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.
buildings, the rather different design of the post office from the 1960s and the vernacular Gothic beauty of the historic Methodist Church, especially the Victorian brackets of its bell tower.
Another new financial services building since my 1980s visit to Circle is the McCone County Credit Union building, shown below to the left of the landmark McCone County Memorial building.
Craftsman style popular in the early 20th century. It is a place where the pages of the famous Craftsman Magazine seem to come alive as you walk the tree-lined streets. But there is more to Havre’s historic districts than the homes–there are the churches, about which more needs to be said.
As my first two images of the First Lutheran Church show, Gothic Revival style is a major theme in the church architecture of Havre, even extending into the mid-20th century. First Lutheran Church is a congregation with roots in Havre’s boom during the homesteading era. As the congregation grew, members decided to build the present building in 1050-51, adding an educational wing by the end of the decade.
The earliest Gothic Revival styled church is First Baptist Church, constructed c. 1901, shown above. The unidentified architect combined Gothic windows into his or her own interpretation of Victorian Gothic, with its distinctive asymmetrical roof line.
A more vernacular interpretation of Gothic style can be found in the town’s original AME Church, built c. 1916 to serve African American railroad workers and their families, and later converted and remodeled into the New Hope Apostolic Church.
The Spanish Colonial Revival style of St. Jude’s Catholic Church, however, shows us that architect Frank F. Bossuot was more than a classicist. The church’s distinctive style sets it apart from other church buildings in Havre.
The same can be said for a church building that comes a generation later, the Van Orsdel United Methodist Church. When the Havre historic district was established, this mid-century modernist designed building was not yet 50 years old, thus it was not considered for the district. But certainly now, in 2018, the contemporary styling of the sanctuary has merit, and the church has a long history of service. It started just over one hundred years ago with a brick building named in honor of the Montana Methodist circuit rider W. W. Van Orsdel who introduced the faith to Havre in 1891. A fire in late 1957 destroyed that building, and the congregation immediately began construction on its replacement, dedicating it in 1958.
The Hell Roaring’ Gulch part of the museum is in stark contrast to the mid-20th century engineered, technological landscape of the Orphan Girl Mine. It interprets the mining camp days of Butte from the late 1860s into the 1880s before the corporations stepped in and reshaped the totality of the copper mining industry and built environment of Butte.
artifacts and banners shown in this photo); the store, which displays common items sought by the miners and their families; and various offices that show the business of
mapping the mines, registering claims, and assaying the metals .
In my first post about the World Museum of Mining, I addressed this valuable collection of a historic mine, several historic buildings, and thousands of historic artifacts briefly. Properties like the impressive log construction of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, shown below, are invaluable. The World Museum of Mining deserved more attention, and it deserves the attention of any serious heritage tourist to Montana.
In the early posts of this exploration of Montana’s historic landscape I spoke of the transformation that I encountered when I revisited Glendive, the seat of Dawson County, for the first time in about 25 years, of how local preservation efforts had kept most of the town’s railroad era landscapes alive while leading to the revitalization of its amazing number of historic residences from 1900 to 1950.
Let’s now turn our attention to public landmarks, old and more recent, that also deserve notice, starting with the magnificent Classical Revival-styled City Hall, one of the anchors of the Merrill Avenue historic district, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1914, this all-in-one municipal building is an impressive architectural
statement by the second generation of Glendale’s leaders that the town would grow and prosper during the homesteading boom of the first two decades of the 20th century. The architect was Brynjulf Rivenes of Miles City. His firm had so many commissions coming from eastern Montana and Yellowstone Valley patrons that by this time Rivenes operated offices in both Glendive and Miles City.
Rivenes had earlier marked Glendive’s new emerging townscape with his Gothic design for the First Methodist Church, in 1909. Fifteen years later, he added another landmark church design with the Romanesque styled Sacred Heart Catholic Church (1924-1925).
