Terry, the seat of Prairie County, is an often forgotten, bypassed part of the Yellowstone River valley. Yet it has long been one of my favorite places, beginning with my first exploration of its history and landscape in 1984.
The valley is stunning—the river is wide and commanding buttes and badland outcroppings flank either river bank, as do the tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad (now Burlington Santa Fe) on the river’s south side and the later automobile Yellowstone Trail (old U.S. 10).
Once from 1997 to c 1980 the tracks of the Milwaukee Road ran along the north side of the river, from east of Terry into Miles City. Today you can still see traces of its roadbed and right of way.
In the 1980s residents impressed me greatly with their sense of, and pride in, their settlement past.
For my work on the state historic preservation plan in 1984, I held a community meeting in Terry, at the recently established Prairie County Museum.
It was a converted State Bank Building, an architecturally impressive 2-story Classical Revival-style building, anchoring one of the corners of the business district. The historical society had basically just moved in and kept many of the ban’s interior details and furnishings and used them to place objects on.
The meeting was a lot of fun, at least for me. And I learned a valuable lesson—listen and observe, don’t immediately judge. The example was a small graveyard, near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Powder Rivers, where the museum had installed a low fence and basic interpretive sign.
I acknowledged that this site was clearly significant but offered that without an interstate highway sign (an exit was less than a mile away) or a marker on old U.S. 10, which was adjacent to the cemetery), “no one knows that it exists or where to find it.” One resident then remarked: “son, we know where it is and what it means.” I have never made that boneheaded mistake again.
In the 1980s, another museum devoted to the amazing photography of Evelyn Cameron was established, in a historic building next to the museum.
The impressive preservation work already underway in Terry was not the only reason I liked Terry. It was a “double railroad” town, that still had its northern Pacific depot at the top of the “T” in the classic t-town plan found in some many Montana towns.
Then its county courthouse was one of the most unassuming public buildings in the state.
Plus there were two can’t miss heritage tourism experiences. The historic Kempton Hotel, a huge rambling, fascinating place is where I spent a night.
And I probably had too much to eat and drink at the local bar/cafe, Bud ‘n’ Bette’s. Bud and Bette Goplen owned and operated the place. Bud died in the 1990s but Bette kept it going until the end of the century. Not only were the pours generous and the beer cold, but they sold one of the best caramel rolls in the valley. And yes it did have prints of C.M. Russell paintings plastered along the walls and a fairly size-able Jim Beam decanter and bottle collection. What a place!
Little did I know that when I visited Terry in 1984, 1985, and 1988, it was during its height. Today the town’s and county’s population is about half of what it was in the 1980s.
The county courthouse has been modernized and enlarged while the Northern Pacific depot has been moved to the museum’s block.
Much had changed in the 20 years between visits in 1994 and 2014. When I had the chance to stop for a moment in 2026, I was concerned with the condition of the Northern Pacific caboose.
At the same time I was very happy to see the excellent condition of the early 20th century Terry school. It is a great building, so expressive of the founders’ hope for the town and county. 100 years ago.
I already noted in an earlier post the transformation of the hunters graveyard along old U.S. Highway 10–it is now one of the best interpreted sites along the Yellowstone River. Along the interpretive panels there is a short-distance walking trail with great views of the river plus you can easily see both the historic bridges over the Powder River at the confluence of the Powder and Yellowstone rivers.
And residents of Prairie County are not done. In partnership with the Montana History Foundation, the state historical society, and the county economic development office, they have added other markers about the deep history of this place in the Yellowstone valley.
Just wish I had a caramel roll from Bud ‘n’ Bette’s!
were so many intact details from the time of construction–built-in storage spaces, private restroom stalls, when hallway clocks ticking down the minutes in a day–the place was like a time capsule.
Intimate spaces, classroom spaces, grand public spaces. The Roosevelt School meant too much to be left to the wrecking ball, and the progress the community foundation is making there is reassuring: once again smart, effective adaptive reuse can turn a building in a sustainable heritage asset for the town. It’s worth checking out, and supporting. And it is next door to one of the state’s amazing throwback 1960s roadside
The work was still underway then, but the result after 30 years of local investment and engagement, assisted mightily by the state historic preservation office and other state groups, is impressive. The Grand Union is a riverfront anchor on one of the nation’s most important river towns in all of U.S. history.
The success of the Grand Union is mirrored in another property I visited in my 1984 day and a half in Fort Benton: the reconstructed Fort Benton. There were bits of the adobe blockhouse and walls still standing in 1984, as they had for decades as shown in the old postcard below.
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.
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.
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.
Downtown Missoula’s architectural wonders make it a distinctive urban Western place. Let’s start with my favorite, the striking Art Moderne styled Florence Hotel (1941) designed by architect G.A. Pehrson. Located between the two railroad depots on Higgins Street, the hotel served tourists and residents as a symbol of the town’s classy arrival on the scene–it was the first place with air-conditioning–of a region transforming in the 1940s and 1950s.
With the coming of the interstate highway in the 1970s, tourist traffic declined along Higgins Street and the Florence Hotel was turned into offices and shops, a function that it still serves today.
Next door is another urban marvel, the Wilma Theatre, which dates to 1921 and like the Florence it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The building was the city’s first great entertainment landmark (even had an indoor swimming pool at one time) but with offices and other business included in this building that anchored the corner where Higgins Street met the Clark’s Fork River. Architects Ole Bakke and H. E. Kirkemo designed the theatre in the fashionable Renaissance Revival style, with a hint towards the “tall buildings” form popularized by architect Louis Sullivan, the building later received an Art Deco update, especially with the use of glass block in the ticket booth and the thin layer of marble highlighting the entrance.
Missoula’s first major department store and entrepreneurial center. The late Victorian era architectural styling of the two-story building also set a standard for many other downtown businesses from 1890 to 1920. These can be categorized as two-part commercial fronts, with the first floor serving as the primary commercial space and the second floor could be offices, dwelling space for the owner, or most common today storage space.
Gibson, the building is one of the state’s best examples of what is called “Beaux Arts classicism,” a movement in the west so influenced by the late 1890s Minnesota State Capitol by architect Cass Gilbert.
Just as impressive, but in a more Renaissance Revival style, is the Elks Lodge (1911), another building that documents the importance of the city’s working and middle class fraternal lodges in the early 20th century.
Of more recent construction is another federal courthouse, the modernist-styled Russell Smith Federal Courthouse, which was originally constructed as a bank. In 2012, another judicial chamber was installed on the third floor. Although far removed from the classic
look, the Russell Smith Courthouse is not out-of-place in downtown Missoula. There are several other buildings reflecting different degrees of American modern design, from the Firestone building from the 1920s (almost forgotten today now that is overwhelmed by its neighbor the Interstate Bank Building) to the standardized designed of gas stations of
1930s and 1940s, complete with enamel panels and double garage bays, standing next to the Labor Temple.
Modernism is alive and well in 21st century Missoula, with a office tower at St. Patrick’s Hospital, a new city parking garage, and the splashy Interstate Bank building, which overwhelms the scale of the adjacent Missoula Mercantile building–which had been THE place for commerce over 100 years earlier.
