As is well known, emigrants from all parts of Montenegro, and those in the immediate vicinity, at the beginning of the last century left en masse for the USA and, in search of better living conditions, settled all over the "promised land". Most of them worked in mines in Montana, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, California, Nevada, Colorado, etc. The largest colonies of our emigrants were in Montana. One such colony, which like most of them existed near the mines, was located on Bear Creek not far from Rad Lodge. During its heyday, the mining company there employed a large number of our emigrants, mostly from the area around Niksic, Krivosi, Podlovce Montenegro and eastern Herzegovina. Many of these settlements, such as Bear Creek, were abandoned immediately after the ore reserves were exhausted, so that today the presence of Montenegrin emigrants in those distant regions is mostly evidenced by lonely tombs and inscriptions on them. They tell us about the incredible cruelty of life in these remote parts of the new world at the time of immigration, about nostalgia, about loneliness... The miners' lifespan was very short. Many died during the work, others died of tuberculosis or the notorious mining disease silicosis, and the mortality among children born in temporary mining settlements was even higher. Among the members of the second generation of Montenegrin emigrants who were born in such settlements, was the recently deceased famous American publisher William Jovanovich, owner of the Brace Jovanovich publishing house. Members of the second generation painstakingly built their way to success in a country far from their parents' homeland, which they rarely had time to even dream about. In the old days, those who were not frightened by the communist system that had taken over their parents' house in the meantime, headed towards Montenegro, that small and wonderful country that they knew only from stories and lullabies from their earliest childhood. We recommend the link: In 1988, Bill and Corky Knebel compiled the data found on the page featuring pictures from the Bear Creek Mining Cemetery. The pictures were collected for the book Margaret Reed Reynolds Carbon County-Montana Cemetery Records, which was published in over 200 pages in memory of the Montenegrins and all other pioneers who never returned to their homes. Gordan Stojović Montenegro.com