Montana’s Stockman’s Bars

Posted on November 21, 2016 by carrollvanwest

As promised in the last post, we are taking a bit of a detour and exploring some of Montana’s bars, especially those with the name Stockman’s or Stockmen’s. The Stockman’s Bar in Missoula is certainly the most famous one in the state, as it has

entertained generations of Grizzly students and fans–note the window mural. But it is just one of several favorite Stockman’s Bars I have encountered in my Montana fieldwork. My top choice is actually on the other end of the state–almost in North Dakota in fact–the Stockman’s Bar in Wibaux.

During my initial work of the 1980s, the large electric sign still worked–and those words just beckoned you to come in, especially as the interior was lit up with the large glass block windows. This place was a drinkers’ hangout–you went down to the Shamrock for food.

A similar large electric sign welcomes you to Central Montana’s Stockman’s Bar in Harlowton–the one mentioned in the last post. But to be a good Stockman’s Bar, a flashy sign is not a necessity–as proven by the friendly Stockman’s Bar in Hall, back in the western part of the state.

But cattle and sheep country–at least historic towns associated with stock growing–are where most of the Stockman’s Bars can be found. Wolf Point’s Main Street is famous for its commercial strip, named Front Street faces the highway and tracks of the Great Northern Railway. One of historic institutions along that corridor is the Stockman’s 220 Club, a real institution for residents and travelers.

Another altered facade is at the historic Stockman’s Bar in Roundup, another livestock growing center and the seat of Mussellshell County.

My favorite combination bar/restaurant with the Stockman name is in the Livingston’s historic district. I rarely come to town without a stop at this drinking landmark.

These buildings are a mere sampling of the Stockman’s Bars in Montana. There are more to explore in all sections of the state, from Bridger to Kalispell.

Another visit to Harlowton

Posted on November 21, 2016 by carrollvanwest

Over the weekend I received a message, asking for more on Harlowton, the seat of Wheatland County. I had developed three posts about Harlowton and other roadside properties in the county, but the reader was spot on–there is more than just the Milwaukee Road story in this central Montana town. Let’s start with the building above, originally built as the Harlowton Woman’s Club Youth Center in 1950.

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.

Steps from the Youth Center parking lot lead directly to the football field.

At about the same time, the woman’s club also reached an agreement with the Kiwanis Club to provide land for a community swimming pool. The women lost their initial vision of a memorial garden, but had gained for the community two institutions–the football field and the swimming pool–that continue to serve Harlowton’s children today.

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.

Wheatland Co Harlowton school neighborhood 1

As the images of the football field show, the recreation centers are surrounded by housing, and yes, Harlowton has an interesting range of domestic architecture–centered in the c. 1910 to c. 1960 period as you might imagine. As a major railroad center for the Milwaukee

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.

Gothic-styled churches also reflect the town’s early 20th century architectural aesthetic. The Harlowton Wesleyan Church (above) and St. Joseph’s Catholic Church (below) are good small town examples of Gothic style, especially the flashy mid-century permastone exterior of St. Joseph’s church.

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.

The Harlowton Public School building is another valuable survivor from the homestead boom era in the town’s history, as other other scattered commercial buildings and bank buildings–none are architecturally overwhelming but they are express the western commercial look of the early 20th century–hopeful but not overly ambitious.

Harlowton today has even picked up another depot–a moved one, that once served on the Great Northern railroad spur–the Billings and Northern–that cut through the east side of Wheatland County. It is out of place on the highway–but glad it is still in use.

Let’s end with a shout out to classic taverns–in this case Central Avenue’s Oasis Bar and the Stockman Bar. Indeed, with its classic electric sign, the Stockman Bar begs the question–where are the state’s other Stockman Bars. Ah, the next post.

Lewistown’s Heritage Development

Posted on November 19, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Photo by Montana Preservation Alliance.

During the state historic preservation planning process in 1984-1985, the new historic preservation efforts in Lewistown, especially the focus on the sandstone masonry of the Croatians, were noted and celebrated as well as the town’s only “marked” historic site, Reed’s Fort Post Office, associated with the very early history of settlement in Fergus County and the history of the Metis who lived here in the 1870s and 1880s. Certainly much more was known about the community’s history and architecture. But there was little public interpretation, except for this log building and, on the other side, of the town, a public park with military artifacts including an ICBM missile–a rarity then and now for a public park anywhere in the west.

