Dec. 28--It was anything but a-business-as-usual 2008 across the United States, indeed the world.

Against a bleak national canvas of home foreclosures, layoffs, Wall Street Ponzi schemes and bailouts and $2 trillion in losses to Americans' retirement accounts, even Montanans felt the chill economic winds.

Yet this area was lucky, faring far better economically than other regions, which enjoyed escalating real estate values and then got hammered when the subprime mortgage market collapsed.

One of the largest heavy construction projects in Eastern Montana in memory finally got under way. After two decades of inactivity, a massive railroad project to move remote Bull Mountain coal to market got funded and is keeping workers from Roundup to Broadview busy. Boich Cos. and FirstEnergy Corp. of Ohio purchased the coalmine project, renamed Signal Peak Energy, and promised to invest $450 million in Montana.

Also, Crow tribal leaders joined Gov. Brian Schweitzer in announcing a major coal project with the Australian-American Energy Company LLC to develop the reservation's vast coal reserves.

TransCanada announced plans to build an underground pipeline to carry Canadian crude to the Texas coast and to invest $1 billion in the Eastern Montana portion.

However, the worldwide recession unexpectedly curbed hot demand for commodities, including metals. Sharp price drops and other factors led many mining companies, including Montana's Stillwater Mining Co., to restructure operations. In November, Stillwater announced it was cutting its work force by 21 percent and temporarily stopped mining platinum and palladium at the East Boulder site. The mine south of Big Timber reopened a week later with a much smaller work force.

In Billings, even though residential housing sales fell 17 percent through November, the average home price rose slightly to $208,022.

And commercial construction in the Billings area was relatively robust with the Shiloh Crossing shopping center opening, a complex that houses a Kohl's department store and in May will have a 14-screen movie complex. Sportsman's Warehouse opened at Pierce Parkway in August. And Cabela's restarted its postponed store off of South Billings Boulevard. These are the first Montana stores for both Cabela's and Kohl's.

The city of Billings building permits showed that all types of new construction grew $3.9 million to nearly $237 million through November, compared with the first 11 months of 2007.