Sheridan County In 1988

Posted on November 16, 2019 by carrollvanwest

After my comprehensive work in Montana from 1984-85 I returned in 1988 to revisit and add new places to my visual understanding of the state. Here are most of the color slides I took in Sheridan County on my second trip to Plentywood and environs.

I particularly looked at the railroad corridors–big surprise I know. Above is the Great Northern depot at Medicine Lake and below is a similar combination of Great Northern depot and elevators at Antelope.

The other railroad corridor I wanted to look at was the Soo Line, which operated a short spur line into the county in the early 20th century. I’m glad I did since hardly any buildings exist along this route today. Below is the T-town plan of Outlook.

Outlook in 1988 still had its classic Soo Line combination depot, with both passenger services, baggage warehouse and station office wrapped in one building. Below is the Outlook railroad corridor.

The station was in fair condition then (it is gone now) and I took a couple of images along with a close-up of the two-seat privy.

Other “towns” on the Soo Line had nothing left but deteriorating elevators. Here in 1988 was what was left in Raymond.

In Plentywood, the county seat, I took images of the great fairgrounds sign and the New Deal-era Sheridan County Courthouse.

I also was so happy to see the Orpheum movie theater still in operation.

Finally I always have found it fascinating that at Plentywood’s main intersection stood 3 bank buildings at the three corners–and at Montana’s best known socialist county in the early 20th century.

And in 1988 I also took care to document the town’s Northern Pacific depot. Railroads and banks dominated the county at its founding.

Last scenes: the Flandrem community monument on Highway 16 and a bit of badlands scenery along Highway 5 (the image is from my original trip in 1985, this the bit of snow, taken February 1985).

Augusta, more than just a rodeo

Posted on November 27, 2016 by carrollvanwest

My friends in the environs of Helena have been surprised that after 300 something posts I had yet to say anything about Augusta, a crossroads town in northern Lewis and Clark County along U.S. Highway 287, during my revisit of the 1984-1985 state historic preservation plan. They knew that I loved the open range drive to Augusta, whether approaching from U.S. 287 or U.S. Highway 89.

Then, the various businesses and bars along Main Street represented not just a favorite place in rural Lewis and Clark County, but also document a classic western town with great roadside architecture such as the Wagon Wheel Motel.

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2011 US 89 to Glacier Canon Sureshot Augusta 003

The annual rodeo in Augusta is one of the state’s best, but Augusta is worth much more than just a summer visit during rodeo season. When I returned in 2014 I found one key building missing–the historic Great Northern Railway passenger station, shown below from a 1984 image.

Augusta began as a crossroads town for neighboring ranches; the later extension of a railroad spur to nearby Gilman spurred competition between the two towns. But Augusta won that battle–today not much outside of the Montana Highway Historical marker, a steel bridge, and a disappearing railroad corridor remains of Gilman.

Augusta has several significant properties, starting with its historic high school building, a bit of neoclassicism on the northern plains.

But I like the football field almost as much as the historic school–could a more neighborhood setting even be imagined?

Then there are historic commercial buildings from the early 20th century–several with National Register qualities, especially the F. M. Mack General Merchandise store–a frame building with paired bracketed cornice.

Over 300 people call Augusta home today, a slight increase since my work 30 years ago. The community not only has kept the historic buildings noted above, residents also have opened the Augusta Area Museum–heritage is clearly part of the town’s future.

The east side of Glacier

Posted on October 19, 2016 by carrollvanwest

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.

The lodge is impressive however you consider it and it served as a trend setter for the image that Hill wished to give visitors to his newly designated national park.

2011 MT Glacier Park and communities 077 East Glacier Lodge

2011 MT Glacier Park and communities 076 East Glacier Lodge

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The huge main lobby, grounded in imported Douglas firs from the Pacific Northwest, brings the loftiness of the park to the interior of the hotel.

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2011 MT Glacier Park and communities 082 East Glacier Lodge

The lodge proved popular with train travelers and additions came as early as 1914-1915, with further expansions due to the demand from automobile travelers on U.S. 2.

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.

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And the trains continue to arrive throughout the summer, bringing tourists to this iconic mountain National Historic Landmark.

