During the 1984 survey of Montana for the state historic preservation plan even I realized that the small rectangular building with a stylized Art Deco entrance outside of Livingston on old US 10 was a special, unique place. By that time the interstate highway bypassed the landmark, and over the next 30 years it slowly began to deteriorate.
The station in 1990KPRK c. 2013Restoration summer 2025
But in 2025 good news abounds for this modernist landmark. Not only is restoration underway, there is a neat bike/pedestrian trail that takes you to the station, and along the way from the east is a beautiful view of the Yellowstone River.
In 1947 Paul McAdam had taken the chance to build the station, one of the first in Montana after World War II. William Fox of Missoula was the architect. Even though the Art Deco style was dated by 1947, it was a perfect choice as time has proven.
Here’s to the successful completion of the restoration, giving this building new life in the 21st century.
Repeat visitors to this blog about historic places in Montana quickly see that the focus is very much on the era of 1860 to 1960. But I have taken time to also record the modern past. This brief detour into northeast Montana (Roosevelt, Sheridan and Daniels counties) shares commercial, public, and religious buildings from the late 20th and early 21st century.
The Montana State Bank (now in 2024 the Bank of Plentywood) in Plentywood has its business roots in earlier bank in the railroad town of Reserve. Its echoing of classical columns in a modern setting makes it my favorite modern style bank in the region.
Not far behind is the Independence Bank in Scobey, built in 1972. After the First Security bank of Havre acquired the bank in 1998 it changed the name to Independence in 2000.
The store is now closed.The store front has changed since this image from 2013
Colorful metal sheathing over old storefronts helped owners update their businesses from the 1960s into the 1980s, enabling downtown locations seem more like shopping centers. The top example is from Plentywood while the bottom, Bryan’s, is from Wolf Point.
The Perkulator coffee shop is still going strong on U.S. Highway 2 in Poplar. Highly recommended!
The design of U.S. post offices moved away from the preference for Colonial Revival styles in the first half of the 20th century and embraced a modern look as shown in Culbertson (top) and Scobey (bottom).
The Roosevelt County office building in Culbertson continued with modem styling into the 21st century. Staying in Roosevelt County new schools for Culbertson and Bainville in the early 21st century also shared contemporary styling. Bainville school
Fort Peck Community College in Poplar has significantly expanded its campus after achieving accreditation in 1991 and the gaining land-grant status in 1994.
Lutheran churches in Plentywood and Wolf Point are also modern landmarks. Plentywood Lutheran ELCA dates to c. 1957-1960 while the Trinity Lutheran Church is a late 19th century congregation that worships in a 1960s building.
Plentywood Lutheran Plentywood Lutheran ELCATrinity Lutheran in Plentywood Trinity Lutheran in Plentywood
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, a 19th century congregation, in Wolf point ends our regional tour of Montana modernism. the building reflects the diocesan decision to build contemporary style churches in towns large and small through eastern Montana in the 1950s and 1960s.
News out of Helena this week is that the historic Manlove homestead has been tagged and within days will be dismantled and placed into storage.
A landmark along U.S. Highway 287 for decades, the log building records the early homesteading era in the Prickley Pear Valley of Lewis and Clark County.
Manlove homestead in 1984
Its core dates c. 1864 but it has been moved to this roadside spot in the 20th century. It rarely has received the attention it had earned and now you wonder, due to the ever expanding sprawl of Helena and environs, if the cabin will ever see the light of day again. Once dismantled too many buildings stay that way.
Dillon is one of my favorite towns in western Montana, and a big reason why is the university. It’s a beautiful campus, donated by the Gothic Revival style of Main Hall (1895-1897), designed by John C. Paulsen.
I’m a huge fan of Paulsen’s with across late 19th century Montana and Main Hall of what was originally the Montana State Normal School is one of his best designs.
With the homesteading boom of the early 20th century, the college began to expand. Its name changed to the Montana State Normal College in 1903, and soon thereafter the one huge building was not enough. The state made the first addition in 1907, which included an auditorium.
