{"id":29962,"date":"2020-09-30T09:05:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T14:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jolenephilo.com\/staging\/?p=29962"},"modified":"2020-09-30T09:46:40","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T14:46:40","slug":"ekalaka-montana-the-first-town-over-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jolenephilo.com\/staging\/ekalaka-montana-the-first-town-over-the-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Ekalaka, Montana: The First Town Over the Border"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ekalaka is the first town west of Camp Crook, the town upon which See Jane Run!<\/em> and the rest of the Tipperary County Mystery series is based. I snickered when I first heard the town’s name because, I mean really, who names their town something that sounds like a cheerleading chant.<\/p>\n

Ekalaka, Ekalaka, shish boom bah!<\/em><\/p>\n

Someone mentioned that Ekalaka was named after an Indian princess. An interesting factoid to toss around, but that was all to a young college graduate who was pretty sure she knew everything. Before life broadened her lens and took her down a peg or two.<\/p>\n

In June of 2007 a fellow writer, who had once lived in Ekalaka, and I visited the tiny western towns where we had once lived. We toured Ekalaka’s museum, which was amazing for a county seat which boasts a population of 369. The museum even has a complete stegosaurus skeleton. More on that in another post.<\/p>\n

The exhibit about Ijkalaka Eagle Man, the town’s namesake, took the older and wiser me down a few more pegs. Like twenty. Or a hundred. Or a thousand. When I read the plaque under Ekalaka’s portrait, I thought of the changes she experienced\u2013moving from a Native American upbringing to life on a ranch to her marriage.<\/p>\n

How did she navigate those changes? What was it like to see her way of life obliterated? How did it feel to learn you were worth eight horses and a hundred pounds of sugar?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Those are questions I’d love to explore and answer in a novel. Maybe once the Tipperary County mysteries have run their course. The wonderful thing about fiction is that once the research about a time period and place is done, imagination and life experience can fill in the gaps. They can answer the question that’s niggled at me since I read the plaque in the museum: What it was about Ekalaka that led white settlers to name a town after her? In my book, that’s a question worth answering and a story worth writing.<\/p>\n

Eklalaka. It’s a wonderful name for a town.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sign up to receive website updates and See Jane Run! book news on\u00a0Gravel Road\u2019s home page<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0right under the picture of\u2013you guessed it\u2013the gravel road.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ekalaka is the first town west of Camp Crook, the town upon which See Jane Run! and the rest of the Tipperary County Mystery series is based. I snickered when I first heard the town’s name because, I mean really, who names their town something that sounds like a cheerleading chant. Ekalaka, Ekalaka, shish boom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEkalaka, Montana: The First Town Over the Border - Jolene Philo Staging<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ekalaka, Montana: The First Town Over the Border - Jolene Philo Staging\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ekalaka is the first town west of Camp Crook, the town upon which See Jane Run! and the rest of the Tipperary County Mystery series is based. 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