Even the local museum was at the beginning stage, sharing quarters with the chamber of commerce in a Ranch-style building, like the park, on the outskirts of town.

How times changed over 30 years. The museum is still at its location but adjacent is now a new facility, replicating a huge barn, expanded exhibits and artifacts about the region’s history.

Markers about National Register-listed properties and districts exist throughout town, courtesy of the exemplary interpretive marker program of the Montana Historical Society.

What happens within town is supported by recent interpretive marker installations at the highway rest stop as you enter Lewistown. From this spot there is an excellent view of the historic Lewistown airfield, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, for its significance in World War II aerial supply lines and defense.

Not only can you see the historic district, you also can learn about its significance through an interpretive marker developed by Montana Department of Transportation.

Steps away is another interpretive kiosk, related to an earlier, sadder military story, that of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians and their attempted flight to freedom in Canada in the 1870s. Both markers also emphasized the overall theme of transportation and how Lewistown has been crisscrossed by important historical events for centuries.

Walking tour brochures help visitors and residents understand more of the history and architectural beauty of the town, from landmarks such as St. Leo’s Catholic Church, an amazing interpretation of Italian

Renaissance revival style from the prominent Montana firm of Link and Haire, and the historic early 20th century domestic architecture in the downtown neighborhoods.

The town’s historic districts serve as anchors within the commendable trail system developed in Lewistown over the last 20 years. Local officials and representatives, working with the state government and abandoned railroad property and corridors, have established a series of trail loops that not only provide excellent recreational opportunities, as signified in this trail head near the Yogo Inn, but also paths for heritage tourists and

residents alike to explore the landscape, and how history in the 19th and 20th centuries created the place where they live and play today.

As we will see later in western Montana, like in Butte and Kalispell, trail systems can be the best of heritage development because they take advantage of the state’s greatest asset–its landscape and sense of the Big Sky Country–and combine it with explanations of the layers of history you encounter wherever you go, creating an asset that visitors will like but that residents will cherish, because they can use it on a daily basis.

Of course recreation, to my mind, is never complete unless there are nearby watering holes where one can relax and replenish, and Lewistown is rich in those too, being they the various classic roadside establishments along the highways entering and leaving town or the can’t miss taverns downtown, such as The Mint and the Montana Tavern, where the signs speak to the good times to come. Those properties are crucial for heritage development because they are important in themselves but they also are the places that get people to stop, and hopefully explore.

Using multiple pasts to create new opportunities for communities: Lewistown has it going, and it’s far different world today than in 1984.

Plains Country Towns in Montana’s Judith Basin

Posted on November 12, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Milwaukee Road Corridor, Moore, 1984.

In my work with the State Historic Preservation Office in 1984-1985, my colleagues put up with many of my own peculiar interests and views of the Montana historic landscape, especially the focus on public buildings and the state’s railroad corridors. My interests, however, in the country towns of the Judith Basin was probably always a puzzler; staff always wished I would press on to Lewistown, where some of the best preservation work in the state was taking place in the mid-1980s (much more on Lewistown a bit later). But I must admit that the maze of small towns–never numbering more than 200 or so souls in any given place–created by the railroads as they fought for market dominance in the rich agricultural region of the Judith Basin some 100 years ago was just fascinating.

Grain elevators at Moore, 1984

And they remain so today. The geographer John Hudson had provided basic insights on the creation, distribution, and purpose of the country towns in the larger development of the northern plains–he coined the phrase “plains country towns.” The constant elements that they all shared–oriented to the tracks, the dominance of grain elevators, the prominence of depots–underscore the railroad era origins. But the towns all had their own individual places and statements, be it a woman’s club, a library, the school, and the bars and taverns. Thirty years later, much was missing from what I experienced in 1984–every place lost population between 1980-2010–but much still remained, and residents seemed determined to keep it that way.

Moore still has its grain elevators but the Milwaukee depot is long gone, creating an empty space along the corridor. Moore has the look of so many Milwaukee Road towns with a T-plan design apparent today even as the town decline from its height of 575 residents in 1920 to the 193 of today.

But the town, which compared to many I visited in 1984 had declined to a lesser degree (229 residents in 1980 to 193 in 2010), still has its public institutions. The Moore Woman’s Club is celebrating its centennial in 2015 while the town’s public library is another key community center while the continued operation of the unassuming Moore public school

is undoubtedly the major reason that the town is still here today.

