Red Lodge Cemetery, Carbon County, Montana

Posted on September 5, 2022 by carrollvanwest

As you leave downtown Red Lodge on Montana Highway 78 heading towards Roscoe, you find the Red Lodge Cemetery high on the bluffs overlooking the town, and not far from the gateway to the county fairgrounds. The cemetery is remarkable. A few years ago residents worked with the Montana State Historic Preservation Office to place the Red Lodge Communal Mausoleum, from the 1920s, in the National Register of Historic Places. The impressive Classical Revival styled building is certainly the centerpiece of the cemetery.

But as the grave markers in the front of the building document, the cemetery itself makes a powerful statement of the ethnic diversity of Red Lodge, especially during its coal mining era from the late 1880s into the middle of the 20th century. Twenty years ago Bonnie Christensen’s book on the ethnic groups who worked in and around Red Lodge, mostly in coal mines but not always, documented how local history went against the stereotypes of the mythic West. A walk through this cemetery, with grave markers from residents who came from the United Kingdom and Ireland or Central Europe or the Mediterranean and especially from Scandinavia, makes history books like that of Christensen become jarringly real.

Two of the more interesting markers bookend the mausoleum and mark the lives of immigrants from Italy who were also members, judging from the markers’ form and style, of the Woodmen of the World.

The mausoleum is not the only crypt. Located behind the mausoleum and facing the mountains to the west is the Powers grave house, built of concrete.

Scattered throughout are child grave markers from the early 20th century, perhaps none more poignant that the hand-scripted concrete marker for Angjelka Grubisic who died not even one year old in 1923.

The concentration of ethnic markers around the mausoleum and to the north of the building is the central pattern of the cemetery. But to the southwest of the mausoleum is the veterans section, marked by an American flag, which documents the long tradition of military service from the 20th century, and 21st century, residents of Red Lodge and Carbon County.

The veterans section in the center of the cemetery is a powerful reminder of what the United States is about. We are a nation of nations–here that reality is loud and clear–but when faced by the enemy, we bind together and sacrifice for the good of the country.

Finding new uses for old landmarks: lessons from Red Lodge

Posted on September 12, 2018 by carrollvanwest

In my Montana travels over the last two years, one of the most interesting, and potentially impactful, projects I encountered was in Red Lodge, where the Red Lodge Area Community Foundation is leading efforts to revitalize the historic Roosevelt School. When, earlier in the decade, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced its interest in the one-room and rural schools of the Treasure State, I worried somewhat that the larger historic schools in small towns and county seats might be forgotten. Red Lodge showed me that was not the case.

I attended a historic preservation conference there in the summer of 2016, where the Montana Preservation Alliance used the school’s historic gymnasium as the conference hall–a simple yet very effective conversion. Gyms had always been community gathering spots, for basketball obviously but also for all sorts of events. There is always a comfortable feel to these spaces.

My surprise came when we toured the building. I thought that due to the name Roosevelt, that the school had been yet another of the dozens of schools constructed in Montana during the “New Deal” of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the depression decade of the 1930s. Wrong–it was a 1921 building, named for former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was the champion of national parks and the open rugged west that Red Lodge was very much part of. Charles Suiter was the architect. He had twenty plus years earlier worked with the much more famous Montana architect John Paulsen as the contractor for the landmark Montana Hall at Montana State University in Bozeman.

So, the overall context for the school was different from what I had gathered in the past. Here was an early 1920s community statement by Red Lodge leaders–the homestead boom had already busted, and tough times were just ahead for Montanans but the community then felt it was time for a modern building, with well-lit interiors and well-placed blackboards that did not glare in the sunlight. And throughout the building there

were so many intact details from the time of construction–built-in storage spaces, private restroom stalls, when hallway clocks ticking down the minutes in a day–the place was like a time capsule.

And then there was the third floor masterpiece, the combination library and performance hall. Classical pilasters framed the stage and added touches of class and seriousness to the space. Here was a public building that spoke to community ambitions but also community pride.

