Robert Vaughn

Born in Wales in 1836, he emigrated to the United States and became an important figure in early Montana as a rancher, farmer, and businessman. He is closely associated with the Sun River valley, and the town of Vaughn, Montana, was named after him.

He is best remembered by readers for Then and Now; or, Thirty-Six Years in the Rockies, a memoir drawn from his years in the region. The book looks back on Montana's pioneer period through personal reminiscence, describing travel, settlement, hardship, and conflict as the territory changed over the second half of the nineteenth century.

That mix of practical frontier experience and storytelling gives his work its appeal today. Rather than writing as a distant historian, he wrote as someone who had lived through the events he described, which makes his account especially lively for listeners interested in Western history and early Montana.