The Great Northern Railway spur line that snaked north from the Yellowstone Valley at Laurel through the Judith Gap then the basin was always a corridor of great interest to me, although the towns created along the way were small, seemingly inconsequential compared to the linking of Great Falls and Billings.

Traveling north out of the Yellowstone then Musselshell valleys, the Great Northern line entered the basin at Judith Gap, and the homesteaders who followed built a grand two-story brick school that spoke of their ambitions.

The corridor then left in its wake places forgotten today. Travelers along U.S. 191 may notice the old brick state bank building and elevators at Garneill, but they may not.

The highway veers away from the railroad line at Garneill, meaning that the old state bank at Buffalo was a forgotten place in 1984–and the town remains so today.

First State Bank, Buffalo, 1984.

Hobson, on U.S. 87/Montana 200, has experienced a much brighter history. Its brick bank building houses a local bar. While no depot remains, the town’s railroad line remains a

point of focus, although most traffic, commercial and otherwise, relies on the highway. Hobson’s population when I visited in 1984 was at its height, 261 people in 1980, and it still tops over 200 today. Another defining characteristic is Hobson’s rather unique (for a plains country town) boulevard plan.

On either side lie business and public buildings and the street ends at the high school, where the six-man football field is a central element of the community’s public landscape.

The Murray Block, 1910, dominates the business district today as it much have done one hundred years ago–it is rare to see a false-front concrete block building. The Masonic

Lodge probably helps to identify some of the builders of Hobson’s historic structures located on the boulevard. But whoever the builders were, here is a very interesting place

and just as importantly the properties are in use, be they a cafe, a store, or a library. A long two-lane road, Montana 239, stretches east from Hobson along the Judith River and headed into Little Belt Mountains. The paved road ends at the earlier settlement of the

basin, the cowboy town of Utica, made famous by the paintings and writings of Charles M. Russell, the state’s most famous artist. Utica has a strong sense of itself, although it is justa tiny place today. A large part of that sense of the past is maintained and enhanced by the work of the Utica museum, the local historical society, and the town rod and gun club. Utica has a level of public interpretation that was certainly not in place in 1984 and that today is rarely matched in a small Montana town.

Utica also has done a commendable job of maintaining and preserving key community buildings, such as the early 20th century school and community hall, both properties associated with the homesteading boom of that time. The town’s historic store is a little

worse for the wear of 100 years of use, but it is still here, and the stone construction speaks strongly to the vernacular quality of the area’s built environment.

History and preservation are not the only reasons for Utica’s survival. In true Montana fashion, most people who take the long drive here come for the food, drink, and good

times at the Oxen Yoke Inn–why else would you locate the town’s primary interpretive sign next to the bar’s parking lot.

For most travelers the highway from Hobson at the eastern end of Judith Basin County to Stanford, the county seat, in the center of the county, is just open road. But between those two towns three Great Northern hamlets still have significant remnants of their past. Moccasin was such a favorite in 1984 that the resulting book from the survey work, A Traveler’s Companion to Montana History, had two images from the place–the New Deal school, with its totally out of place but flashy Art Deco design, and the two-story Classical Revival styled bank building. Those landmarks remain in Moccasin, but much worse for the wear. The school is clearly among those threatened landmarks highlighted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2012. The bank is hanging on, barely.

Moccasin still has other historic buildings worthy of note, such as a church, its town pump, even a telephone booth (a real disappearing part of the landscape from 1984 to 2014).

More importantly, its historic Great Northern combination depot, although battered, still is along the tracks nearby the elevators, reminding anyone looking closely enough of the railroad roots of the place.

The next two towns of Benchland and Windham also retain their historic depots. The Benchland station has deteriorated in the last generation as documented in a comparison of a 1984 image with one from 2014.

The Windham depot has been moved slightly off the tracks–but still within a stone’s throw of the rails. The station, along with the historic commercial strip of the T-town plan, and historic elevators, still give meaning to the “W” of the town sign.

The curve of the tracks headed to Stanford is a good place to rest with this post–more on the plains country towns of the Judith Basin in the next post.

The Scenic and Historic Landscape of Montana Highway 78

Posted on September 17, 2015 by carrollvanwest

Montana Highway 78 is not one of the state’s major roads nor one of its recognized special routes of scenic and cultural wonders. Yet as the road cuts away from the Stillwater River in southern Stillwater County and heads into the bare yet compelling rolling hills of Carbon County, it cuts quite a path, a winding road that goes by historic stock barns, one-room schools, streams coming out of the mountains, and overviews suggesting the grandeur and mystery of this place.