Intimate spaces, classroom spaces, grand public spaces. The Roosevelt School meant too much to be left to the wrecking ball, and the progress the community foundation is making there is reassuring: once again smart, effective adaptive reuse can turn a building in a sustainable heritage asset for the town. It’s worth checking out, and supporting. And it is next door to one of the state’s amazing throwback 1960s roadside

experience, The Yodeler Motel, built in 1964. Step back in time but also look at the heritage-infused future of Red Lodge: a worthwhile stop indeed.

To those who built a state, and made history

Posted on July 25, 2017 by carrollvanwest

Sad news came out of the state capitol last week when budget cuts gave the Montana Historical Society no choice but to announce that its uber talented staff just don’t have the funding to travel to the hundreds of important places across the state, to gather stories, preserve historic buildings, conserve invaluable documents and photographs, and to celebrate with communities both large and small the history, traditions, and people that made Montana the special place it is.

It’s unfortunate when a state steps back from its past and thinks its future is better without it. When I look for those who built the state, the deep past is where I start, and the leaps forward in how Montana’s tribes are documenting and interpreting their history to their terms and needs, one of the most important developments in Montana’s heritage development over the last 30 plus years.

Then there are the properties that link the peoples of Montana and their sense of themselves and their past–cemeteries large and small across the state, where veterans are commemorated and families celebrated.

Fort Kipp Cemetery, above, is one of those place, nestled on the river bluffs overlooking the Missouri River. On a larger scale but still intimate, personal, and compelling is the city cemetery of Red Lodge, hundreds of miles away. Here surrounded by the mountains

are graves from the early Finnish residents who came to work at the coal mines and build a community. Some are of a traditional design, immediately translated from the old country. Others–like the cast iron family marker shown above–are as mainstream as American industry could make it at the turn of the twentieth century: a prefabricated marker cast somewhere back east but with Finnish lettering, speaking to those who also came over in c.1900 to build a new land.

The Finnish imprint on the landscape of Carbon County has been eclipsed by generations of growth since the early 1900s, but as the 2016 Road Show of the Montana Preservation Alliance demonstrated, buildings large and small are still part of the landscape. With a few acres of land outside of Red Lodge, Finnish settlers and their descendants have maintained a place of community–the Kavela–which remains vibrant some 100 years later. At this place of ethnic identity and celebration, you almost feel like an intruder–that you have stepped inside a sacred circle as an outsider. But families go out of their way to make you feel welcome, through fellowship, good food, and stories of past and present. The Kavela naturally features one of the most traditional Finnish community buildings–the sauna, built of concrete in the 1920s. Speak of tradition, ethnic pride, and assimilation–a concrete sauna might say it all.

Indeed what you can find in the Finnish landscape of Carbon County is repeated countless times across Big Sky Country, just in different languages and with different forms. It is why you get off the interstates and travel the backroads, the dirt roads, for

the markers of the nations that built our nation can be almost anywhere. It might be of the many ethnicities who mined the copper of Butte, or the African American railroad

workers and other average citizens who established permanent institutions such as the Bethel Union AME Church in Great Falls, pictured below.

Stonemasons from Croatia are credited with many of the architecturally striking stone buildings in Lewistown, shown below, whereas if you stop and explore the state capital

of Helena, you can see where Irish Americans banded together to fund some of the state’s most iconic structures, from the majestic Catholic Cathedral that overlooks the city and the commanding statue of General Thomas Meagher in front of the State Capitol.

2011 MT Lewis and Clark County 137 catholic cathedral

2011 MT Lewis and Clark County 130 Thomas Meagher sculpture Civil War

From the Meagher statue it is only a few steps to the east to the doors of the Montana Historical Society. Its operating hours are fewer but you will find an institution not just of the past but of the future for like the land itself, the society, its collections, and dedicated staff are the keepers of the things and words that remain from those who built the state. The idea that Montana can stride into the 21st century without the Montana Historical Society is folly, defined.

A last look at Carbon County, and a visit into the Crow Nation

Posted on October 22, 2015 by carrollvanwest

In the northern reaches of Carbon County are two additional towns on U.S. 212 I would like to review before I turn into a far different landscape in neighboring Big Horn County. I looked earlier at the Boyd store, and its changes over 30 years, briefly in passing on to other railroad towns in the Clark’s Fork Valley.

