Montana's Historic Jails

12 Locations | Curated by Julian Boughton

As railroads expanded west in the late 1800s, Montana’s population boomed and so did crime. Towns like Bozeman developed rapidly to serve new homesteaders; Gardiner grew as tourists traveled to Yellowstone National Park; and Butte exploded as people came to work in the mines. Saloons and brothels were ubiquitous and appealed to Montana’s main demographic: single, young men. While murders were rare, misdemeanors like drunkenness and disturbing the peace became common. The increase in crime spurred demands for order.


During Montana’s territorial period, criminal justice efforts were extra-governmental; vigilantes executed accused criminals. Those who stood trial were transported long distances to the county seat. The Progressive Era, beginning in the late 1890s, brought widespread social and political reform, including policing, and many Montana communities built jails.


Most towns constructed their first jails out of wood, building later facilities out of stone, which signified strength and permanence. Masonry jails also became representative of a community’s longevity. For example, Baker, in Fallon County, constructed its concrete jail to dissuade officials from choosing another town as county seat. Many second-generation jails featured iron cells with pulley-operated cell doors, made by the St. Louis-based Pauly Jail Building Company.


Small towns typically built unadorned, one-room jails. Some, like the Square Butte Jail, lacked basic utilities. In contrast, larger communities, like Bozeman and Helena, built jails that featured distinct architectural styles, such as Romanesque and Queen Anne. They often bore fortress-like details, such as crenelated (castle-like) cornices and arched entryways. Most were at least two stories, had a designated women’s cell, and a sheriff’s residence.


Ultimately, most early jails fell out of use as boomtowns shrank during hard economic times or as prosperous, growing communities replaced them with larger facilities. The Granite County Jail, built in 1896 and still in use, is a rare exception. Several former jails are now museums, housed in sturdy buildings whose architecture reflects past generations’ commitment to creating law-abiding communities.

Masterful stonework of local granite in the Romanesque style creates a somber effect in this 1890 institution. The corner tower (which lost its battlements in the 1935 earthquakes), thick stone lintels, and heavy arches recall the romantic nineteenth-century notion that a structure’s appearance…
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The Granite County Jail was constructed in 1896, three years after Granite County was carved from two adjacent counties and Philipsburg made the county seat. The town served as hub to extensive area mining and, later, ranching. The jail was the first major public building constructed for county…
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Lewis and Clark named nearby Belt Butte for its girdle of rocks and, in 1877, John Castner named his town Belt. Coal brought Castner here, and Fort Benton was the first market for his Castner Coal Company. Then, in 1889, the Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company built…
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When the Northern Pacific Railroad announced plans to build a branch line to Yellowstone National Park in the early 1880s, the small town of Gardiner quickly emerged as a “wild west” town. Early accounts labeled it “a veritable Shantyville . . . an ideal squatter town, with the rudest houses.”…
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Prominent landowner and state senator Edward Donlan won a political victory in the 1906 legislature with the designation of Thompson Falls as county seat for Sanders County over the rival town of Plains. By compromise, most county posts were filled by Plains appointees, but Donlan donated his own…
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Ismay’s bustling business, wicked ways, and itinerant population of cowboys and railroad men earned it the nickname “Little Chicago.” This town, born with the construction of the Milwaukee Road across Montana, began in 1908 with the name of Burt. Burt became Ismay a few months later, taking its new…
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Calls for a better Gallatin County jail came in 1886, only five years after the county’s second jail was established in the original courthouse’s basement. A grand jury found that the facility lacked proper ventilation, sewer, and security, as well as sorely needed cells for separating men, women,…
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Incorporation in 1906 established Belgrade’s independence, but also created a need for local service offices. The Belgrade Bank, built in 1902, was already central to the town’s civic business as home of the telegraph line and newspaper. Though the structure’s castellated Gothic style rendered into…
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The completion of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad line through this area in 1908 brought an influx of homesteaders, increasing the demand for county services. Simultaneously, the Progressive Movement in Montana sparked a county splitting craze. An acrimonious battle soon…
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The Milwaukee Land Company laid out the neat, tree-lined streets of Square Butte in 1913. Strategically located along the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific’s route between Lewistown and Great Falls, Square Butte was for a time an important stop because it offered an abundant supply of…
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A single female boarding house (an early twentieth-century euphemism for brothel) shared the block with the original jail in 1912. Set back from the street, the small ten-by-ten-foot wood-framed jail had only enough room for a single cell—which may have been adequate to control disorder in early…
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