Kalispell: Growth and Preservation in Northwest Montana

Posted on September 29, 2016 by carrollvanwest

Kalispell was a Montana jewel 0n the Great Northern Railway. Despite that fact, in 1984 the preservation of the railroad’s historic passenger station was not certain. This landmark, at the head of the T-plan town, still stood but was viewed as an impediment even an eyesore by some. The depot (1892, 1899, 1914, 1929) was built when Kalispell was an important division point on the railroad’s main line then altered over the next three decades to the stuccoed exterior you find today. It marked literally the beginnings of the town’s history. Yet, when I held a public meeting at another landmark, the town’s historic Carnegie Library (1903) that had recently been through an adaptive reuse into the

Hockaday Art Museum, strong sentiments for more preservation were rarely heard. The depot was not listed in the National Register nor were many of the downtown buildings. There were a few of the town’s rich stock of Victorian era houses listed. The success of the Hockaday and the Conrad Mansion (1892-1895) historic site seemed to be enough for many residents, or they thought preservation only meant pretty homes and buildings.

Then came the work east of Kalispell in and around Glacier National Park to inventory and list eligible buildings to the National Register in the mid to late 1980s. That, along with the loss of key downtown landmarks and new voices from preservationists and property owners, began to grow the interest in historic preservation.

The result was a massive multiple property study of Kalispell for the National Register of Historic Places, resulting in the listing of dozens of additional historical properties in 1994. The historic railroad depot was listed and serves as home for the Chamber of Commerce and a visitor center, a front porch for the downtown. A new era in historic preservation had been launched, and the result today is impressive, as the next posts will explore.

Appreciating the town’s achievement in historic preservation over the last 20 years comes at an opportune time. The economic changes in the 1980s and 1990s are ready to be repeated again. A federal grant, matched by local sources, will mean that the historic railroad corridor through the center of town will be moved–opening up acres for new construction. Everyone knows this will be as fundamental of a change as when the Great Northern moved their division point to Whitefish in 1904. But now Kalispell has a strong historic core, identity, and purpose–the past has become fundamental to its future. Now let’s review that preservation achievement.

Lincoln County’s Gateway Towns

Posted on September 26, 2016 by carrollvanwest

I love Montana town signs, and Troy, deep in the state’s logging country, has one of the best. The sign lures to a city park nestled along the Kootenai River. The focus point is a

historic Great Northern depot, which has been moved to the park. There is also an interpretive trail, part of a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, that tells the story of the Callahan boom, which mining and logging combined to lure investors and residents to the area. It is a story arc that the forest service follows at other sites in a region the service describes as the Callahan Creek Historic Mining and Logging District. It is a very useful perspective on the town’s history, and not one that I pursued in 1984 when I explored this part of Lincoln County in the fieldwork for the state historic preservation plan. I paid attention to the historic railroad corridor–Troy (1892) after all was on

the Great Northern’s main line, and I documented the few historic buildings left facing the railroad tracks today. The Home Bar (c. 1914) and the Club Bar were institutions then, and remain so today. The Kootenai State Bank building still stands but has experienced a major change to its facade–made better in part by the American flag painted over some of the frame addition.

The Troy Jail, above, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2006 and it remains the only building so listed in the town today. D.E. Crissey, a local contractor, built it out of concrete in 1924 during Troy’s boom from 1916 to 1926 when its population jumped from 300 to 1300. The Snowstorm mine, which produced lead, zinc, and silver, started to serve the demand for raw materials during World War I. The mine soon turned what had been a small railroad town into a mining camp best known for its brothels and bars. Then in the early 1920s the Great Northern decided to build a division point here, further booming the town. The Sandpoint Pole and Lumber Company began its logging business in 1923, and Troy suddenly was the largest town in the county

Perhaps the most impressive landmark left in the wake of the Troy boom is the public school, with the impressive central block flanked by classroom wings and a gymnasium built in later decades. Home to the Troy Trojans, the soldier statue in front of the school is also a public art landmark in Lincoln County.

Troy thus was much more than just a gateway into Montana from U.S. Highway 2–it was once a mining center, but one that went broke fast as the mines played out in the 1920s, the Great Northern closed its roundhouse, and the Great Depression hit in the 1930s.

In 1984 as I traveled from Troy via Montana State Highway 508 to Yaak, the only “town” left in the state’s far northwest corner, you could still encounter key mining properties along the Yaak River, such as this concentrator at Sylvanite.

