The last best battle

Baucus bill would protect the popular Montana phrase — once and for all

By RICHARD HANNERS / Whitefish Pilot

The battle for preserving the last best place continues — but it's not a battle over coal, timber or subdivisions. It's a battle over words.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee recently passed Sen. Max Baucus' measure to keep the phrase "The Last Best Place" from being trademarked.

Baucus included language in a Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriation bill that would prohibit the slogan "Last Best Place" from being trademarked.

"I'm going to do whatever it takes to protect the phrase - 'Last Best Place,'" Baucus said. "There is no way I'm going to stand by and let someone gain the rights to it. That's like trying to take the term 'Big Sky Country' or 'Treasure State.' It won't fly with folks around our state, and it won't fly with me."

The battle over the trademark has been ongoing since 2002, when Nevada businessman David Lipson tried to gain exclusive rights to the term for his exclusive Paw's Up lodge in the Blackfoot River Valley.

Former Sen. Conrad Burns tried to prevent the trademarking, but he was unsuccessful at securing protection for the popular saying after a series of court decisions deemed the language invalid.

In a press release, Baucus staff said he worked with legal counsel, crafting the proposal to comply with the court ruling while still preventing the phrase from being trademarked. His provision would prohibit the U.S. Department of Commerce from spending funds to approve the trademark — effectively killing the request.

"'The Last Best Place' is a phrase that belongs to all Montanans, to describe the place they call home," Sen. Jon Tester said in supporting Baucus' measure. "It isn't a trademark."

Most Montanans are familiar with the phrase after it was used for the title of a hefty, door-stopping anthology of Montana writers that was assembled in 1988 by Missoula writers William Kittredge and Annick Smith.

But Whitefish writer and wildlife biologist Douglas Chadwick claims he first used the phrase on page 186 of his 1983 book on mountain goats, "A Beast The Color Of Winter," where he warned about the use of explosives in seismic explorations for oil and gas in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Lipson's attempt to trademark the popular phrase was not the first time Montanans found their literary traditions treated like any other natural resource — seized for a profit. The most egregious example came in the early 1990s when French designer Claude Montana unsuccessfully laid claim to the state's very name itself.