But Boyd is worth a second look if for nothing more than its rambling vernacular design post office since so many of those buildings have been replaced in the last 30 years by standardized USPS designs. The same can be said of the Boyd School, a frame building now encased in vinyl that has layers of history in it as the community made additions as necessary over the decades.Continuing north on U.S. Highway 212 is the much larger, prosperous town of Joliet. Joliet is an anomaly–its population now is larger than it has ever been since census data has been recorded. So many eastern Montana towns steadily lost population to where they are mere skeletons of themselves today. Joliet has avoided that fate; in fact its population in 2010 was slightly more than when I first visited in 1984.

The Joliet Community Center symbolizes the town’s stability and sense of itself.

The Rock Creek State Bank, now the Rebakah Lodge Building, anchors one of the town’s most prominent commercial corners. It is one of several buildings in Joliet listed in the National Register of Historic Places, including a large historic residential district, in the last 30 years. Joliet had nothing designated in the National Register when I visited in 1984.

While there is a bright new sheen to a good bit of Joliet, the downtown still has that classic mix of vernacular frame and brick one-story commercial buildings typical of the turn of the century railroad/homestead boom towns. And like most, a tavern, in this case the Frontier Bar, is a permanent fixture in the town.

Outside of town is a wonderful array of roadside public sculpture, courtesy of long-time Joliet resident Charles Ringer. Ringer moved to town, purchasing an old junk yard and part of a WPA granary, in 1971. His works have become landmarks for travelers along U.S. Highway 212. Ringer runs a studio shop out of an old ranch-style house.

Known to many winter travelers as “The Snow God” but named “The Creature” by its creator Charles Ringer, this huge metal sculpture is roadside art at its best in Montana.

Ringer is also known for his various kinetic sculptures, and the entire property becomes a way for travelers to interact with, or just enjoy, the general wackiness of his creations.

From Joliet you can strike out east on an improved gravel road, passing through the town of Edgar, and then climbing up out of the Clark’s Fork Valley and into the land of the Apsaalooke, or the Crow Indian Tribe. Traveling west in the Crow reservation, you encounter two instant landmarks, one much more recent than the other but both are tightly intertwined. A compelling metal sculpture of a warrior announces the entrance to the Plenty Coups High School, shrouded on the morning I went there in 2015 by an early morning fog.

Across the road is the Plenty Coups State Park, a fascinating memorial to the former Crow chief Plenty Coups, who the Crow Indian Tribe has designated as its last traditional tribal

chief. Plenty Coups had been among the first Crow Indians to take up a homestead, 320 acres along Pryor Creek, in 1884. His succession of dwellings, using locally available

materials to build a log house, help to tell his story as well as how some Crows became ranchers. The park has erected a modern tipi to show earlier Crow dwelling types; the rambling nature of the log house, is both typical and spectacular. Typical in that

it is a three-bay house with a centered front door, but actually quite spectacular in its interior feel of open space, and that its very size would have spoken to the family’s prominence and achievements. The park also interprets a traditional sweat lodge, adding to the understanding of tradition and new ways that blended to create the homestead.

When Plenty Coups died in 1932 he was 84. He and his wife Strikes the Iron left 195 acres of their property to be a public park. Later the National Park Service designated the site as a National Historic Landmark. Since my first visit in 1982 a new museum building had been added to the park, significantly enhancing the public interpretation of the site; you left with the feeling that this was just not a static installation and memorial (as it was in the 1980s) but a true museum and park which will continue to grow and adapt to the needs of the Crown Indian Tribe and the park’s visitors.

To the east of Pryor, on Pryor Creek Road, was another historical place associated with the Apsaalooke–the Pryor Creek Battlefield. Where in the low creek bluffs and the narrow

valley created by the water, a major battle between the Apsaalooke and their enemies the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho took place c. 1861–just at the time the Civil War was beginning in the United States far to the east.