The Keystone Mill was barely hanging on to the side of the mountain then, now it is nowhere to be seen. Montana 508 has instead become a gateway to some of the some of the most open, untouched high mountain landscape, one that meanders back and forth with the river, bridges, and, perhaps most importantly, bars.

That would be the Dirty Shame Saloon–another institution that some back in the city thought that perhaps I should avoid. Glad I did not. Had a great meal there in 1984, and even though the bar’s dining area has been extended, it still had that vibe, of both a local place but also another remnant of the old logging and mining days along the Yaak.

Yaak by way of local paths and trails is a gateway too, between Idaho and Montana and Montana and British Columbia. More to the point it is a gateway between what was and what still is within the Montana landscape.

Yaak’s general store, service station, lodging, and whatever else you need is another throwback place, and can be found on the web as the Yaak River Tavern and Mercantile. You haven’t “done” Montana if you don’t make it to Yaak.

Eureka!! It’s a Lincoln County Town

Posted on September 26, 2016 by carrollvanwest

Nestled within the Tobacco Valley of northern Lincoln County is the town of Eureka, which serves as a northern gateway into Montana along U.S. Highway 93. I first encountered the town in 1982, as I returned from a jaunt into Alberta, and immediately thought here is a classic linear town plan, a landscape created by a spur line of the Great Northern Railway.

As I would come to find out, on two return trips here in 1984, the town was much more than that, it was a true bordertown between two nations and two cultures. The two trips came about from, first, a question about a public building’s eligibility for the National Register, and, second, the fieldwork for the state historic preservation plan, where such obvious landmarks as the National Hotel and Eureka passenger depot were noted. Thirty

years later I was pleased to see the National Hotel in much better condition but dismayed to see the Great Northern passenger station–a classic example of its early 20th century standardized designs–is far worse condition that it had been in 1984.

Otherwise, Eureka has done an impressive job of holding together its historic core of downtown one and two-story commercial buildings. In 1995, owners had the Farmers and Merchants State Bank, built in 1907, placed in the National Register. Walking the town, however, you see the potential of a historic district of this turn of the 20th century place.

Oh yeah, what about that second reason for two trips in 1984? That would be the Eureka Community Hall, one of the last public buildings constructed by the Works Progress Administration in Montana in 1942.

Located on a hill perched over the town, the building was obviously a landmark–but in 1984 it also was just 42 years old, and that meant it needed to have exceptional significance to the local community to merit listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Eureka had been a logging community, and the depression hit hard. The new building not only reflected community pride but also local craftsmanship, and it became a

foundation for community resurgence in the decades to come. The building was listed in 1985, and was the first to have my name attached to it, working with Sally Steward of the local historical society. But credit has to go to Pat Bick and especially Marcella Sherfy of the State Historic Preservation Office for urging me to take it on, and to guide me through the maze of the National Register process. Today, it has experienced an adaptive reuse and serves as a rustic log furniture store.

During those visits in 1984 I also held a public meeting in Eureka for the state historic preservation plan, where I learned about the Tobacco Valley Historical Society and its efforts to preserve buildings destined for the chopping block through its museum village on the southern edge of town. Here the community gathered the Great Northern depot (1903) of Rexford, the same town’s 1926 Catholic Church, the Mt. Roberts lookout tower, the Fewkes Store, and a U.S. Forest Service big Creek Cabin from 1926.

But thirty years later I found new public interpretation not just in the museum village but in the town itself, as Eureka introduced visitors to its history and setting and also told its

border story of such fascinating people as Joseph Peltier, who built the first dwelling at the town site in 1891, and especially the cross-border entrepreneur Sophie Morigeau, who was trading in the area as early as 1863.

The Peltier log dwellings came within a year of each other, 1891 and 1892, and their size, finish, and log notching speak to the region’s rapid development. His 1891 low pitched roof, v-notched cabin is typical, throughout the mountain west, of first homes–quickly constructed shelter. The second house, with its hewn log exterior and crafted corner notching speaks to permanence. The settler was here to stay in 1892.

Eureka has held its population steady over 30 years, just a few families over 1,000 residents, a sizable achievement considering the change in both railroading and logging over that time. I think community pride and identity has to be contributors, because you see it everywhere, and I will close with two last examples. The town’s library and nearby veterans park, and then the magnificent Art Deco-influenced high school–yet another New Deal era contribution to this special gateway town.

