Great Falls Resurgence

Posted on July 3, 2026 by carrollvanwest

Montana newspapers this week featured a story about economic resurgence in Great Falls, where the population has remained basically level in the 21st century while other Montana cities have grown by leaps and bounds. Readers of this blog recognize that I am a big booster of what heritage and historic preservation has meant to the city, and certainly that pride in history and culture you find anytime you visit Great Falls as I found during a fall 2025 visit.

The proliferation of colorful, descriptive murals enliven downtown commercial buildings, including the highway underpass at the restored Milwaukee Road passenger station. the topic has been historic—witness the penetrating graze of town founder, Paris Gibson, below.

Or if it is a more abstract design in the city’s commercial heart ( the reproduction city street lights add charm too).

Downtown recreation is another positive change, as the river trail between the tracks of the Great Northern Railway and the Missouri River continues to expand and improve.

One of the state’s best skateparks also adds significantly to recreation, and community building in Great Falls.

And speaking to community building the restoration and adaptive reuse of downtown buildings create nighttime gathering spots, giving residents plenty of reason to come downtown. The Celtic Cowboy, located in a circa 1890 livery building, has become a popular pub while the owe era of Smoked took a 1930s building and made it a must-stop place for Barbeque.

Even the iconic Sip-N-Dip lounge has announced a renovation and improvements to this mid-20th century landmark.

My stop in Great Falls last October centered around a check of the renovation of the National Register-listed Union Bethel AME Church. Like many others I supported its grant application and I was pleased to see work underway to ensure another 100 years for this landmark.

No doubt the protection of the city’s historic buildings and finding new community uses for them continues as an anchor for Great Falls, be it the Children’s Museum or the impressive History Museum and Archives. Both are located along the city’s historic railroad corridor.

Preserving and telling local stories but Great Falls is further enhanced by two major national institutions—the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail interpretive center and the Charles M. Russell Museum.

The Russell continues to expand, and amaze, as it evolves from a regional to truly national cultural center. The city too is trending in that direction, which means that next visit will certainly be sooner than later.

Judith Landing over 40 years

Posted on January 31, 2026 by carrollvanwest

There are few places in the nation more important than the broad river valley at the confluence of the Judith and Missouri rivers in central Montana, a place only accessible by historic gravel roads. When I first visited in 1984, I came from the Fergus County side through Winifred.

View from MT 236 north of Winifred, 1984

Why is Judith Landing so important? It was a vital and frequently used crossroads for Northern Plains tribes for centuries. Then in 1805 as Lewis and Clark traveled on the Missouri, they camped at the confluence (private property today). In 1844, The American Fur Company established Fort Chardon, a short-lived trading post.

In 1846 Indigenous leaders of several tribes met at Council Island to discuss relations between the Blackfeet and other northwest tribes. In 1855 leaders from the Blackfeet, Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Nez Perce returned to Council Island to negotiate the Lame Bull treaty, which established communal hunting areas and paved the way for white settlement in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

Settlement first came with trading posts, serving a nearby army base, Camp Cooke (1866-1870) and connecting steamboat traffic on the Missouri to nearly mining camps (like Maiden). When the U.S. government moved the base, Fort Benton merchant T.C. Power developed his own businesses and post at Judith Landing and established “Fort Clagett” to the immediate west. In the 1880s he partnered with Gilman Norris to create the famous PN Ranch from the remnants of these early settlement efforts.

Visiting this place was a major goal of the 1984 historic preservation plan survey. At that time the ranch was still operating as a ranch and the one slide that I took shows several of the historic and new ranch buildings, yes from a distance because in the work I always respected private property boundaries.

Over the next 40 years I worked in Montana many times but never made a return to Judith Landing. I knew that the historic buildings of the PN ranch were there and that a National Register district existed affording some protection. Then in late 2024 came the news that Montana State Parks was acquiring 109 acres of the historic property and would create the Judith Landing State Park. I couldn’t wait to return and visited in late September 2025.

Interpretation and maps at the parking area

At that time there had been little in the way of “park development.” I hope it largely stays that way because the sense of time and place conveyed by the rustic, rugged surroundings is overwhelming. You can be lost in history.

The half-dovetail “mail barn” was moved to its location on the ranch about 1890. It continued to serve as a post office until 1919.

The stone warehouse was severely damaged in a flood 50 years ago—but it is hanging on, and indicates how important trade and commodities were here 150 years ago. It operated as a store until 1934 and then became a barn for the next 40 years until the flood of 1975.