The Crows had worked with federal officials to build a road turn-off and place interpretive markers about this key battle for the control of the Yellowstone Country c. 1861, just before the time that the first permanent white settlers entered what would become Montana Territory. Thirty years ago, I knew from Crow historian Joe Medicine Crow that this famous battle, where the Apsaalooke secured control of the region in what Medicine Crow called a “glorious victory,” took place along Pryor Creek Road. But the markers now pinpoint the battlefield and interpret what happened plus the significance of the fight.

Here was suddenly a place that I had truly never “seen” before–and an indication of how good interpretive markers can make a desolate place come alive with historical meaning. Kudos to all for bringing forth this forgotten battlefield and a site of a famous Crow victory.

Bridger: Northern Pacific Railroad Hub in the Clark’s Fork Valley

Posted on October 11, 2015 by carrollvanwest

As you head north into Montana from Wyoming on U. S. 310, the first substantial place you encounter is Bridger, named for famed fur trader and early Yellowstone traveler Jim Bridger. Like its neighbor to the north in Fromberg, Bridger is another turn of the 20th century Northern Pacific Railroad town in the Clark’s Fork River Valley that was much the same from my initial visit 31 years ago. Its population had remained steady–a tad over 700, about the same as in 1984, and only 150 or so less than its height in 1950.

The town’s grain elevators speak to the formative impact of the railroad. Here back in the late 1890s engineers followed a well worn and recognized Indian trail–a similar route to what Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians chose a generation earlier as he tried to find safety for his people, traveling from Wyoming into the Clark’s Fork Valley.

The town’s commercial district retains much of its early 20th century look. Old bank buildings dominate the town center, while substantial 2-story commercial buildings (including properties listed in the National Register) remain, showing how quickly merchants came to Bridger and launched businesses to attract the growing number of homesteaders in the Clark’s Fork River valley in the 1910s.

That first generation of settlers did their part to build lasting community institutions. The Bridger United Methodist Church is an impressive example of vernacular Gothic design. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The town library is almost a picture perfect example of what this institution should look like in a small town setting.

The irrigation ditch drifting through the town park is a reminder of how the engineered landscape of irrigated fields provided much of Bridger’s early wealth and development. The park itself was a creation of the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s.

Within the park is a ceramic and brick arch, one of the town’s many examples of public art. The mural on a side of a store seen earlier in this post is another example while creative metal statues of wild horses grazing or the imposing figure of Jim Bridger himself welcoming visitors at the southern end of the town underscores a local tradition of public art not often seen in Montana’s small towns.

Other historic statements of the town’s sense of community include the 1930s Civic Center, a bit worn today but a center for community gatherings and social events for decades.

Bridger’s schools from the 1960s introduce Montana modernism to the townscape, almost like spaceships landing within the middle of the Clark’s Fork River Valley. Modernism 1960s style also characterize Sacred Heart Catholic Church, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, and the Bridger Seventh Day Adventist Church, constructed in 1965.

St. Paul Lutheran Church Sacred Heart Catholic Church

These community anchors date from 50 years ago, so obviously growth has been stagnant, or stable, pick your terms, since the boom introduced in the valley through expanded irrigation projects in the post-World War II era. But all of the buildings are well maintained, and are part of the sense of overall sense of pride you get from a visit to Bridger.

Bridger has reminders, both in monuments and in businesses, of the deep past of the Clark’s Fork River Valley. It is an interesting place of strong institutions, several National Register-listed historic homes, and local business, and a significant part of the often ignored history of the Clark’s Fork Valley.

Railroad Towns of the Clark’s Fork Valley

Posted on October 10, 2015 by carrollvanwest

The name Carbon County seemingly says it all–here is a Montana place that is mining country, and coal mining at all. As earlier posts have discussed, coal mining is vitally important to the county’s history. The county seat of Red Lodge was a major coal mining town. But even Red Lodge’s historic built environment speaks of another side of Carbon County’s history. Its tall shiny grain elevator along the railroad tracks remind us that Carbon County was also agricultural country, especially in the Clark’s Fork River Valley.

