In 1903 the Joliet Trading Company purchased nine lots from the Joliet Townsite and Improvement Company to build one of early Joliet’s formative businesses. Founded by Jerry Farrell, the Joliet Trading Company included a storefront, warehouse, lumber yard, and this front-gabled vernacular-style house where Farrell, wife Mary, and their seven children likely lived. The Joliet Trading Company sold the building materials and dry goods that sustained the town after the coal mine in nearby Carbonado closed in 1901. The business also served the wave of homesteaders that flocked to the Rock Creek valley in the early twentieth century. An early Joliet mayor, Farrell secured forty acres for Joliet’s cemetery and brought Montana Governor Edwin Norris to speak at the town’s Fourth of July celebration. In 1911, tragedy struck Farrell and his business partners when fire destroyed the storefront and warehouses. Joliet Trading Company was underinsured, and the business went into receivership. This Park Street home is all that remains.
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