Hillcrest Cemetery, established in 1883, is not only one of Deer Lodge’s oldest community institutions, it is also one of its most compelling and beautiful nestled as it is west of the town within the Deer Lodge Valley. Burials here date to at least 1872 (the earliest legible death date I found on a marker). The general layout of the cemetery comes from a map provided by the City of Deer Lodge on its website.
The diversity of its grave markers adds to the beauty and rich stories found at Hillcrest. The classical mausoleum for the John Morony family commands the northern end of the cemetery, with its low square posts linked by chain defining a spot that is within the cemetery but also outside of it. John Morony was a Montana native who gained great wealth as the managing director of the Amalgamated Copper Company in addition to several banks from Great Falls to Anaconda, Missoula, and Dillon and as a major investor with the Montana Power Company.
South of the Marony mausoleum is most of the cemetery’s burials, with the well maintained grounds marked by large trees, various ornamental plantings and drives that crisscross the cemetery allowing you easy access to its different sections.
The ethnic diversity of those buried here is striking, reminding us that Deer Lodge was more than the location of the state prison (a very important fact) but also a place that the railroads shaped, with the Utah Northern, then the Northern Pacific, and finally the Milwaukee Road laying tracks through the valley. The latter had the most impact as the Milwaukee made Deer Lodge a division point with roundhouses and other buildings, which stood in the 1980s but are now largely gone.
There are many markers of artistic value, from formal, carved stones rich in symbolism and architectural detail to those of a more vernacular design origins, which can even be difficult to translate today.
Hillcrest Cemetery also has grave markers that reflect patterns found in other Montana community cemeteries in those that mark fraternal lodge memberships and service in the U.S. armed forces.
The cemetery also has early pioneers buried here, including Conrad Kohrs, whose historic ranch, the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, is a National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service not far from the cemetery.
The grave markers above are just a few of the many at Hillcrest Cemetery worthy of acknowledgement and fuller study. This historic place is one of the most interesting community cemeteries I have encountered in Montana.
Standing quietly next to Forestvale Cemetery is Helena’s Odd Fellows Cemetery, formed in 1895 when several local lodges banded together to create a cemetery for its members. Most visitors to Forestvale probably think of this cemetery as just an extension of Forestvale but it is very much its own place, with ornamental plantings and an understated arc-plan to its arrangement of graves.
Compared to Forestvale, there are only a handful of aesthetically imposing grave markers, although I found the sole piece of cemetery furniture, the stone bench above, to be a compelling reminder of the reflective and commemorative purpose of the cemetery.
One large stone monument, erected in the 1927 by the Rebekah lodges (for female members) of the town, marks the burial lot for IOOF members who died in Helena’s Odd Fellows Home, a building that is not extant. The memorial is a reminder of the types of social services that fraternal lodges provided their members, and how fraternal lodges shaped so much of Helena’s social and civic life in the late 19th and early twentieth century. Helena’s Odd Fellows Cemetery is a significant yet overlooked contributor to the town’s and county’s historic built environment.
Kalispell’s Main Street–the stem of the T-plan that dates to the town’s very beginning as a stop on the Great Northern Railway–has a different mix of businesses today than 30 years ago when I visited during my state historic preservation plan survey. It also now is a historic district within National Register of Historic Places, noted for its mix of one-story and two-story Western Commercial style businesses along with large historic hotels and an opera house for entertainment.
The Opera House, and I’m sorry you have to love the horse and buggy sign added to the front some years ago, dates to 1896 as the dream of merchant John MacIntosh to give the fledging community everything it needed. On the first floor was his store, which over the years sold all sorts of items, from thimbles to Studebakers. The second floor was a community space, for meetings, a gymnasium, and even from a brief period from 1905 to 1906 a skating rink. In this way, MacIntosh followed the ten-year-old model of a much larger building in a much larger city, the famous Auditorium Building in Chicago, providing Kalispell with a major indoor recreation space and landmark. Allegedly over 1000 people attended a performance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin soon after the opening.
The Alpine Lighting Center dates to 1929 when local architect Fred Brinkman designed the store for Montgomery Ward, the famous Chicago-based catalog merchant. Its eye-catching facade distinguished it from many of the other more unadorned two-part commercial blocks on Main Street.
In my state historic preservation plan work of 1984-1985, Thompson Falls became one of my favorite stops. No one much in the professional field had been surveyed here yet, and then I was particularly interested in how the Northern Pacific Railroad transformed the late territorial landscape. As the image above shows, Thompson Falls was a classic symmetrical-plan railroad town, with a mix of one and two-story buildings from the turn of the 20th century. I focused on this commercial core.
The public meeting at the mid-20th century Sanders County Courthouse was well attended and most were engaged with the discussion: the pride, identity, and passion those in attendance had for their history and their interest in historic preservation was duly noted. The courthouse itself was not a concern–it dated to 1946 and wasn’t even 40 years old then. But now I appreciate it as a good example of Montana’s post-World War II modern movement, designed by Corwin & Company in association with Frederick A. Long
Little did I understand, however, that the sparks of a local community effort were already burning–and within two years, in 1986, Thompson Falls had placed many of its key historic properties in the National Register of Historic Places.
The old county jail (1907) has been transformed into a museum, both preserving one of the town’s oldest properties but also creating a valuable heritage tourism attraction. The contractors were Christian and Goblet, a local firm that had a part in the construction of the town’s building boom once it was designated as the county seat.
The mid-20th century Sanders County Courthouse is to the west of the commercial core and it marks how the town stretched to the west in the latter decades of the century.
Along with the conversion of businesses and the adaptive reuse of older buildings, Thompson Falls also has located key community institutions, such as the local library first established in 1921, along Main Street facing the railroad tracks.
But many community institutions–fraternal lodges such as the Masonic Lodge above, the public schools, and churches are on the opposite side of the tracks along the bluffs facing the commercial core. Thompson Falls is a very good example of how a symmetrical plan could divide a railroad town into distinctive zones.
The late 19th century discovery and development of silver mines high in the Granite Mountains changed the course of this part of the Pintler route. The Granite Mountain mines yielded one of the biggest silver strikes in all of Montana, creating both the mountain mining town of Granite and a bit farther down on the mountain’s edge the town of Philipsburg, which by 1893 served as the seat for the new county of Granite.
The U.S. Forest Service’s rather weathered and beat-up sign marks the historic entrance to the mining town of Granite, located at over 7,000 feet in elevation above the town of Philipsburg. During the 1984-85 state historic preservation plan work Granite was the focal point. The office knew of the latest collapse of Miners Union Hall (1890) turning what had been an impressive Victorian landmark into a place with three walls and lots of rubble–it remains that way today.
Connecting the Granite road to the town of Philipsburg, today as in the past, is the site of the Bi-Metallic Mill, which is still in limited use today compared to the mining hey-day.
Montana's Historic Landscapes 