Gambrel-roof barn near Fishtail, Highway 78

Classic center-aisle stock barn with side extensions, Highway 78 outside of Roscoe

The Hogan School is a turn of the twentieth century delight, the model one-room schoolhouse design of that period. The Hogan family had established the county’s first rural school in 1887; this later building served the surrounding ranch kids until 1967. Its preservation today is an excellent example of local stewardship by the property owner.

There are several different pull-offs along the road, with one dedicated to two very different historic markers. One interprets how the Bozeman Trail cut through this landscape in the 1860s: it is the historic Montana Highway Historic Marker, part of the program documented by Glenda Bradshaw and Jon Axline in their work, and dates back to the mid-20th century when the state got serious about developing heritage tourism experiences for visitors. Next to the rustic-themed state marker is a private marker, honoring J.E. Madson, an influential early Lutheran pastor in the region. Its Art Deco styling is totally different from the historical marker but it also ties into the highway aesthetic of the mid-20th century.

Roscoe is my favorite hamlet along Highway 78, in part because of the local effort to preserve such key landmarks as the schoolhouse along the highway and because of the preservation of historic commercial buildings from the town’s heyday 100 years ago.

The real reason I always visit Rosecoe whenever possible is the same reason generations of Montanans come here–the Grizzly Bar. I first discovered the Grizzly in 1984 and loved its look, its hospitality, its community feel, and oh yeah, its steaks.

Thirty years later, thank goodness the grizzly bear sculpture still dominated the facade, although the sign itself had been modernized. The place also had expanded in size–but its feel remained much as it was in the 1980s and 1990s: mostly a community gathering place particularly on the weekend that also could be flexible and accommodating enough to welcome us visitors in the summer. It is one of the best rural bars in the state.

Another highway pull-off provides one of those “Scenic Overlooks” found through the state. This one perhaps not as spectacular as others but also giving travelers a sense of what this landscape is like, and what awaits them as they continue down to Highway 78’s southern terminus at Red Lodge, where the preservation ethic and the successes over 30 years will be the next topics of the blog.

Geraldine: A Milwaukee Road Town that made it

Posted on May 10, 2015 by carrollvanwest

My last post looked at the disappearing towns of the Milwaukee Road in central Montana’s Meagher County. Those themes of a railroad, town creation, and abandonment were constant in several posts as I traced the imprint of the Milwaukee on Montana’s landscape in the 20th century. However, not all central Montana plains towns tied to the Milwaukee Road have disappeared–Geraldine in Chouteau County is one of those exceptions.

Milwaukee Road depot at Geraldine, c. 1998

Geraldine was established c. 1913 along a major spur line of the Milwaukee Road that connected its division point at Harlowtown to the much larger railroad transportation center of Great Falls to the north. Due to the richness of the high plains agriculture of southern Chouteau County–the land south of the Missouri River–and the commitment of its citizens, Geraldine has remained generally solid through the decades. According to census records, the town has never topped 400 residents, 375 being the largest number of residents, and now, according to the 2010 count, there are only about 100 less, a little over 260 residents. Losing what amounts to 25-30% of the population over the 100 years sounds like a disappearing town, true, but in an eastern Montana perspective, it is not. As this blog has documented at many places, too many plains country towns have lost 50% or more of their population in just the last 30 years.

In the 1984-85 historic preservation survey, Geraldine impressed me for several reasons. First was the dominating presence of the grain elevators, as seen above and with the first photo in this blog. I had grown accustomed to Milwaukee Road towns where the corporate standardized design for the combination depot–a building that joined both freight and passenger operations–dominated the railroad corridor. Here the elevators punctuate the skyline and loom over the town itself–the railroad created the need for them, certainly, but by the end of the 20th century the elevators were still viable businesses while the depot had become a local museum and community center.

