Historian icon Historian

Harry Fritz

Harry W. Fritz is Professor of History and Chairman of the Department of History at The University of Montana in Missoula. He graduated from Missoula County High School in 1956, and attended Dartmouth College (A.B. 1960), The University of Montana (M.A. 1962), and Washington University in St. Louis (Ph.D. 1971). Professor Fritz teaches courses in early American history, American military history, and Montana history.

He has been UM’s Teacher of the Year (1972 and 1999) and the Carnegie Foundation’s Montana Professor of the Year (2004). In 1985 he was a UM’s Distinguished Service Award winner and in 2003 he received the Governor’s Humanities Award in the Humanities. He has written and lectured widely on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He is the author of The Lewis and Clark Expedition (Greenwood 2004), Montana: Land of Contrast (1984; rev. ed., 2001), and co-editor of Montana and the West (1984), The Montana Heritage (1992), and The Montana Legacy (2002). In 1985 and 1987 he served in the Montana House of Representatives, and in 1991 and 1993 in the Montana Senate.