Standard histories tell you that Cut Bank, the seat of Glacier County, dates to 1891. But significant numbers of permanent settlers did not arrive until the first years of the 20th century, following a major investment by the Great Northern Railroad to build a huge steel bridge and railroad offices, shops, and a roundhouse. The Fort Benton River Press on February 12, 1901, reported that “Cut Bank is rapidly assuming a metropolitan appearance.”
The initial railroad boom soon slowed until the homesteader movement brought new growth. In 1911 town officials agreed to discuss the creation of a permanent town cemetery with state officials. Between 1911 and 1914 citizens formed the Crown Hill Cemetery Association and the first documented burials in the local newspaper took place in 1914.
Located north of town the cemetery is on a slight rise and has an impressive view of Cut Bank to the South. A small lake is the focus of the cemetery plan.
Otherwise the cemetery contains long rows in a rectangular manner and there are few huge grave markers, instead many dignified and subtly designed markers cover the grounds.
There are several interesting markers and many note a fraternal lodge association.
The Halvorson marker dates to be death of Mrs. Harry Halvorson who died in 1924. At that time her funeral was the largest ever held in Cut Bank. The Midland Empire of April 22, 1924 reported that 650 attended the funeral and that 77 cars went from the town Masonic Hall to the cemetery. A member of the Rebekah lodges in both Cut Bank and Shelby, Halvorson’s funeral attracted other lodge members from Shelby, Conrad, Valier and Browning. Her husband was the senior member of the Halvorson mercantile company, which started in 1901.
Another important marker is the veterans memorial from World War II. Cut Bank played a significant role as a satellite air field for the Great Falls Army Air Base. In 1942-43 pilots trained here in flying the B-17 Flying Fortresses. In 1948 the army conveyed the base to the town for civilian use.
Perhaps an unattended consequence of the military air base is that winter temperatures at Cut Bank was regularly available to national media, which played up the mage of Cut Bank as the coldest place in the lower 48 states. Cut Bank embraced the image, as this bit of roadside sculpture below attests. It stands at the eastern entrance into town on US Highway 2.
Crown Hill Cemetery is one of the oldest properties in Cut Bank open to the public. The cemetery is well maintained, well manicured and a testament to the respect and dignity local residents give to their past.
All of Glacier National Park is spectacular, frankly, but as you reach Logan Pass and consider the historic architecture on the east side of the park, often the landscape itself overpowers the man-made environment, be it the modernist visitor center at Logan Pass, above to the left of center of the image, or the Many Glacier Hotel on the north end of the park, below. The manmade is insignificant compared to the grandeur of the mountains.
The reverse is true at East Glacier, where the mammoth Glacier Park Lodge competes with the surrounding environment. The massive log hotel was the brainchild of Louis Hill, the president of the Great Northern Railway, who wished for a building that could mirror the earlier 1905 Forestry Hall for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Hill had the vision but architect Samuel L. Bartlett of St. Paul, Minnesota, carried the vision into an architectural plan.
But the long landscaped walkway from the Glacier Park Lodge to the Great Northern passenger station, also themed in Rustic style, let everyone know who was in charge–the railroad, whose influence created the national park and then built the facilities that defined the look of the park for the next 100 years.
I am speaking instead of the wide range of images and themes that visually interpret the town’s and county’s history. Finding public art murals about the open landscape once dominated by the Blackfeet Indians and the buffalo is not surprising–communities often embrace the deep history of their land.
That Cut Bank also has a large expressive mural about the Lewis and Clark Expedition is not surprising–murals about Lewis and Clark were installed across several towns during the bicentennial of the expedition in the first decade of this century. East of Cut Bank is Camp Disappointment, one of the more important sites associated with the Corps of Discovery.
Nor is it surprising to see communities commemorate their homesteading roots, and the importance of agriculture and cattle ranching.
But I was surprised, pleasantly, by the number of murals that also documented the town’s twentieth century history, whether it is the magnificent steel trestle of the Great Northern Railway just west of the commercial core, or a mural that reminded everyone of the days when the railroad dominated all traffic here.
It is this first half of the 20th century feel that the murals interpret–the era that actually built most of the historic buildings you find there today–that I find so impressive and memorable about Cut Bank, be it people on bicycles or what an old service station was like.
Space matters when you interpret the built environment, and these various murals reflect not only a sense of town pride and identity they also give meaning to buildings and stories long forgotten.
U.S. Highway 89 enters the Blackfeet Indian Reservation on its southern border, heading for its junction with U.S. Highway 2 and the reservation center of Browning. Before the junction, you cross the historic Two Medicine River, a historic corridor for the Blackfeet. To the west of the river crossing is a highway historical marker for Coldfeet School, a one-
room school (not extant) built for Blackfeet children in 1933 during the New Deal. To the east of the highway river crossing, however, was one of the earliest schools (1889) on the reservation, the Holy Family Catholic
This panorama of the mission site today shows that neither of the dormitories remain, although the historic frame barn and mill still stand (to the left) while the chapel is still a dominating element, and has been incorporated into present-day Blackfeet culture. It is in excellent shape.
Another change is that the Blackfeet provide public interpretation of the site, through their own historical markers, which is extended into the adjacent historic cemetery, one of the most somber places in the region. The old mission is now part of the reservation’s heritage tourism effort.
Returning to U.S. 89 and heading northwest, you head to the junction of U.S. Highway 2 and the town of Browning. The town is a center for reservation education, as shown by the new campus for the Blackfeet Community College.
Here too is another historic Catholic Church, the Little Flower Catholic Church, built in 1931, from locally available stone in a Gothic Revival style. The congregation supports a small Catholic school next door.
The Browning fairgrounds is an important Blackfeet recreation and cultural center, with this recent installation again providing public interpretation of Blackfeet culture.
and U.S. 89, heading north. It created an appropriate, respectful way for the increasing number of auto tourists headed to Glacier National Park to learn about the Blackfeet in particular and Plains Indian culture in general. The famous mid-20th century anthropologist, John Ewers, had worked tribes to create the museum’s initial exhibits and collections. In the 21st century, the Blackfeet have developed additional institutions to take advantage of tourism through the nearby Glacier Peaks casino and hotel, a complex that has developed from 2011 to 2015.
These new buildings are part of a long-term continuum of tourism in Browning, starting with this old concrete tipi, built originally as a gas station in 1934 and now converted into a coffee shop. And the Blackfeet
Trading Post is a business found in all sorts of national park gateways–the classic place to get cheap souvenirs and t-shirts of all types, not to mention moccasins and all of the stereotypical material culture of Native American tourism in our country.
the primary voice on what the park means, and how visitors can think about it today. The Native American presence on U.S. Highway 89 today is much more evident, with much more public interpretation, than in my travels 30 years ago.
Montana's Historic Landscapes 