Utica is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in west-central

Judith Basin County Judith Basin County is a county in the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,023. Its county seat is the town of Stanford. History Judith Basin County was formed of area taken from western Fergus and eastern Casc ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

, United States. It is approximately from Lewistown at the intersections of Pig Eye Road, Montana Route 239 (the "Utica highway"), and Montana Route 541.

Yogo sapphire Yogo sapphires are blue sapphires, a colored variety of corundum, found in Montana, primarily in Yogo Gulch (part of the Little Belt Mountains) in Judith Basin County, Montana. Yogo sapphires are typically cornflower blue, a result of trace amou ...

s were found near Utica in the mid-1890s. Judith River Ranger Station is near town. The town itself now consists only of a church and a museum, plus a few houses.

Notable residents

One of Utica's most famous local residents was the western painter

C.M. Russell Charles Marion Russell (March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an American artist of the American Old West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans, ...

, who at the time was a young cowhand hired by a local rancher and gold miner named Jake Hoover. Russell stated that he learned most of his frontier skills from Hoover, and the two men remained lifelong friends. He featured Utica in the 1907 painting ''A Quiet Day In Utica'', which was originally known as ''Tinning a Dog''. Hoover; local businesswoman Mollie Ringold, a former slave; store owner Charles Lehman and Russell himself are all depicted in the painting, seen standing between the hitching post and door of the general store.

Demographics

References

External links

Utica Museum
Unincorporated communities in Judith Basin County, Montana Unincorporated communities in Montana {{JudithBasinCountyMT-geo-stub