Then there was the town plan. Milwaukee Road country towns were “T-plan” towns where the tracks, depot, and elevators defined the top of the T while the town’s business district formed the stem of the T. Geraldine was a bit different, a tilted T-plan town, where the top

of the T, due to the railroad’s approach was slanted, giving Geraldine, compared to other Milwaukee towns, an off-kilter look. Geraldine also still had business, although the number of independent places had diminished since 1984-1985. Two key institutions today are

the local state bank, a Classical Revival-styled two-story building from c. 1914 that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the First National Bank of Geraldine. Unlike scores of other local institutions in the 1920s and 1930s, the Geraldine bank did not close its doors and continues to serve ranchers and town residents today. It is a rock from Geraldine’s past that surely helps to define its future. The same can be said for the

Geraldine school–home of the Tigers. This local school has several different building periods, as this image of its facade indicates, but maintaining a school district is vital to the town–plains country towns that lose their schools soon become abandoned places.

Geraldine touches upon many key theme of eastern Montana history–in subtle yet significant ways. It even lightly touches on another theme of this blog–Montana Modernism. No one was much looking at the contemporary styled buildings of the late 1950s and 1960s in 1984-1985. I was no exception. But in the 21st century, we want to document those buildings and appreciate how the new architecture expressed the hopes of the post World War II generation. Geraldine’s contribution is its United Methodist

Church, with its particularly notable tall concrete bell tower, mixing a bit of tradition with the new look of the postwar generation.

Geraldine of course has a classic western watering hole–Rusty’s Bar and Grill, completed with its front glass block windows. It is highly recommended–not much on the outside admittedly but a full community experience on the inside. Historic depot and bank, modern-styled church, unique town plan, and great bar: more than enough reasons to come to Geraldine, not once but whenever travels take you between Great Falls and the Musselshell River Valley.

Miles City: The Yellowstone’s Forgotten Jewel

Posted on December 27, 2014 by carrollvanwest

When I first visited Miles City more than 30 years ago I came to find out more about this first white settlement place in the Yellowstone Valley, where the U.S. Army established its Tongue River Cantonment in 1876 and then, after the battles at Rosebud and the Little Bighorn that same year, it established Fort Keogh, named in honor of Myles Keogh, one of the soldiers who died at Little Bighorn. I had a small travel grant from the American Association of state and Local History to support this research–the beginnings of the eventual Capitalism on the Frontier book of 1993, so I spent time in the local library–part of which was a classical-styled Carnegie Library, with a rather garish yet functional extension from the 1970s covering up the original building’s facade.

I spent time that evening at another landmark, the Montana Bar, part of an early 1900s building that is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The bar was not only full of friendly, helpful types. It also had one of the most amazing intact tavern interiors I had yet encountered in Montana.

Here, in these dark-stained wood booths, the decorative pressed tin ceiling, the magnificent back bar, and all of the stuffed animal heads seemed to be the real West that was being forgotten and covered over in the more urban, more populated western half of Montana where I lived.

Miles City especially seemed a throw-back when, across the street, was the biggest, most splashy bar sign I had yet seen in Montana: that of the Ranger Rider Bar.

That evening I never considered meander through the streets out to the chain motels out by the interstate highway. I just walked across the street to the Olive Hotel, a historic downtown hotel from the railroad era; the build just stood a few blocks away from the Northern Pacific Railroad depot and faced Main Street, what was for many decades u.S. Highway 10, the primary east-west link in Montana.

For many visitors no doubt, a day and night in Miles City would be more than enough–that was certainly the reaction back in Helena. But that early 1983 visit would be just one of many over the years since as I have carefully explored the city’s many layers, ones far deeper and more significant than the real West image the town still carries proudly. Next comes my real introduction to Miles City during the preservation plan travel of 1984, and my meeting with the Rivenes family.

Glasgow on the Hi-Line

Posted on July 23, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Glasgow, the seat of Valley County, has a rich small-town urban landscape, among the best along the Hi-Line of U.S. Highway 2. Although businesses and population has struggled since I spent time there during my 1984 fieldwork (the population dropped from 4,455 in 1980 to 3,250 in 2010), the town retained an edge of vibrancy and vigor.

Many of the patterns shaping life in the northern reaches in Montana are still on display within Glasgow, starting with the original impact of the Manitoba Road, then Great Northern Railway. The combination passenger station continues to serve travelers, who if they wish to step off the train will find a classic strip of bars and cafes facing the depot.

The railroad corridor has deeply imprinted the town, with giant elevators dominating the skyline while even the highway as it dips under the tracks by means of the New Deal-era underpass pays tribute to the true “right-of-way” through Glasgow.

