Grain elevators not only record the industrialization of plains agriculture; they also show you places–where the railroad left a siding and some sort of town, mostly gone now, took root over 100 years ago. Kevin is in northern Toole County, maybe 20 minutes south of the Canadian border. This lone elevator documents its homesteading era, that with the bust of the 1920s gave way to a boom in oil production in the middle decades of the 20th century. several oil tanks still remain from that era.
Kevin, Toole County, Montana
Kevin is the outlier–the rural grain elevators of Toole County record places that were once large agricultural communities, and have not been in population decline for decades. But elevators, both from the early days and from more modern times, remain as the sentinels of Toole County.
At Devon, Toole County, the elevators face U.S. Highway 2 and the tracks of the Great Northern Railway, now the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. I wonder if you can see them from the Sweet Grass Hills. some 30 miles to the north.More recent metal grain silos surround the older grain elevator at Dunkirk, a land-locked place surrounded by grain fields for as far as the eyes can see. Galata, on the eastern end of Toole County, captures the fundamental nature of the Hi-Line landscape–bands of steel on raised roadbeds, dotted here and there by tall grain elevators and the spare building or two.
The City Cemetery is one of Missoula’s oldest extant public properties, if not the oldest since it dates with a year of the arrival of the tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the early 1880s. Recent news stories have spoken of surplus land and new development. I hope that as those plans for change are implemented that city officials also consider listing the cemetery in the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of the most interesting public cemeteries I have encountered in Montana. The cemetery also meets the criteria for eligibility of the National Register.
One of the best ways to document a cemetery for the National Register is to explore its historical significance. In the case of the Missoula cemetery, it dates to c. 1883-1884 as a public institution and represents an important way that early town officials began to build the public infrastructure for the city to come. Also the cemetery has several important markers that commemorative key groups and events in local history.
For example, this section of early graves of the Montana Pioneers at the cemetery, marked initially by the large cross, has been memorialized by a recent (1982) commemorative tablet.
This large obelisk marker dates to 1919 and refers to the effort of a once large and significant women-led group, the Women’s Relief Corps, who initially led the commemoration of Union dead from the Civil War, as an auxiliary organization to the Grand Army of the Republic. The WRC stayed active through the Spanish-American War and World War I and this marker recognizes veterans from all of those conflicts.
Fraternal organizations were very important in Missoula’s late nineteenth and early twentieth century history. Their membership is well represented throughout the cemetery; here are images of the Order of the Eastern Star and then a strategically placed Masonic monument at one of the cemetery’s crossroads.
The image above speaks to the cemetery’s overall design, a reflection of the mid-nineteenth century Rural Cemetery Movement, which perceived a well designed cemetery serving almost like a city park, with curvilinear drives, landscaped grounds, and lots of ornamental plantings, from boxwoods to large, expressive trees. The Missoula City Cemetery, as the next images show, has all of the traits of a Rural Cemetery Movement property.
These images speak to the cemetery’s architectural significance, another point of emphasis for a National Register nomination. The cemetery has several elaborate grave markers, a virtual sculpture garden that also speaks to the city’s artistic expressions.
Yet as the image directly above suggests, the cemetery also represents the community and many of its grave markers are small and largely unadorned, reflective of a working to middle-class centered place as Missoula was for so much of its first 75 years.
Nestled as it is south of the Northern Pacific mainline, the cemetery is a relaxing but noisy environment at many times. Let’s hope that its new future reflects the importance of its past and this urban cemetery is not surrounded by high-rise buildings and development that transforms what has been an urban oasis for over 130 years into a mere dead end.
These images speak to the cemetery’s architectural significance, another point of emphasis for a National Register nomination. The cemetery has several elaborate grave markers, a virtual sculpture garden that also speaks to the city’s artistic expressions.
Montana's Historic Landscapes 