulking letterboard. Inside, the lobby’s orange hues have remained unchanged since the ’80s.

Four friends walked in for “Twisters.” One wanted to watch because she knew the original “Twister,” while the other three women had little idea about the ’90s tornado blockbuster. The sequel called.

“It’s just something fun to do, especially when there’s really not much to do around here,” Demi Taber said. “I think it’s important to still keep some type of entertainment going on.”

Lindsey Collett recently moved from Billings. “Big city,” she remembered. She prefers the small town, one where the county’s only movie theater has two screens and, on this evening, two films to choose from.

As the four walked toward screen No. 1 for “Twisters,” a storm loomed outside.

Just earlier, the National Weather Service in Glasgow announced a severe thunderstorm warning. A line of storms appeared to hurtle toward town at 50 mph. Damaging winds and “penny size” hail could soon arrive, the office warned.

Impact seemed imminent. 7:15 p.m. in Glasgow, they forecasted.

Exactly when “Twisters” would begin.

Summer thunderstorms roll into Glasgow on warm evenings like this one, when the moisture and winds converge, blasting tower-like into the sky. That unstable draft often forms the swift spectacle that batters the land beneath. Its instability seems resolute, unbending. Punishing.

Glasgow has always sat “on the edge of life and death,” said Heavey, the “middle of nowhere” photographer. He chases storms, just like the characters in “Twisters.”

A weaker tornado impacts the county maybe once a year, but inside Valley Cinemas, the twisters kept coming. About 15 people gasped and laughed throughout the storm-chasing thriller.

Two hours after the film began, its credits rolled. The four friends said they enjoyed the movie and walked outside, where the sidewalks sat dry and the sky had turned a twilight ultramarine. This evening, the land had escaped its discontents, spared for once from its own seething tumult.

The storms had stayed inside the theater.

JR Rasmusan manages Valley Cinemas and came to close up for the night. Things change rarely here, and when they must, the town ensures this venue survives. When pandemic restrictions temporarily closed the theater, it survived by selling popcorn on Wednesday and Saturday nights, he recalled.

“There’s not a lot to do here in the middle of nowhere, so you try to keep as many things open as you can,” Rasmusan said.

Outside, he switched out a poster for “Despicable Me 4” with one for “Deadpool & Wolverine.” “Twisters” stayed up.

***

Downtown may go quiet, but overnight, Glasgow stays awake, industriously.

The trains keep hauling. Mayor Rod Karst said he picked up a part-time gig working a graveyard shift at the Albertsons bakery. Bob Loewen’s wife works there too. And he wakes up early — 2:30 a.m. — but not to work.

He leaves the house at 3:30 a.m. and walks for hours, something he has embraced after surviving open heart surgery and other health issues.

“I’m trying to build back up,” Loewen said.

Just before 5:30 a.m., he passed the old Albertsons, then the new one, wearing a “Middle of Nowhere” T-shirt.

Downtown, D&G Sports & Western makes shirts like this one, printing the slogan within a cutout of Montana — though this early in the morning, the store hadn’t opened yet.

The sun peeked over the clouds that hung low on the horizon, illuminating their edges with an orange glaze. Soon it would send its beams through the windows at Toodie’s Cafe, kitty-corner from D&G.

There, Mark Berger cooks up dishes like the Hi-Line Classic, an egg-based breakfast platter named for the railroad line spanning northern Montana. He grew up in Glasgow, lived on the urban West Coast and moved back a couple years ago.

At 7 a.m., Zak Peterson and Pete Helland walked in, one after the other. The two men serve on the board of the Elks Lodge, which rents the space to Toodie’s Cafe. They want to support the cafe, so they go every Friday morning.

Peterson’s order varies with the specials, but Helland usually gets a Hi-Line Classic.

“It’s a really good breakfast,” Helland said. “Mark is a hometown kid.”

Berger said he got “burned out” living in a larger city. He took his culinary skills back home and opened the cafe, and now he prizes the “luxury and a privilege to live so isolated.”

Later that morning at the Valley County Pioneer Museum, Leta Godwin puzzled over whether pioneers still live in Glasgow. “I guess,” she resolved. After all, this museum records the ups and downs of the town’s past. In front, a T-33 trainer jet stands tall, reminding Glasgow of an Air Force base that was.

But earlier at Toodie’s Cafe, Berger saw a sunny future for the middle of nowhere.

“I have a really good, solid group of friends that have all moved back here,” he said. They’re building a skate park and boosting events downtown.

Then he went back to cook.

Puffy clouds had given way to the Big Sky, innocently this time.