Maddie McCuddy
First Place
University of Montana
$3,000 Scholarship
Caiden Gray, a broncs rider from Miles City, MT, gets kicked by his bronc at the Missoula Stampede Rodeo at the Missoula Fairgrounds on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025.
Maria Pacheco and her daughter comfort each other while speaking to the press, following her husband's hearing at the Russel Smith Federal Courthouse in Missoula, MT, on July 10, 2025. Christopher Martinez Marvan, husband to Pacheco, had been detained by ICE agents in Helena the previous week after he was mistaken for another man. He saw his family for the first time since he was arrested during the hearing.
Diann Yoder, 29, joins a game of softball with the older kids outside their two-room schoolhouse in Mays Lick, KY on Oct. 23. The Yoder family, an Old Order Amish Family, is one of about 50 in Mays Lick, in a community that has been growing since 2004. The school was recently built, separating children anywhere between kindergarten and high school, into two age groups.
John Rimel shovels spent grain, donated by Kettle House Brewing, to feed his cattle on his cattle ranch in the upper south hills of Missoula, Montana on July 30, 2025. The Rimel Ranch, a 160-acre ranch in the South Hills up Pattee Canyon, was originally bought in 1955, and Rimel has watched the hills change around him his entire life. Although he has been facing urban pressures for decades, having a conservation agreement through Five Valley Land Trust has put the question of development out of the question. This allows for the protection of the land that he owns, but still expects to see new homes pop up around him in the future.
Greg Nowak, 78, sits in his apartment in Missoula, MT on October 1, 2025. Nowak is Montana's only Grandmaster chess player. A self-described "sociable Christian loner," Nowak spends most days playing chess alone at different coffee shops, teaching students, and studying previous games of other Grandmasters. Although Nowak has no family left, chess itself feels like company and has given his life purpose and control.
Artists and traveling singers come together around a campfire to play guitar during the last night at the Old Salt Festival in Helmsville, MT on June 21, 2025. The festival is a celebration of the spirit of land stewardship in the West, blending country music, wood-fired cooking, and community.

