I last visited Whitetail ten years ago. Established along the Canadian-based Soo Railroad line a century earlier, the town was in a free fall, from a height of 500 c. 1920 to a handful of families in 2010. Then the Canadian, then the U.S. government closed the border crossing between 2011 and 2013. Now the town is down to a population of nine in 2020. God bless those still there, doing what they can.

The school building tells much of the story. Built when hopes for the town were high in the 1920s, it’s two-story height and bell cupola made it a landmark in the flat open terrain. I hope when I visit next, the school is there, a silent statement of the dreams with which our high plains were settled.

Secure in its concrete base, the old school bell, removed 50 years ago, is still there to ring, or so I can hope.

The community church, still a gathering place or has it gone the way of the Catholic Church, moved to the Daniels County Museum in Scobey?

Businesses were largely gone ten years ago. But the post office and grain elevators remained. I bet the elevators are still there serving ranch families but you wonder about the post office.

Whitetail in Montana’s northeast corner is as far removed from Whitefish in Montana’s northwest corner as two places could ever be. They both began as railroad towns. One didn’t make it; the other thrives.

But what’s been lost at Whitetail tells as much about history as what has been gained in Whitefish. You cannot understand Montana history without both.