The next couple of posts will explore this part of Carbon County–the towns and places many tourists roar by as they seek out Red Lodge and the mountains beyond. Some places were, and are, tiny but still changes over 30 years are apparent. Boyd, for instance. In 1984 I caught this iconic view of past and present at the historic Boyd store. The building is still there but the facade is changed, to a rustic western style, one more to the liking of fast-moving tourists.

Edgar is a place that admittedly I gave little attention to in 1984. That was a mistake. I missed a very interesting modernist-styled school, probably part of the county-wide WPA projects for schools in the late 1930s, along with another 1960s styled addition. The school closed in 2009.

Edgar still has its bar, located in a fine one-story brick building–but not much else from the decades when it mattered in the 20th century.

Fromberg is a different story. Unlike so many country railroad towns in Montana, Fromberg has a strong sense of itself, both in the present and in the past. Part of that has to be a reflection of its comparative stability. Its population height came in 1940, with mover 500 residents. Today the population remains over 400, just about a 100 person decrease over 70 years. For Montana rural towns that is exceptional. Indeed, from my first visit in 1984 to my last in 2015, the town had only lost a few families.

Fromberg has its own museum; the centerpiece of which is its restored railroad depot, part of the old Northern Pacific spur line. In true northern plains fashion, other historic buildings have been moved onto the museum grounds. It’s not quite a building zoo but the buildings give the place enough presence to attract visitors speeding along the highway.

Fromberg is a t-plan town, and all of the patterns of that type of town planning are apparent. From the depot, running west, is the primary commercial street, with brick and fame buildings on either side.

The historic Odd Fellows hall dominates the commercial district–its conversion into the town’s post office, rather than a historic building being lost so a modern standardized design post office could be put in its place, is an excellent example of historic preservation done right. Indeed, Fromberg residents have embraced the possibilities of preservation and multiple buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The mural about overland travel on the front of the Clark’s Fork Bank adds a touch of public interpretation. If you want first-person stories, a stop at the Little Cowboy Bar (and “museum”, located at where the commercial district intersects with the highway, will be worth it. It is one of the region’s classic watering holes.

Fromberg also has documented its historic domestic architecture, raining from vernacular styled early 20th century homes to more stylish bungalows and even a couple of good examples of Dutch Colonial Revival style.

The homes are clustered around two historic churches, the brick St. Joseph Catholic church and the frame Gothic-styled and National Register-listed Methodist Church, built in 1907-1908 by contractor Charles Darnell and the community.

The historic Fromberg school, like its counterpart in Edgar, was part of the countywide program of building modern schools by the WPA during the New Deal. Its still impressive facade conveys well the WPA’s sense of modernism, and it remains the town’s primary community center today.

Carbon County’s Bearcreek and the Smith Mine Disaster

Posted on September 30, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Red Lodge prospered as a railroad/coal town because rich seams of coal existed all around it, especially to the east along Bear Creek, now followed by Montana 308. Active exploitation of these resources started at the beginning of the 20th century, and continued, on a significantly reduced scale, into the 1970s.

Bearcreek, the town that served these mines, was not much a place when I first visited in 1984, with the mines having been closed for a decade, many had left. It had that abandoned look of other Montana mining towns where mining had ceased. Over 300 people lived there during World War II; in the 1980s about 60 residents could be counted.

Today, population has slightly ticked up–to almost 80 residents–but little remains of historic Bearcreek and its boom from 1905-c.1925, except for buildings made with stone from nearby sandstone quarries or flashier commercial buildings with pressed tin exteriors.

Bearcreek is a sliver of what it had been due to the growth of the Colstrip mines and the railroad shift from coal to diesel power from 1925 to 1950. But its fate, so closely intertwined with the mines, took a terrible turn for the worst in early 1943 when methane gas combined with lax safety procedures to led to the explosion of the Smith Mine. With 74 miners dead, along with one first responder who died from injuries attempting to save the miners, the Smith Mine explosion is counted as Montana’s most deadly coal mining disaster. (Ironically due to the demand for coal during World War II, the mine stayed in production, in spite of the disaster, until the end of the war).

