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Crane, Montana

census-designated place in Montana, United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ5790545 ↗
Source-derived summary

Crane is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Richland County, Montana, United States. As of the 2020 census, Crane had a population of 91. Crane has a post office with the ZIP code 59217. Montana Highway 16 passes through Crane.

The town was named for trapper Jimmy Crain when the post office opened in 1910.

Climate

According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Crane has a semi-arid climate, which is abbreviated as "BSk" on climate maps.

Editorial summary

“Crane, Montana” enters the record as census-designated place in Montana, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Crane, Montana and census-designated can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2020, 1910—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Crane, Montana and census-designated.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Crane, Montana” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Crane, Montana and census-designated provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5790545. Authority coordinates are 47.576, -104.262. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 1910.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Crane, Montana”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Crane, Montana primary sources, Crane, Montana archive and Crane research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Crane, Montana”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Crane, Montana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.