Soon another building was added and a long rectangular, quasi Craftsman style wing was built to hold more classrooms. if I read the internet sources correctly, Billings architect Charles S. Haire was the designer, but the completion of the building was delayed by a constitutional challenge to its funding.
The university art museum ended up in this wing
Despite the funding controversy, the college continued to grow from 780 students in 1910 to about 1800 in 1920.
Matthews Hall, a classically inspired, yellow-brick building, was a residence hall constructed to help meet women student enrollment in 1919. The dining hall in a more Colonial Revival style came along a couple of years later in 1921.
With the construction of a new gymnasium and classroom building (later Business and Technology) in 1924, the first generation of growth at State Normal College came to an end.
The modern era introduced an entirely new architectural vocabulary to the college. The college became Montana State Teachers College in 1931 and then Western Montana College of Education in 1949. The student union building dates to that era and was built in 1958.
Once the institution became Western Montana College in 1965 and started to expand its curriculum, new buildings were a must. The James Short Center and the Lucy Carson Library came in 1969.
Short CenterCarson Library
Then in 1971 came my favorite, Block Hall. Named for science professor Daniel G. Block, the building gave the college modern labs and led to expansion in the college’s environmental studies program.
In 1988 the college again changed names to Western Montana College of the University of Montana and with the turn of the 21st century it changed for perhaps the final time as the University of Montana Western. Two buildings belong to this past generation of development, the Bulldog Athletic and Recreation center and the Swysgood Technology Center, finished in 2001.
BARC buildingSwysgood Center
One other building joined the campus before the end of the twentieth century, and did so in a very roundabout way. Edward and Effie Roe established a large ranch in the Clark canyon area of Beaverhead County. They built a two-story Colonial Revival ranch house. By the 1990s no one lived in the house but media baron Ted Turner owned the ranch. He gave it to the college if the college would move it—28 miles to Dillon. The move took place in 1998 and then the college restored it as offices, with further donations from the Roe family.
The Montana Western campus is a jewel in the state’s public architecture. Dillon is so lucky to have to be its home.
As readers of the blog know, the Shields River Valley is one of my favorite places in Montana. A good place to start any exploration is the village Wilsall, which, from my perspective, is close to a lot of larger towns and population but, then, also thrives quite well in its own.
The town’s past lies with the cattle ranch of Will and Sally Jordan—thus the same Wilsall—and the building of a spur line by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1909, and the homesteading boom in northern Park County. The historic grain elevator is one potent reminder of both the railroad and homesteading. The tracks ran to the west of the present US 89 highway.
By 1910, the place had a post office; a modern one stands along the highway while an older one is attached to the mercantile building.
Soon the town’s primary crossroads at Elliot and Clark streets was defined by an impressive classical style bank on the west side and a large brick mercantile store on the east side.
The Bank Bar in fact has recently been in the news because, guess what, national media has again “discovered” a great Montana eatery—
something that locals have known about for years. Maybe the review will get more people to slow down a bit and look around.
The stop is worth it, not just for a cold brew and perfect burger, but for the town’s Crazy Little Museum (also called the former Norwegian Embassy). It’s always refreshing when a place has a good perspective on itself and honors a person like Bob Tomasko who did a lot for the town before his death in 2012.
Historic community buildings survive such as the school from the 1910s, now boarded up.
And the town community hall, which remains in use even as the population has dwindled from 237 in 2000 to under 200 in 2020.
US Highway 89 is one of my favorite north-south routes in Montana stretching into Wyoming. I always look forward to my next visit to Wilsall.
Montana Highway 16 stretches north from U.S. Highway 2 following a spur line of the Great Northern Railway laid about 1910. Following that railroad corridor first brought me to Medicine Lake, the actual lake and town of that name in February 1984.
Great Northern depot in 1984
When I returned over thirty years later, the depot was gone, but the lake and town were doing ok.
Depot is gone today
Medicine Lake is a very important place in northeast Montana and the 8,000 + acre lake has been protected as a National Wildlife Refuge since 1935.
Medicine Lake NWRMedicine Lake NWR
Native Americans for centuries visited and hunted here, as hundreds of tipi rings along the lake bluffs documented. The lake remains a touchstone for several tribes today.