Gilman and Pauline Norris’s own ranch house, a turn of the twentieth century Shingle-style beauty, speaks to the ranch’s success. perhaps it can be restored as a future park interpretive center, open in the summer.

Historic path/road down to the river landing from the front of the ranch house.

The important point is that, now, finally, Judith Landing is a state park, conserving one of the most remarkable places of the northern plains.

Tower Rock State Park

Posted on December 29, 2025 by carrollvanwest

Since my initial survey of Montana historic places in 1984-1985, Montana state parks has established several small but significant historic parks. One of these, Tower Rock State Park, is viewed by hundreds of drivers daily, as it is located directly on Interstate I-15 along the Missouri River Canyon in southern Cascade County.

Native Americans traveling from their Rocky Mountain homelands into the game-rich high plains, used the rock formation, over 400 feet high, as a landmark between the two regions. The Bitterroot Salish, Lower Kootenay, and the Piegan Blackfeet are all associated with the place. For the Piegan Blackfeet it was and is a sacred place. Groups camped in the vicinity between the Rock and Missouri River.

When on July 16, 1805 Capt. Meriwether Lewis of the famous Corps of Discovery encountered the Rock on his journey west, he noted the presence of what he called an “Indian road” around the Rock. He then decided to name the place and wrote in his journal: “this rock I called the tower. it may be ascended with some difficulty nearly to its summit, and from it there is a most pleasing view of the country we are now about to leave. from it I saw this evening immence herds of buffaloe in the plains below.^”

The surrounding region’s development took place in the late 19th century, accelerated by the decision of the Manitoba Road to built through the canyon a rail link connecting Great Falls, Helena and Butte. This line became known as the Montana Central Railroad.

In the early 20th century came an automobile route, U.S. Highway 91, and then the interstate highway in 1968. Interestingly, the property’s official designation as a historic site came much later. Tower Rock was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. Two years later, it became a state park of about 140 acres.

The park is day-use only but there is adequate public interpretation. There is also a maintained trail to the Rock’s base, allowing for a more direct experience with landscape and some mitigation of the noise from the highway. The importance of the place deserves a more robust treatment but perhaps more can come in the future ( and the adjacent disposal center can be moved to a more appropriate location).

Glasgow, Montana: It might be in the middle but it’s not nowhere

Posted on August 11, 2024 by carrollvanwest

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’s sense of itself today still respects it past, brilliantly conveyed by its large and expansive museum. When I first visited Glasgow 40 years

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.

Lewis and Clark mural, 2095, by Jessie Henderson, a Chippewa/Cree artist

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.

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.

Whitehall revisited

Posted on July 26, 2023 by carrollvanwest

I last addressed Whitehall, a town along the historic US 10 route (Montana Highway 2) seven years ago. I have always liked this place, as a crossroads (Montana 55 and2) and for its 20th century history as a sugar beet refinery town.

Passing through in May 2023, I realized that I had not said much about the town’s roadside art—especially murals. Is there a better decorated pawn shop than Community Pawn on Legion Avenue (Montana 2)?

Just down the street is a mural celebrating Whitehall itself on the side of the Star Theater.

Of purse Whitehall also has a mural about the Corps of Discovery, telling the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition in Jefferson County.

The Boarders Hotel is a reminder of the age when Montana, not nearby I-90, was a major east-west highway in Montana.

A block north of Legion Avenue is the town’s residential district. Is there a better example of yard art than this bungalow?, especially with its welcoming gate titled “sans souci” (without worry)?

Why worry indeed, when you can always stop at Whitehall’s Mint Bar before continuing your journeys in Jefferson County. cheers!

Decision Point on the Missouri River

Posted on August 14, 2022 by carrollvanwest

Confluence of Marias and Missouri Rivers

In my 1984 field study for the Montana state historic preservation plan, there were many places that were “known” to Native American tribal historians, students of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and scholars of the northern plains fur trade. But few of these places were provided public interpretation. much less public access. Such was the case with the Lewis and Clark campsite of early June 1805 at the confluence of the Missouri and Marias River.

Location of Lewis and Clark Expedition campsite

The campsite became known as decision point because as the expedition rested and regrouped there, they also decided which river to follow. After initial investigations, the members chose correctly and soon found themselves at the great falls of the Missouri River.