Chouteau County’s Plains Country Towns

Posted on August 16, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Thirty years ago geographer John Hudson wrote a series of articles and a book on the topic of “plains country towns,” addressing the landscape patterns he found among the railroad-established towns of the northern plains. Ever since Hudson’s concept of plains country towns has influenced how I look at the Montana’s small towns. Even in such river counties as Chouteau County where the Missouri River trade base of Fort Benton has dominated the county’s economy and population since the mid-19th century, you can still find the unmistakeable imprint of the railroad and the grain elevators that mark the presence of a town.

Earlier in this blog I have discussed Square Butte (above) and Geraldine. Today I want to review two other small towns, Highwood and Carter. Highwood is the largest, counting

just about 175 people in the last census. Like most plains country towns, it has steadily lost population in the last 50 years. In fact this weekend’s Great Falls Tribune discussed how the Highwood High School was going to forge a co-op for sports with Geraldine so both schools could continue to have basketball, volley ball and 7-man football, played at this tiny field in Highwood.

The Highwood School is no doubt the pride and center of this community, a place not often found by travelers nestled as it is in a gulch formed by Highwood Creek along Montana Highway 228. It began in the 1880s as cattle country but with the coming of the railroad in the 1910s t became an outlet for grains, as its set of tall elevators makes apparent. A small one-story false front building for the 1912 Highwood Mercantile Company also remains to mark the town’s railroad years.

Carter has one-third the population of Highwood–only about 50 people in the 2010 census–but is better known to travelers due to its location along U.S. Highway 87 between Great Falls and Fort Benton. The Rocking K Bar is the roadside landmark but travelers

should turn south and drive down into Carter proper since the town, despite its tiny number of residents, still has many of the community institutions that defined a proper plains country town of 100 years ago.

First, there is the still operating Carter Elementary School, probably the one institution that keeps the town alive–when country towns lose their school soon everything else goes too.

Next comes the tracks, railroad depot, and the grain elevators–while not public institutions they do give the community commercial lifeblood, and as long as the trains roll by there remains an economic reason for Carter to exist.

The depot has been moved from its original location paralleling the tracks, but this early 20th century standardized designed combination depot for the Great Northern Railway still stands–there were hundreds across the state in my survey of 1984-1985 and one of the more disturbing trends of the new survey of 2013-2015 is how many Great Northern depots are gone, eliminating from the landscape they once dominated.

Faith too has remained in Carter, with the persistence of the town’s small vernacular styled gable-front little white Methodist church, although in its first generation several congregations had been established here.

Carter also still has its Community Hall–an institution across the northern plains that defined hope and persistence in the years following the homesteading bust of the 1920s.

Community halls too were more numerous in 1984-1985 than today–the building in Carter is a significant community link between past and present.

Finally there is the federal presence–marked by a concrete block post office from the last decades of the 20th century. The threat a few years ago to close hundreds of rural post offices across the region brought new, and necessary, addition to role of post offices as modern community landmarks for plains country towns.

Admittedly, Carter is a place that hundreds roar pass daily as they drive U.S. Highway 87. But with its extant school, depot, brace of elevators, church, community hall, and post office, Carter is a valuable physical document of the plains country towns that once populated eastern Montana, serving as important way stations along the metropolitan corridors of rails and sidings that crisscrossed the west.

Harlem on the Hi-Line

Posted on May 30, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Whenever travelers or residents for that matter talk about Hi-Line towns, Havre, Shelby, Glasgow, Wolf Point always enter the conversation. Some places, inexplicably to my mind, never do: Harlem is a case in point.

A gateway to the Fort Belknap Reservation, Harlem is one of the early Great Northern Railway towns, dating to 1889, and was established to serve as a commercial center on the northern border of the reservation.When the homesteading boom swept through the Hi-Line during the early 20th century, Harlem quickly expanded and most of the historic buildings found there today date between 1910 and 1940.

What struck me powerfully when I visited in 2013, compared to my last visit in 1984, was dual themes of growth and decline. The Aaniiih Nadoka College, established in 1884, had left its initial spartan quarters on the edge of the reservation into new modern-styled buildings, that still reflected the spirit of earlier vernacular styled buildings.

