New this winter · Winter 2026-27
Road Trips Winter Edition: The Flathead. A guide to doing winter on the Flathead and Glacier's west side, the mountain, the trails, the warm-up spots and the places to stay, bound into the Winter issue of Distinctly Montana and carried to readers in every corner of the state.
The story gives people a reason to come up for a winter weekend. The listing tells them who to call.
The section has a fixed number of pages, so it has a fixed number of places.
Every placement comes with free enhanced digital content on Digital Road Trips, the interactive edition built for the phone in a jacket pocket. A $150 to $2,495 value, included.
It stays the active Road Trip for the Flathead for at least 12 months, and we promote it to our audience for at least 12 months.
One time only. Road Trips goes to a different part of Montana every issue, and we don't know when it will be back to the Flathead. Reserve by November 15, when we begin finalizing layout before Thanksgiving.
See the Winter EditionA mission cook's 58 murals. A town that picked itself up and walked to Kalispell. A cabin with a stranger story than the man who built it. Here is what Montana will be reading this winter, and where your business fits.
Seven pieces so far, with more to come as the issue closes. Bylines and titles are working versions.
Stand-in photo: Loren T. Vine, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
By Nick Mitchell
In 1904 and 1905, Brother Joseph Carignano, a self-taught Italian Jesuit lay brother who came to the mission as a cook and handyman, painted 58 murals inside the Mission Church of St. Ignatius on the Flathead Reservation. The piece follows Carignano and the murals, and what the church has meant to the Salish and Kootenai communities across more than a century.
Stand-in photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Ross Peterson
In the late 1880s Demersville was the head of steamboat navigation on the Flathead River. When the Great Northern chose a route two miles north in 1891, the town did not die. It jacked up its buildings, loaded them onto rollers and hauled them to Kalispell, where parts of it still stand.
Stand-in photo: Evan Swigart, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Sherman Cahill · Working title
Montana has roughly ten wineries, working inside a liquor licensing system written before small producers existed. The piece follows the Montana Grape and Wine Association, led by Dan Murphy of White Raven Winery in Columbia Falls, through the same fight breweries and distilleries have had with the state's taverns, and treats both sides as small operators protecting what they built.
Stand-in photo: Unknown maker, 1886, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Lindsay Tran
Read a quilt closely and you learn what a family could afford, what they wore out, what a mother saved for a daughter. The piece reads Montana quilts as a record of the women who made them, drawing on the state's quilt archives and the quilters keeping the tradition alive.
Stand-in photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Joseph Shelton
Told as a fairy tale, with the cabin as its hero: a 10-by-12 plywood shack built outside Lincoln, hauled away in the dark in 1997, nearly cut up for a magazine stunt, displayed at the Newseum for eleven years and now locked in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Its builder stays mostly offstage.
Stand-in photo: Chevsapher, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Charlie Denison
At 116 N. Broadway in downtown Billings, behind a bookcase with a Prohibition-era iron gate, is a speakeasy named for Robert Dana Harper, who practiced medicine in Sidney for 41 years and delivered more than 3,000 babies. His son opened the bar; the guest book by the door fills with notes from Richland County.
Stand-in photo: Erika Williams, U.S. Forest Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Gary Shelton
Our humor columnist returns with another dispatch from ranch and small-town Montana, in his usual dry, affectionate voice.
First, the fit that holds for every issue. Then a few natural fits drawn from the places and subjects in this issue's stories. They are ideas to start a conversation, not placements. Where an ad runs is something our sales team works out with you.
Distinctly Montana readers actually read the magazine, and they appreciate the ads in it. Readers tell us they go looking for the businesses they find in these pages. Whatever you do and wherever you are in Montana, if you want an engaged, responsive audience, this winter issue is good for you.
Lodging, dining, ski shops, outfitters, spas and guides from Whitefish and Bigfork to West Glacier and Essex.
Reads with Road Trips Winter Edition, Demersville and the wine storyBusinesses in St. Ignatius, Ronan, Polson and along the Highway 93 corridor.
Reads with The Sacred Art of St. IgnatiusDowntown Kalispell businesses and anyone who trades on the town's history.
Reads with DemersvilleFabric, quilt and craft shops, guilds, museums and galleries.
Reads with Pieced TogetherDowntown Billings restaurants, shops and venues, and businesses in Sidney and Richland County.
Reads with Doc Harper'sMontana wineries, breweries, distilleries, wine shops and restaurants.
Reads with the wine storyRanch supply and small-town businesses.
Reads with Old Broke RancherAd artwork for the Winter issue is due November 15. Print ads start at $645 an issue. Veteran-owned businesses take 17.76% off every rate; non-profits take 15% off.
Rather talk it through? Call 406-600-7660.
Rates, dates, who reads it, all in one PDF. Takes ten seconds.
Our sales team calls within one business day to say hello and answer questions. No drip campaigns, no sequences.
Print copies and digital subscribers: Distinctly Montana Media Kit 2026, page 1. Followers: Facebook and Instagram combined, September 2026. Website visits: Google Analytics, distinctlymontana.com, September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026.
Pair a print ad with our digital channels, or run them on their own.
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