Medicine Lake, MT
The town is much more recent, established by the railroad in 1910, with the iconic Club Hotel and Bar in business within a year.
I have stopped at the Club Bar where the old neon sign was a bit weathered but hospitality was everywhere. Don’t know about the hotel—maybe rooms was still used during the hunting season.
The Medicine Lake K-12 school keeps the town of about 250 people together but since my last visit the school lost its distinctive mascot name of The Honkers. For sports the school has merged with Froid and took us nickname of Red-Hawks. Did that mean that town gathering spot would change its name from the Honker Pit? Absolutely not. Great place!
Medicine Lake, the town, has several buildings from its first generation of settlement, including a corner gas station (adapted into a new business) and classic false-front one-story commercial buildings, including a lumber business and a hardware store.
Yet a dwindling population has hurt the business core. For 40 years between 1940 and 1980 the town’s population stayed around 400. The next 40 years witnessed a decline—and in a small town a loss of 150 people can really hurt.
But the town began a slight rebound in population in between 2010 and 2020, with some of it fueled by fracking man-camps
The bones of an early 20th century homestead town are still there. I hope to visit again and see new changes in 2025.
The Missoulian a few days ago had a splendid article about the demonstration of a beaverslide hay stacker at the Grant-Kohrs National Historic Site in Deer Lodge.
Grant Kohrs Ranch
The Deer Lodge Valley is a good place to find these ingenious machines, invented in the early years of the 20th century. Indeed in my 1984 work on the state historic preservation plan I encountered my first beaverslide near Galen, as shown below.
Near Galen, 1984
But to see the biggest concentration go to the Big Hole Valley in Beaverhead County. They were invented there in 1908. It takes two teams of horses to pull the hay up the slide and then drop it into the squarish pen, creating the hay stack.
Just outside of Wisdom Two beaverslides along highway 278
You can find great examples along the county’s historic roads.
Lemhi RoadBannock Pass Road
Powell County along the Blackfoot also has a scattering of the hay stackers.
Orphir Creek Road, Powell County Orphir Creek Road, Powell County A marker along US highway 12 interprets the region’s hay stackers
40 years ago I was certain that the beaverslides were not long for this world. Several folks at community meetings spoke of how many had disappeared. Yet ranch families were not ready to let them go, for tradition’s sake and the fact that loose stacked hay keeps better than modern machine baled hay. Beaverslide hay stackers remain part of the rural landscape of western Montana.
I last visited Whitetail ten years ago. Established along the Canadian-based Soo Railroad line a century earlier, the town was in a free fall, from a height of 500 c. 1920 to a handful of families in 2010. Then the Canadian, then the U.S. government closed the border crossing between 2011 and 2013. Now the town is down to a population of nine in 2020. God bless those still there, doing what they can.
The school building tells much of the story. Built when hopes for the town were high in the 1920s, it’s two-story height and bell cupola made it a landmark in the flat open terrain. I hope when I visit next, the school is there, a silent statement of the dreams with which our high plains were settled.
Secure in its concrete base, the old school bell, removed 50 years ago, is still there to ring, or so I can hope.
The community church, still a gathering place or has it gone the way of the Catholic Church, moved to the Daniels County Museum in Scobey?
Grain Company BuildingGas station and Garage, 2013Abandoned businesses, 2013A metal facade and open door marked what was left of the Whitetail Theater.
Businesses were largely gone ten years ago. But the post office and grain elevators remained. I bet the elevators are still there serving ranch families but you wonder about the post office.
Whitetail in Montana’s northeast corner is as far removed from Whitefish in Montana’s northwest corner as two places could ever be. They both began as railroad towns. One didn’t make it; the other thrives.
Abandoned home at Whitetail
But what’s been lost at Whitetail tells as much about history as what has been gained in Whitefish. You cannot understand Montana history without both.
In doing the photography for the 1984-85 survey for the State Historic Preservation Office, everything was in Black and White, both for the stability of black and white negatives but also for the cost—color slides were expensive. Thirty plus years later, it’s totally different. Everything is digital and only a few places will even process black and white film.
