Tag Archives: Montana historic cemetery

Klein’s Cemeteries, Part 2: Miracle Lodge #84 Cemetery

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On the east side of U.S. Highway 87, directly across from the UMW Cemetery in Klein, is the Miracle Lodge #84 cemetery. Fraternal lodges meant much to the early generations of Montana settlers, and all types of organizations were active in the state in the early 20th century, when this cemetery was established.

Klein, Montana.
Looking southwest of the cemetery toward Klein

Miracle Lodge #84 was affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization that began in the United States in 1819 when the first lodge organized in Baltimore, Maryland. The organization was designed to take care of members in illness and in old age, and provide burial services. There are numerous I.O.O.F. grave markers in the cemetery. There also are several markers related to the Endeavor Rebekah Lodge #71, which was the women’s side of organization. The Odd Fellows allowed for women members in 1851, with most male lodges having associated Rebekah lodges.

Miracle Lodge #84 Cemetery is a large, sprawling cemetery, that is still active. Among its most distinguishing features are the numerous family plots, outlined with low, concrete walls, which sometimes have several grave markers within, or no markers at all, with probably wooden or metal markers lost over the decades.

Miracle Lodge #84 Cemetery
From Miracle Lodge Cemetery looking west to UMW Cemetery

Together these two cemeteries, nestled in the foothills of the Bull Mountains and facing each other on U.S. Highway 87, are powerful historic sites, reminding us of mining communities long forgotten as well as the stunning diversity of the settlers who made up the founding generations of so many Montana communities.

A new future for Missoula’s City Cemetery?

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The City Cemetery is one of Missoula’s oldest extant public properties, if not the oldest since it dates with a year of the arrival of the tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the early 1880s. Recent news stories have spoken of surplus land and new development. I hope that as those plans for change are implemented that city officials also consider listing the cemetery in the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of the most interesting public cemeteries I have encountered in Montana. The cemetery also meets the criteria for eligibility of the National Register.

One of the best ways to document a cemetery for the National Register is to explore its historical significance. In the case of the Missoula cemetery, it dates to c. 1883-1884 as a public institution and represents an important way that early town officials began to build the public infrastructure for the city to come. Also the cemetery has several important markers that commemorative key groups and events in local history.

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Missoula Co Missoula Cemetery 11

For example, this section of early graves of the Montana Pioneers at the cemetery, marked initially by the large cross, has been memorialized by a recent (1982) commemorative tablet.

Missoula Co Missoula Cemetery 3 Relief Corps

This large obelisk marker dates to 1919 and refers to the effort of a once large and significant women-led group, the Women’s Relief Corps, who initially led the commemoration of Union dead from the Civil War, as an auxiliary organization to the Grand Army of the Republic.  The WRC stayed active through the Spanish-American War and World War I and this marker recognizes veterans from all of those conflicts.  

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Fraternal organizations were very important in Missoula’s late nineteenth and early twentieth century history.  Their membership is well represented throughout the cemetery; here are images of the Order of the Eastern Star and then a strategically placed Masonic monument at one of the cemetery’s crossroads.

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The image above speaks to the cemetery’s overall design, a reflection of the mid-nineteenth century Rural Cemetery Movement, which perceived a well designed cemetery serving almost like a city park, with curvilinear drives, landscaped grounds, and lots of ornamental plantings, from boxwoods to large, expressive trees.  The Missoula City Cemetery, as the next images show, has all of the traits of a Rural Cemetery Movement property.

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Missoula Co Missoula Cemetery 6These images speak to the cemetery’s architectural significance, another point of emphasis for a National Register nomination.  The cemetery has several elaborate grave markers, a virtual sculpture garden that also speaks to the city’s artistic expressions.

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Missoula Co Missoula Cemetery 9

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Yet as the image directly above suggests, the cemetery also represents the community and many of its grave markers are small and largely unadorned, reflective of a working to middle-class centered place as Missoula was for so much of its first 75 years.

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Nestled as it is south of the Northern Pacific mainline, the cemetery is a relaxing but noisy environment at many times.  Let’s hope that its new future reflects the importance of its past and this urban cemetery is not surrounded by high-rise buildings and development that transforms what has been an urban oasis for over 130 years into a mere dead end.