When I visited in 1984 the mine site was abandoned, deteriorating, but it did have public interpretation in the shape of a wooden highway historical marker, and the hulk of buildings did suggest a solemn memorial to those who had lost their lives.

Since that time, the deterioration of the site has continued, as it is open to the elements. But the Montana State Historic Preservation Office has worked with property owners to create the Smith Mine Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places. Plus, the preservation office and Montana Department of Transportation have added their own public interpretation markers to the highway historical marker, and these attract tourists on a regular basis to think about and remember those who died to fuel the nation’s war machine during World War II.

Frankly I think that is a good place for the Smith Mine site to be: a decaying yet compelling industrial memorial to coal, miners, and the constant need for mine safety.

Red Lodge: Preservation Maybes and Maybe Nots

Posted on September 22, 2015 by carrollvanwest

It’s no secret that I have long admired the towns of the Yellowstone Valley. Thirty plus years ago, the attitude across much of Montana was dismissive of this region: I even was told by someone who should have known better that “outside of Custer, there’s really isn’t much history there.” Not only was their history in spades–chronologically deep, thematically rich–there was this tremendous built environment that I began to explore in 1982, and haven’t stopped since.

Admittedly I take an old school approach to the preservation of this landscape. Red Lodge has many exemplary preservation achievements but in the 21st century success may be leading to the community losing that edge, admittedly rough edge, that once characterized this region of Montana. Case in point: the Snag Bar. The image on the left is from the 1980s–on the right is an image from this summer. I was happy that the Snag was still with us–always a cozy watering hole in the past. But now its entrance spoke to a different audience, and the place had taken on the “Main Street Preservation” look that you can find across the country–and a bit of distinctiveness was gone.

Red Lodge was not tipped into that preservation fantasy land right out of Disney’s “Main Street U.S.A.” But new infill of modern false-fronts and even a heavy mountain-like Rustic feel doesn’t help, not to mention the northern California wine bar with its set-backs and sidewalk seating. It is just worrisome. As is the future of this once grand movie theater,

which has been hanging on, seemingly by a thread, for decades. The theater has one of the great Classical Revival facades found in the state, full of whimsy and wonderful detail.

Its conversion into a garage was kept it alive but a conversion into a new public use: well it is a huge building, that needs work, and Red Lodge is already blessed with a brilliant historic movie theater, the Roman. Multiple theaters in the early 20th century made sense: today not so much.

Red Lodge also has gotten it right in its residential historic districts. The “Hi-Bug” neighborhood–a designation 100 years ago that spoke to the merchant class that lived in the town’s most affluent neighborhood–has made a remarkable recovery in the last 30 years, and looks great as these few images attest.

Throughout town there are similar preservation success stories, ranging from a historic service station (that has a nifty exhibit about Yellowstone tour buses and their preservation lurking inside) and one of my new favorites, the Regis Grocery, now a neighborhood (meaning off the tourists’ beaten path of US 212) cafe worth a stop.

Red Lodge does have challenges–growth that can overwhelm historic character, too many tourism focused businesses–but the changes here over 30 years are impressive achievements, sure signs of how the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act has helped to change the face of Montana.

Red Lodge’s Commercial District: Turn of the 20th Century Masonry in the Yellowstone Valley

Posted on September 21, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Red Lodge’s commercial district is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. While the construction dates in the district span over 100 years, from the 1890s to more recent modern-era “in fill” buildings, the most notable pattern is the number of two-story stone or brick commercial buildings from the turn of the 20th century.

The landmark Pollard Hotel is a good example. Opened in 1893 as the Spofford Hotel, the building was an instant business landmark, a hotel located halfway between the depot and the heart of the new city. As the boom intensified at the turn of the century, Thomas Pollard bought the place and doubled its size in 1902. The Pollard served as that “booster” hotel, designed to show businessmen and investors that Red Lodge was an up and coming place.

The Pollard was not alone in defining the city’s look. Facing it were long blocks of two-part mostly brick commercial buildings, with retail and sales on the first floor and residences and offices for a growing professional class on the 2nd floors.