So too has the federal government left a deep imprint on the town, from the irrigation projects of the U.S. Reclamation Service to the construction of Fort Peck Dam in the 1930s and then the Glasgow Air Force Base in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Glasgow Post Office and Federal Courthouse lies at the heart of downtown, reflecting in its blocky massiveness and Art Deco styling the federal presence.

Just as important, the building tells the federal side of the local story through the New Deal mural, “Montana Progress,” by artist Forest Hill that adorns the lobby. It is one of the state’s six extant New Deal post office murals. Here the coming era of progress–symbolized by railroads, irrigation (the sugar beet factory), Fort Peck Dam and electric power–supplants cowboys, Indians, and the rural landscape itself.

Another landmark featured in the mural is the Glasgow Civic Center, part of the larger effort to create community institutions in the face of the often overwhelming sense of change and despair during the Great Depression. The Civic Center still serves as a town anchor, an important part of Glasgow’s public landscape.

The federal imprint left a decided modernist turn to the townscape, although preservation efforts in the last generation have kept earlier classical or revival-inspired buildings part of the town, such as the Goodkind Block, the First National Bank, and especially the Rundle Building, which may be the town’s most distinctive architectural statement from its initial settlement and development era.

The highway corridor shows the modernism of the 1950s most graphically through restaurants, bank buildings, and signs designed to grab the attention of all those who entered.

Glasgow’s built environment tells the story of how federal programs, from irrigation to New Deal to the Cold War, could leave marks still apparent in the 21st century.

Back on the Hi-Line at Chinook: a town that got it

Posted on May 15, 2014 by carrollvanwest

Chinook, the seat of Blaine County, has long been among my favorite Hi-Line towns. Certainly there is the Elk Bar, with its cowgirl in the champagne glass neon sign,–is there a better bar sign in the Big Sky Country? But then Chinook is most definitely a railroad town of Great Northern vintage. Then it is part of U.S. highway corridor, and I loved staying at what was then a Mom and Pop Bear’s Paw motor lodge on the west side of town in 1984. And it is irrigation country, and the impact of the federal Milk River Project in the early 20th century. Railroads, highways, irrigation, bars–throw in that the town is also the gateway to the Bear’s Paw National Battlefield and the end of the Nez Perce National Historic Trail: little wonder I stayed there for 3 days in 1984 exploring a wide swath of the region.

This post is subtitled “a town that got it” for the simple reason that when I visited in 1984, outside of the battlefield (which was little more than preserved ground with a few early 20th century markers not the more fully interpreted landscape you find today) and the local museum (which was since grown considerably) the words “historic preservation” were new, and somewhat foreign. Nothing was happening–30 years later however you can see a range of preservation work, along with some exciting adaptive reuse projects. Chinook treasures its past and sees it as an asset for the present, and future.

A U.S. 2 service station converted into a great ice cream stop in Chinook

What didn’t I “see” in 1984: the New Deal imprint on the town. Frankly put, the Chinook High School is one of my favorite New Deal buildings in the state–perhaps its slick International modernism made it hard to grasp 30 years ago but today its powerful statement of 1930s aesthetics can’t be missed.

That’s not all the New Deal left the town–it also energized public buildings with a new City Hall and an annex to the county courthouse, both somewhat subdued architectural statements.

I did a better job of understanding the transportation corridors and how they impacted Chinook. Most prominent to my mind was a three-story brick hotel, serving both railroad passengers and newly arriving homesteaders. In 1984 it looked as if only minor changes had occurred since first construction-it still looks that way 30 years later with a few more windows filled-in, and general hard times apparent.

The Great Northern depot was another focus of my work but somehow I missed a great 1920s gas station that has been restored and converted into new uses by a local financial institution–it is now on the National Register of Historic Places and good example of how the roadside architecture of the 1920s can find new uses in the 21st century.

Another big miss was the Sugar Refinery–especially considering the role that Chinook played in the Milk River project, both in its origins, the nationally significant case of Winters v. United States at the turn of the century (see Beth LaDow’s epic study The Medicine Line (2001), and then the impact of this major federal project from 1911 to the present. Not to mention that the high school nickname

was the Sugarbeaters, surely one of the GREAT names in high school sports.

You cross a major ditch on the way to the refinery, on the outskirts of town. A good bit of the property remains, with the tall stack speaking strongly to the merger of homestead and factory on the northern plains. The refinery began an new era in the town’s history–a theme worth exploring in the next post.

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