The 30-year growth of the college certainly underscored new opportunities as the flashy facade of the Ft Belknap Casino, facing U.S. Highway 2, showed a new revenue source. Standardized designs for federal housing also indicated the growth of a large neighborhood just south of the U.S. 2 and Montana 66 junction.

The theme of decline, however, marked the historic business district of Harlem. When I visited in 1984, Harlem had over 1000 residents–now that number is close to 800. Classic roadside gas stations, even at prominent corners, had closed.

The Art Deco-ish Brekke Block (1941) only had a few going businesses; the early 20th century commercial block at Central and Main streets had even fewer signs of life. The Grand Theatre no longer showed movies. The imposing classical facade of the old state bank had broken windows and decaying architectural details. These historic buildings retain their potential to impress, and could be heritage assets in multiple ways. They need attention before it is too late.

While life and commerce enlivened the railroad and highway corridor, the downtown had a shuttered, tired look. But pride was there too. The Harlem Centennial Park, established in 1987, featured an memorial to the thirteen airmen who lost their lives when Air Force cargo planes collided north of town in 1992. The dedication and commitment to raise the funds and build such an appropriate monument impresses–and for travelers like me, I had no idea that this terrible air accident took place, and was glad that Harlem understood its obligation to the airmen and to history to record the event, permanently, with the memorial. It was one of several surprises I encountered during my visit to Blaine County in 2013.

Joplin in Liberty County: A Disappearing Railroad Town

Posted on February 15, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Joplin today has a population hovering around 150, a decline of about 50 since 2000. E. C. Tolley, a real estate locator during the homesteading boom and Joseph E. Rehal, a Syrian-born merchant who made the biggest initial investment, are jointly credited with establishing the town. In fact, they promoted rival parts of town, which led to uneven and scattered business development. In a history of Liberty County, Art LaValley recalled: “The Commercial Club was very active in promoting the town of Joplin. They erected a large, new sign by the railroad crossing, facing the depot so that people getting off the train would see it. It was a picture of the world and read ‘Biggest Little Town on Earth.’”

Joplin sign, 1984

Another contribution of the Commercial Club was the creation of a town square park, complete with bandstand: the Joplin Community Band was popular throughout the region, until it disbanded in 1937. Two years later in 1939, famous be-bop jazz artist, saxophonist Charles McPherson was born in Joplin.

Like most of the Great Northern towns of the decade, Joplin began well as homesteaders came quickly. By 1913, O.C. Boggs of Joplin wrote a testimonial for his huge Nicholas-Shepard Oil-Gas Tractor: “we are pulling six 14-inch Oliver Engine Gang Plows in sod. Our average work is 15 acres per day of ten hours” The First State Bank of Joplin opened its doors,along with many other mercantile and professional offices. In 1916 Jensen Brothers and Layton hardware stores went into partnership to take advantage of the agricultural boom. The drug company came in 1917.

But drought hit this area hard in the late 1910s. In the 1920s the boom had busted, not just because of the agricultural crash. There was the matter of the Dempsey heavyweight fight in Shelby in 1923. Losses there impacted the local bank, which closed in 1923 just days after the fight. The New Deal brought new hope in the mid-1930s when the PWA helped to fund a new brick school and the WPA funded sidewalks.

I had not been in Joplin since 1984 when I visited in 2013: many landmarks were missing or closed. The Great Northern depot was gone completely. Today there is nothing but the tracks and grain elevators

to remind one of the town’s lifeblood. Then the school closed in 2005 and Joplin joined the consolidated school system in Chester.

One key institution from the homesteading era still shapes community life: the Joplin Community Hall, where everything takes place: voting, reunions, funerals, parties, concerts, celebrations, especially in mid-June when the town still hosts an antique car show at the town park. Both the hall and town park were developed by Joolin’s Commercial Club–a forerunner to a Chamber of Commerce–in the first decade of settlement.

It was at the community hall in 2011, that a large crowd gathered to convince federal officials to let them keep another community institutions: the Joplin post office.

Today along U.S. Highway 2, a bright, shining streamlined moderne town sign has replaced the earlier littlest big town in the world–which remains in the town center, away from the highway as if residents keep the motto to heart but no longer share it with every traveler on the road.

In 2010 Larry Olson told the Great Falls Tribune that he had “seen a lot of changes in his 72 years living in Joplin. ‘When I was growing up, it was so different,” he said. “Nowadays, everything is closed up. You’ve got a [Lutheran] church and a bar — that’s it.’”

