Founded in 1882, a year after the area’s first silver strike, Neihart was nearly deserted by 1887. In 1891, the Great Northern Railway laid track connecting area mines to the Great Falls smelter, and investors and miners rushed back. On a hill south…

Montana’s original Highway Department building reflects the ascendancy of the automobile in twentieth-century America. As drivers began lobbying for good roads, state government responded, forming the Montana Highway Commission in 1913. Five years…

Seventeen charter members formed Kalispell Lodge No. 42 in 1892. Masons first held lodge meetings in several locations. Work began on this building in 1904, but when the Great Northern Railway moved its division point to Whitefish, the town paused…

In 1906, Choteau’s newspaper, the Acantha, proudly celebrated the completion of the new courthouse. “This splendid edifice,” its editor predicted, “… will stand for years as a monument to the honor and integrity of all the people of the .” Built of…

The end of a long court battle between Amalgamated Copper and renegade mine entrepreneur F. Augustus Heinze in 1906 brought about an unprecedented building boom. The Beaux Arts style, with its grandiose composition and exuberant detail, was the…

When the town of Valier was founded in 1909, a wood-frame schoolhouse was quickly erected to serve the children of the new community. Less than two years later, the school board moved to replace that school with a more substantial building. In 1911,…

The Helena branch of the Federal Reserve Bank opened in 1921, the result of lobbying by Norman B. Holter and other farsighted local businessmen. It distinguished Helena as the smallest town in the country to host such a bank. When the 1935…

As the tracks of the Great Northern Railway inched westward from St. Paul to Seattle, Flathead Valley towns vied for designation as the railway’s division point. In the spring of 1891, however, railroad officials purchased land from the Reverend…

The Sisters of the Order of St. Ursula came to Montana in 1884 to establish schools for Indians. When the homestead movement created a need for more urban educational facilities, the Great Falls Townsite Company offered the sisters any two city…

Clean lines, formal monumental openings, and restrained revival details mark the 1939 Great Falls Civic Center as a municipal Art Deco style building. The Works Projects Administration provided most of the funding for the building. The…