Just call them the hills

One thing that gets many people riled up is the name of the mountain range that sits just south of Havre. Favored names seem to be the Bear Paw Mountains, the Bears Paw Mountains, the Bear Paws, and the Bear's Paw Mountains.

Most interesting is that whichever way people prefer the name to be, they are most adamant about it. In fact, arguments about the name of the mountains have caused at least a couple of barroom brawls in Havre through the years.

In the late 1950s, Northern Montana College President Lou Brockmann asked Bill Pecora to research the way the mountains got their name in the first...