With recovery and the arrival of more and more automobile traffic from the late 1930s to the 1950s, many of the older buildings received mid-century updates. The remodels could
The 1950s and 1960s brought many changes to Glendive. Post World War Ii growth both in the town and the many surrounding ranches led to expansion and remodeling at the historic Glendive Milling Company in 1955. When the historic districts for Glendive were designated in the late 1980s, preservationists questioned the inclusion of this important industrial/agricultural complex due to the changes of the 1950s. Viewed today, however, the mill complex is clearly a very significant historic site.
More contemporary styled church buildings were also dedicated in the mid-century, such as the classic “contemporary” styling of the Assembly of God building, with classrooms at
at the front rather than the rear, or the modified A-frame style of the First Congregational Church, which I shared in an earlier post on Glendive.
Glendive is very much a blending of different 20th century architectural styles, reaching back into the region’s deep, deep past, as at Makoshika State Park, where the visitor
center/museum is an excellent example of late 20th century modern style–clearly a building of the present but one that complements, not overwhelms, the beauty of the park itself.
The woman’s club began c. 1921 and had already made a major contribution to the town’s well-being in establishing its first library. After World War II, however, club members felt they should once again help build the community, by building a youth center and veterans memorial garden. Mrs. Norman Good proposed the project in 1946 and Mrs. G. D. Martin provided the first substantial donation. The club then held fundraisers of all sorts. By 1950, construction was underway, with contractor Clyde Wilson building the center with logs from Colby and Sons in Kila, Montana.
As the youth center was under construction, the woman’s club also reached an agreement with the school board to use land for the construction of a new football field, named McQuitty Field. Located behind the youth center, the field opened in 1950.
Thus, on U.S. Highway 12 lies the public recreation heart of Harlowton–a postwar gift of residents and service clubs to the community. In 1956, the woman’s club deeded the Youth Center to the Kiwanis Club, which still manages it today.
Road, it once also had several hotels and more short-term housing for workers and travelers–a good bit of that has disappeared, or is disappearing.
It is difficult to visit Harlowton and not notice the mammoth Montana Flour Mills set of concrete grain silos–today’s silent sentinels of what ranchers once produced in abundance in these lands.
The mill, made from locally quarried stone, came within months of the completion of the railroad to Harlowton–the concrete silos reflected the hopes of investors and local ranchers, as grain production soared in the 1910s–reaching some 1.2 million bushels in 1918. It wasn’t called Wheatland County for nothing. I still wish the big electric sign that once adorned the silos was still there.
But in the last 30 years, Polson has boomed as a lakeside resort town, with a population of 4700 today compared to the 2800 of the 1980s. Key landmarks remain but nothing has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since my 1984 visit, even the great New Deal modern courthouse above.
These landmarks need to be treasured because a new Polson is emerging all around town–and could crowd out the places that frame the community’s identity. Right now there is a balance between old and new, but a tipping point is around the corner.
Imagine my pleasure to be there for the theatre’s grand opening May 19, 2012. Not only had the community raised the funds to repair and reopen the business, they also took great pains to restore it to its earlier architectural glory. Such an achievement for a town of just over 3,000 residents–when you consider that the next city south on Interstate I-90 is Anaconda with its monument Washoe Theatre, I immediately began to think of future “movie palace” trips. What a treat, both for the experience and architecture.
In that same trip to Deer Lodge, I noted how the community had recently enhanced the National Register-listed W. K. Kohrs Memorial Library (1902), one of the region’s great Classical Revival buildings by the Butte architectural firm of Link and Carter (J.G. Link would soon become one of the state’s most renowned classicists), by expanding the library
with an addition to the side and behind the commanding entrance portico. Although it has proven to be difficult for such a small town to keep the library professionally staffed, the care they have shown the exterior and interior indicate they understand the value of this monument from the past.
Then add in the impressive examples of turn of the 20th century church architecture, represented by the Cotswold Gothic stone work of St. James Episcopal Church, the more former Tudor Revival of the 1st Presbyterian Church, and the more vernacular yet
Montana's Historic Landscapes 