When I carried out my 1984 work, everyone knew that the confluence was at Loma, seen in the background of the photograph above. But access to the actual location and significant public interpretation was still to come. As I have written in numerous prior posts, one of the most significant changes from 1984-1985 and my recent work in Montana from 2012 to 2021 is the amount and quality of public interpretation and public access to significant historical landscapes. There has been a huge improvement, and Decision Point is an excellent example of federal agencies working with landowners and state and local government as part of the Upper Missouri River Breaks project.

The image above tells the story of the steamboat Ophir and the amount of river trade that once marked the Missouri River. The interpretive marker below tells the story of the early American Fur Company trading post known as Fort Piegan.

Even if you are not into the history of the region, the overlook created and maintained by the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is a beautiful vista, and conveys strongly the landscape as encountered by generations of Native Americans and then in much more rapid succession by the Lewis and Clark expedition, American and Canadian fur traders, steamboat travelers, and by the 1880s the tracks of the Great Northern Railroad. An absolutely stunning historic site.

Back on the Hi-Line: Culbertson

Posted on May 30, 2020 by carrollvanwest

The Hi-Line is Montana’s major northern transportation corridor–first carved by the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway in the 1880s and then extended by the Great Northern Railway a decade late. Today most travelers use U.S. Highway 2, which largely parallels the railroad, to traverse the Hi-Line. The first place you encounter of more than 500 people is Culbertson, established in the 1880s and named for Alexander Culbertson, who was once the factor (the manager) of the Fort Union fur trading post at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers.

The Great Northern depot at Culbertson

Earlier in this documentary blog on the Montana landscape, I discussed Culbertson as part of the landscape of oil and fracking then taking place in the region. Today I want to share images of community institutions that link the town’s more than 130 year history to the present. Historic churches are a good place to start.

The United Methodist Church reflecting a vernacular Gothic type that can be found all across the northern plains in the late 19th and early 20th century. The Community of

God Church shares that similar vernacular Gothic style and retains its bell tower. Mid-20th century modern style can be found in St. Anthony Catholic Church. As regular readers of the blog may recall, I have explored the diocese’s choice of mid-century modern style for many Catholic churches in eastern Montana. The Culbertson church is a good example of that pattern. Another church that belongs to the modern design era of the 20th century is Trinity Lutheran Church, especially as this distinguished building expanded over the decades to meet its congregation’s needs.

One of the most interesting buildings in Culbertson is the Armory, part of the significant impact that New Deal agencies had on the built environment of Roosevelt County in the 1930s. Justified as part of the nation’s war preparedness efforts in the late 1930s, so many armories across the country have found second life as public buildings, serving local government and community events.

In my earlier post about Culbertson I should have focused more on surviving commercial buildings from the early 20th century–the time of the homesteading boom. The beautiful cast-iron cornice on the Moen Building (1908) is impressive, one of the best examples of that Victorian commercial style still extant on the Hi-Line.

Some of the extant two-story commercial buildings from the homesteading boom show some architectural styling, like the two below, but then a former town bank is impressive in its detail and masonry as any in the region. Culbertson had high hopes in the 1910s.

On either side of the town center are two additional important institutions. The Culbertson Museum serves as a community heritage center but also as a visitor center for travelers entering Montana. Its outdoor sculpture of the Lewis and Clark Expedition is a reminder to all travelers that traces of the Corps of Discovery can be found along so much of the Hi-Line.

On the west side of town is its historic cemetery, the Hillside Cemetery. At first glance, it seems unimposing, more quaint that important. But the cemetery is the oldest historic

resource in Culbertson, and in fact is the the burial place of two former Union soldiers, one from Illinois and one from Minnesota, who fought in the Civil War. The markers are a reminder that the mid-19th century roots of Montana are never far away, even at the small town of Culbertson.

Roosevelt Co Culbertson cemetery Civil War

Roosevelt Co Culbertson cemetery Civil War 2

Montana State Capitol: update

Posted on November 9, 2018 by carrollvanwest

In 1982, two years before I began my survey of all 56 counties for the state historic preservation office, I took on a very meaningful and fun assignment—developing an interpretive tour of the recently restored Montana State Capitol. Jim Mc Donald’s firm in Missoula had developed a comprehensive study nd they and the many partners and contractors restored the grand spaces of this turn of the twentieth century building.