On the Hi-Line at Liberty County, 1984 and now

Posted on February 13, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Abandoned homestead in 1984, north of Joplin, Sweetgrass Hills in background

Liberty County, created in 1919 with Chester as county seat, was the next place I visited, and it proved to be one of my favorites along the Hi-Line. Stuck between the larger railroad towns of Shelby, a junction point, to the west and Havre, a division point with Great Northern maintenance yards to the east, the Great Northern never saw a need to invest in or to encourage investment in town development in Liberty County. In the 1910s, hundreds of homesteaders flooded into the area: this 1984 image above of an abandoned homestead with the sacred Sweetgrass Hills in the background is one of my favorities. Today a little over 2000 people live in the county.

Lothair was the first town I encountered in Liberty County. Its grain elevators called me off the highway in 1984; they remain landmarks today.

Nothing else much is there, although in the 1910s residents and nearby homesteaders petitioned the state railroad commissioners to force the Great Northern to treat their town more seriously. The 1918 petition, launched by the Lothair Commercial Club and others, called on the railroad to replace a depot that had burned in 1912. The residents complained that “the depot now in use is of the portable style 12×34 feet, which with a box car body for freight, constitutes the facilities for the handling of passengers, freight, baggage, and express, as well as for the housing of the agent and operator. . . . The waiting room is only of sufficient size to accomodate four or five people comfortably.” The petitioners argued that their town was at “the center of a very extensive dry land farming territory, nearly all of which has been filed on, but only about one-third is under active cultivation at the present time.” But the hopes of Lothair never survived the homesteading crash of the 1920s.

mid-1980s town sign of Chester

Chester has fared better. It retains a historic Great Northern depot, from the 1950s, although it was been moved from its earlier prominent location a bit farther to the east along the line.

Chester has a T-town plan, with one attribute that I later found in other turn-of-the-century Montana railroad towns: an architecturally compelling two-story brick building on one corner, situated so its entrance faced both the tracks and the highway that paralleled the railroad.

This building is the historic First State Bank of Chester (1910), one of two Liberty County buildings in the National Register of Historic Places. The bank closed in 1920, but the building remained important to the community, serving all sorts of function; a local high school class researched its history for the National Register nomination in 1997.

1st State Bank, Chester, 2013

The organization of space in Chester is interesting. As typical of a T-town plan, the railroad corridor dominates the top of T with the tracks, elevators, warehouses, and railroad buildings.

Chester t-town plan, 2013

The adjacent route of U.S. Highway 2 creates sorta of a “bottom” to the top of the T, where gas stations and other auto- and traveler-focused buildings, including a diner and an automobile museum, stand. One bit of roadside architecture–the MX Motel–really captured my attention in 1984 because only a few years earlier Montana and especially Liberty County eagerly pursued

MX Motel sign, 1984

the Carter administration idea of a defense system where nuclear missiles would be moved on tracks over a huge expanse of land, creating uncertainty for enemy targeting of missile silos. Liberty County had good reason to be excited about the MX–the time Chester had enjoyed sustainable growth was in the 1950s when the Bureau of Reclamation constructed the Tiber Dam/Lake Elwell project in the southern end of the county.

Tiber Dam Reservoir (Lake Elwell), 1984

I stayed at the MX Motel in 1984–and never imagined it would still be there 30 years ago. It remains, but I wonder if anyone recalls why the name MX made sense to Liberty County in the past.

The stem of the T-town plan in Chester is also interesting. The bank is the visually prominent element while the county courthouse is a large two-story brick facade a bit farther down the street. At the base of the T is the school campus, a sprawling group of brick Art Deco-influenced buildings (1935 for the Art Deco elementary school; the high school building dates to 1952) that now serve students with three old railroad towns: Chester, Joplin, and Inverness, and the school nickname is the Hi-Line Hawks.

Located between the commercial district and the school is the National Register-listed First Episcopal Methodist Church (1911-1968); it became the county museum in 1970, and soon will have served that cultural function for longer than it was a church. A much more recent yet still appropriate adaptive reuse is the conversion of another church into a county arts center. This portion of Montana has actively pursued cultural tourism in the 21st century and the arts center plus the earlier museum are parts of that effort.

Next: Joplin, a Liberty County town on the border with Hill County

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