The decorative cornices proudly proclaimed that the new buildings were part of the new century, and a promising era for all involved. Of course commercial design in more settled areas to the east and west had already moved away from the heavy masonry typical of the 1880s–but Red Lodge was largely a Victorian commercial district for what would be a 20th century mining boom town.

While two-story, two-part commercial blocks set one pattern in historic Red Lodge, another is created through the rhythm of the large commercial enterprises and the less ambitious one-story brick buildings of the district.

Here is another building material found in abundance, rusticated concrete block meant to mimic stone masonry, and the stuccoed top half of the bakery building is another reminder that some owners used imitation materials to fit into Red Lodge’s streetscapes.

While the commercial district retains much of what made it a special place when I first visited over 30 years ago, it has lost some of that small town Montana feel as owners increasingly cater to those tourists passing through. The challenges of preservation in Red Lodge will be the next topic.

Red Lodge: Coal Town of the Clark’s Fork Valley

Posted on September 19, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Clark's Fork River, off U.S. 212, Carbon County, MT

When the Northern Pacific Railroad entered the Yellowstone Valley in the 1880s, officials and investors immediately began the search to find and acquire locally available deposits of coal. First there came the Klein mines north of Billings and then by the end of the decade, the first move toward mines to the south, in the Clark’s Fork Valley, at what would become Carbon County with its major town of Red Lodge on Rock Creek. Development began slowly, with the Depression of 1893 intervening, but as the era’s financial and railroad magnates combined the Great Northern, the Burlington Route, and the Northern Pacific into one huge co-operative venture, they selected a new place in the Yellowstone Valley, a town called Laurel at the confluence of the Clark’s Fork and Yellowstone rivers, to connect the three railroads. In short order, a Northern Pacific Railroad spur line was built down the Clark’s Fork Valley to the place called Red Lodge–U.S. Highway 212 follows this route–and the boom was on.

Entering Red Lodge from the north via U.S. 212 you encounter immediately the town’s roots as a railroad town, as the historic Northern Pacific depot remains rooted at the head of the town. Here is where my long-interest with the Red Lodge story began in 1984 when

I met with a small group of local historians, preservationists, and civic leaders determined to keep Red Lodge and its still intact historic environment together. The group’s vision for the depot was for it to be a visitor center, an arts center, but more than anything a community center, a visible sign of the turnaround that could happen. Already, at the head of town artist Peter Toth had begun the new tradition with his mammoth wood sculpture, “In Honor of a Proud and Noble People,” installed in 1979, a theme of the region’s

Native American history and proximity to the Crow Indian Reservation that also was captured in a much more commercial way by the neon sign of the Red Lodge Cafe then, and still to my mind, the best place in town. The neon, like Toth’s sculpture, was designed

to attention of the one course of heritage tourism income that locals recognized: that summer traffic coming out of Billings and off the interstate heading to Yellowstone National Park via U.S. 212 and the Beartooth Pass, one of the true highway wonders of the United States. How to get people to stop, and how to restore pride and hope for the town itself: those motivated the group I met in 1984 moreso than any well meaning goal of merely preserving history and pretty buildings.

To say that the initial depot project was successful would be an understatement. Thirty years later the depot is a public space that includes a gazebo, outdoor art, and a setting of history and culture rarely rivaled in the region. As you move south from the depot, you also immediately encounter several of the dreams the groups discussed in 1984: a National Register of Historic Places historic district (there are now more than one); restored and treasured public buildings such as the Carnegie Library and Carbon County Courthouse;

and their biggest goal of all in 1984, the acquisition, preservation, and transformation of iconic Labor Temple into a history museum and heritage center for the Carbon County Historical Society.

The group understood the power of the Labor Temple: they could tell a story not just of railroad magnates and economic development but could look at this history from those who came and labored in the mines, and built the town. The building dated to the decade of Red Lodge’s height, 1910-1920, when the town’s population reached 5,000 but especially once the Northern Pacfic opened new mines at Colstrip to the east in the 1920s, the town had been in a decades long period of population decline, where less than 2,000 people lived in 1980. Many had given up, obviously, but those who stayed saw the bones of a possible community renaissance–and preservation was a big part of that. That more recent story comes next.

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