Designed by the firm of Bell and Kent, the Capitol is a jaw-dropping public space, which spoke of the state’s dreams and ambitions at its beginning. No matter how jaded you might be about politics and politicians today just a walk through the corridors of grandeur, and power, of the Capitol will remind you that democracy does matter and we the people continue down the demanding path of making ourselves rise up to democracy’s promise.

Plus the 1982 project was just a great learning experience. I worked most closely with Jennifer Jeffries Thompson, then the education curator at the Montana Historical Society, plus it became a way to meet and learn from the SHPO staff then, led by Marcella Sherry, and the architect Lon Johnson and architectural historian Pat Bick. Governor Ted Schwinden and his staff were great and I always appreciated the interest shown by Senate Republican leader (and future governor) Stan Stephens. Senator Stephens always wanted me to lead his groups through the building, but I never knew if that was because he thought I had something to say or that everyone always liked to hear me say it, with my southern accent echoing in the chambers and hallways.

I learned so much because the Capitol was full of magnificent western art depicting pivitol moments in state history, as understood by state leaders one hundred years ago. Everyone (my celebrities included actors Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall) wanted to see Charles M. Russell’s depiction of the Lewis and Clark expedition at Ross’s Hole in the House chamber. My favorites however were the series of historical paintings by Edgar Paxton in the legislative lounge and office area.

Paxson’s portrayal of Sacajawea showing the way at Three Forks—artistic license acknowledged—was always a favorite teaching opportunity for in a painting of 100 years ago Paxton depicted a reality—the presence and importance of a Native American woman and an African American slave, York—at a time when historians of the west had difficulty even acknowledging their existence in history.

I also liked the scope of Paxton’s narrative and the prominence of the Native American stor..u even to the surrender of Chief Joseph, which would have been fairly recent history when Paxton carried out his work.

The Senate Chamber taught other stories, from the process of voting and government to the story of the three Georgians who left the South in the midst of the Civil War to find riches in Last Chance Gulch, now Helena, and on to the massive Sioux and Cheyenne victory over George Armstrong Custer’s Calvary at the Battle of Little Big Horn.

While I had stopped in at the Capitol several times in the last decade, I did not really explore. My trip this summer found many more history lessons throughout the building.

The statue of the Mansfields were an effective complement to the earlier statues for Wilbur F. Sanders and Jeanette Rankin, which had booth stood in the Capitol when I worked there in 1882 and 1983. I also really like the bronze bell added in honor of the state’s centennial. Both the Mansfields and the bell allow you to take visitors into Montana’s late twentieth century history.

Then the women history murals, titled Women Build Montana, are just delightful, and inspiring. Installed in 2015 the murals by Hadley Ferguson add new layers of history and meaning to the grand old Capitol. Of course there is much more to the art and architecture of the State Capitol than what I have highlighted here. The Montana Historical Society maintains an excellent website that gives you all of the details you would ever need. But I hope that you do will visit the Capitol if you haven’t recently. Some 36 years after I first discovered its history, art, and architecture it still has many lessons to teach.

A Return to Fort Peck

Posted on March 30, 2017 by carrollvanwest

For sheer scale and audacity nothing in Montana built environment rivals the transformations wrought on the Missouri River and the peoples who for centuries had taken nourishment from it than the construction of Fort Peck Dam, spillway, powerhouse, reservoir, and a new federally inspired town from the 1930s to the early 1940s.

The mammoth size of the entire complex was just as jaw-dropping to me as it had been to the New Dealers and most Americans in the 1930s. That same spillway, for instance, had been the subject of the famous first cover of Life Magazine by Margaret Bourne-White in 1936.

When she visited in 1936 the town of Fort Peck housed thousands but once the job was over, the town quickly diminished and when you take an overview of Fort Peck, the town, today it seems like a mere bump in what is otherwise an overpowering engineering achievement.

Coming from a state that had headquartered another New Deal era transformation of the landscape–the even larger Tennessee Valley Authority project–I understood a good bit of what Fort Peck meant as I started my work for the state historic preservation plan in 1984. A good thing I knew a little because outside of a Montana Historic Highway marker and a tour of the power plant there was little in the way of public interpretation at Fort Peck thirty years ago.

First came efforts to better interpret the Corps of Discovery and their travels through this section of the Missouri River 15-20 years ago. The theme was Lewis & Clark in the Missouri River Country, but by the 2010s the region’s demanding weather had taken its toll on the installation.