But I have continued to take a few rolls of black and white film on my recent work in Montana. Here are a few images to share.
The older US 2 route into Cut Bank features this wonderful piece of roadside sculpture. And back in 1984 the Glacier Gateway Inn was the place to stay.Frank Little Grave in Butte. The starkness and shadows of black and white film is perfect for cemetery work, as this famous grave at Mountain View Cemetery shows.The same is true for Anaconda’s historic cemetery. As I have said in earlier posts, this place is one of the state’s most compelling places. I can explore there all day long. Love the decorative iron work on the gate and entrance to the Knights section at AnacondaGhost towns from either the mining or homestead eras always leave buildings that just seem to say more in black and white. Here we are at Barber on US Highway 12 in central Montana.Abandoned schools that become lonely landmarks of hopes crushed: Buffalo, Montana
In 2024 I began to see media accounts, both regionally and nationally, of how Glasgow, the seat of Valley County, was the most isolated place you can imagine, truly in the Middle of nowhere.
Historic Great Northern Railroad corridor in Glasgow
I’m not one to argue with geographers and economists. I’m sure from their perspective, they got it right. But I never thought of Glasgow as isolated: it is on the Great Northern mainline, and part of the famed Empire Builder Amtrak route, and on U.S. Highway 2.
Great Northern depot, Glasgow
Then the town has always shown a great deal of pride and ambition, conveyed so effectively by its many historic buildings, starting with the First National Bank, built c. 1884 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
1st National Bank building, Glasgow
When you enter the town from the underpass of the railroad, the bank is the first landmark to catch your eye, appropriate too for the impact of local banks on a town’s economic prospects during the homesteading boom and bust of the 1910s and 1920s, respectively.
Rundle Hotel, during renovation in 2013
Another landmark from the homesteading era is the Rundle Building, once the Glasgow Hotel and restored in the last ten years as an upscale hotel in the heart of downtown. Built c. 1916 and designed by the important Billings firm of Link and Haire, the Rundle is a captivating statement of an Arts and Crafts-infused Mediterranean Revival style. I have been trying to get back to Glasgow to stay here for the last four years—maybe I will make it in 2025.
The 1930s transformed Valley County through the construction of the mammoth Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River. Glasgow too has a major New Deal landmark in its U.S. post office and courthouse, built c. 1939 and designed by federal architect Louis A. Simon.
Post office/federal courthouse, Glasgow
Its understated New Deal Deco exterior obscures a jewel of an interior, highlighted by its New Deal-funded 1942 mural depicting local history and the changes brought about by the Fort Peck Dam by artist Forest Hill. This building too is listed in the National Register.
Glasgow post office mural
Another important New Deal supported building was all about the community, and providing new opportunities: the Glasgow Civic Center. It too has a New Deal Deco style, and its large public space has been used for almost every type of event or gathering you can imagine.
Glasgow Civic Center
Glasgow’s sense of itself today still respects it past, brilliantly conveyed by its large and expansive museum. When I first visited Glasgow 40 years
Valley County Museum
ago, I held a public meeting on the state historic preservation plan here, and the next morning residents gave me a detailed tour of the recently established museum. I was impressed with its collection then, now it sprawls through the building to the adjoining grounds.
Veterans section of the museumThe high school band sectionLewis and Clark mural, 2095, by Jessie Henderson, a Chippewa/Cree artistThe back bar at saloon exhibit
Indeed, the saloon exhibit underscores another fun part of Glasgow—across from the depot in the original route of Highway 2 is an amazing collection of bars, stores, and eateries, right out of the early 1900s.
Glasgow bars at depot
But back to the museum, and its important Montana decorative arts collection of the work of modern craftsman Thomas Molesworth, once in the town’s Carnegie library.
The newer exterior exhibits led the museum to move entire building to the property, including examples of the homestead shacks of the early 1900s that were followed by permanent homes such as this white painted bungalow.
Representative ranch house from homesteading boom
Pride of place, pride of the past. Glasgow might be in the middle but it is far from being nowhere as this small sampling of properties demonstrates.
Montana's Historic Landscapes 