At the lake’s edge are additional markers encouraging visitors to imagine the time before the lake when the Big Dry River often meant exactly what it said–the reservoir keeps it full now.

New interpretive markers combine with a well-defined pull-off to encourage travelers to stop and think about the loss of life that occurred in building the dam. Many of the massive infrastructure projects of the New Deal have similarly sad stories to tell–but few of them do.

You can explore the landscape with the assistance of the highway markers to a far greater degree than in the past. Even if today it is difficult to “see” the transformation brought about by the massive earthen dam, there are informative markers to help you.

The new visitor center at the Fort Peck powerhouses takes the site’s public interpretation to a new level. Just reading the landscape is difficult; it is challenging to grasp the fact that tens of

workers and families were here in the worst of the Great Depression years and it is impossible to imagine this challenging landscape as once lush with thick vegetation and dinosaurs.

Through fossils, recreations, artwork, historic photographs, recreated buildings, and scores of artifacts, the new interpretive center and museum does its job well. Not only are the complications of the New Deal project spelled out–perhaps a bit too heavy on that score, I mean where else do you see what the “Alphabet Agencies” actually meant–but you get an understanding of worlds lost in the name of 20th century progress.

Is everything covered? Far from it–too much in the new public interpretations focuses on 1800 to 1940, and not how Fort Peck has the harbinger of the Cold War-era Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin reject that totally transformed the river and its historic communities. Nor is there enough exploration into the deep time of the Native Americans and what the transformation of the river and the valley meant and still means to the residents of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. There’s still work to be done to adequately convey the lasting transformation that came to this section of Montana in the mid-1930s.

Canyon Ferry and the transformation of the Missouri River Valley

Posted on March 30, 2017 by carrollvanwest

Canyon Ferry Lake is the third largest in Montana. A good part of it lies just east of Helena, the state capitol, while the bulk of the lake stretches southward into Broadwater County. Living in Helena during the 1984-85 state historic preservation plan survey, and often driving U.S. 287/12 which parallels the lake, you would think that the lake and its history would have played a major role in that initial plan. Such was not the case–rarely did I or anyone else give it much of a thought. Canyon Ferry Lake in 1984 was just 30 years old–it was not “historic.”

But its historic impact can’t be ignored. As part of the massive federal plan to conquer the Missouri River, the Pick-Sloan Flood Control Act of 1944 was justified by wartime conditions–it would create new sources of hydroelectric power–but actual construction did not get underway until the later 1940s and 1950s. Historians have studied the act’s disastrous impact on Native American tribal lands in the west, and the environmental consequences of building some 50 dams on the Missouri and its various tributaries.

For Lewis and Clark County and Broadwater County, you can see the relationship between the dammed Missouri and irrigation, as shown above along Montana Highway 284, and you can find remnants of how the project displaced towns, landmarks, and people along the length of the river. No longer was the Missouri the river that the Corps of Discovery had traversed at the beginning of the 19th century.

St. Joseph Catholic Church, perched now on a barren bluff facing the lake, was moved about 2.5 miles east to its present location in 1954. Originally near the river in what was then known as the Canton Valley settlement, the church building is one of the state’s oldest, dating to 1874-1875 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The proud Gothic styled church is the remnant of one of the valley’s earliest settlements.

Not far from the church is another remnant of the early 20th century settlement boom during the early 20th century homesteading era after the creation of the county in 1897. Located along Montana Highway 284 this one-room school is typical of the type found throughout the state from 100 years ago, as adaptive by communities and school boards with the small gable-end extension creating storage space and a barrier between the cold winds of the outside and the inside of the classroom itself.

These vernacular buildings and landscapes compare starkly with what the U.S. Corps of Engineers built at Canyon Ferry in the 1950s. It is a Colonial Revival styled federal village–an architectural choice wildly out of step with regional traditions, and a reminder to anyone that here was the federal government, in the midst of the Cold War, placing its imprint on the land.

In 1984-1985 I ignored this new public landscape of a school, administrative building, work buildings, and village. Thirty years later, of course I see Canyon Ferry as a very distinct historic district, symbolic of the entire Pick-Sloan project and a significant example of an architectural aesthetic from the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

The Canyon Ferry headquarters of the mid-1950s is not listed in the National Register but it could be–an evocative grouping of buildings that helps to document that 60 years we were assured and more than a bit arrogant in our power and mastery of technology. We were convinced hat as we controlled the world, we could also control nature.

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