Hospitals

22 Locations | Curated by Julian Boughton

Healthcare in Montana first arose with Indigenous use of native plants, especially the Four Sacred Medicines — tobacco, cedar, sage, and sweetgrass — which treated various ailments, whether spiritual, physical, or emotional. Change came with the arrival of Catholic missionary Father Antonio Ravalli to St. Mary’s of the Rockies in 1845, where he brought Western medicine to the Salish. It was the gold rush era of the 1860s and 1870s, and the influx of Euro-Americans, however, that prompted the creation of hospitals.

The first medical facilities were modest. Most medical care took place at home. Doctors and midwives made house calls and family members nursed ill relatives. Some midwives founded birthing hospitals in small residences, and physicians ran private practices (including hospitals) from domestic and commercial buildings. However, religious women, especially Catholic nuns and Protestant deaconesses, had the greatest impact on healthcare, managing and staffing community hospitals as well as hospitals created to serve miners or railroad workers. As populations continued to swell, some of these larger, religiously-affiliated hospitals implemented nursing schools, such as St. Joseph’s Hospital in Lewistown.

Regardless of specialization, all Montana hospitals were up to date for their time. They contained operating rooms, sanitization stations, x-ray machines, and patient rooms. Some also had space for physician’s offices and apartments for medical staff. As early-twentieth-century facilities grew in importance and institutions hired architects to draw plans for multilevel facilities, they dispensed with homelike materials and designs. Instead, they chose the permanence of brick and sandstone cladding and embraced styles ranging from the charming Mission Revival to the stately Classical Revival. Some, like the Holy Rosary Hospital in Miles City, incorporated Craftsman elements, once again providing a visual connection to domestic architecture (and to Montana’s homey first hospitals).

As towns continued to grow in the mid-to-late twentieth century and medical technology changed, even these “modern” hospitals were replaced by larger, state-of-the-art facilities. Not all survived, but several of Montana’s historic hospitals were converted for other uses. Still standing today, they bear witness to hospitals’ integral role in community development.

Built as a hospital in 1902, this building illustrates the early development of care for the indigent in Montana and is the only such structure remaining in the state. Silver Bow had previously maintained a poor farm and quarantine house on these premises while contracting out for hospital…
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In 1903, Lewistown welcomed a group of nuns from France, members of the Order of the Daughters of Jesus. This location would turn out to be their only house in the United States. In a short time, Sister Philomene saw that the twenty-four-year-old town needed a hospital, and she began soliciting…
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St. Joseph’s Hospital Nurses’ Training School originally opened in 1919, but this building, completed in 1936, put the hospital on a level playing field with eight other Montana Catholic hospital training schools. Until the mid-twentieth century, hospitals almost exclusively provided nurses’…
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A converted two-story house served as the county hospital in 1907, a year before the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad arrived in Miles City. With encouragement from the railroad, which needed a place to treat injured workers, the county decided to build a larger facility. The…
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Amidst economic prosperity brought on by the local “apple boom,” Stevensville physician Dr. William Thornton established this surgical center, then the only such facility in the entire Bitterroot Valley. Completed in 1910, builder W. R. Rodgers used brick and cast concrete of his own manufacture to…
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Orville Snell Haverfield came to Montana in 1909, newly graduated from St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons. Haverfield set up practice in Hardin and eventually became county physician, health officer, and coroner. During the early years of his practice, Hardin doctors treated patients in a…
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Generous verandas, period furnishings, and healing waters invite the visitor to experience turn-of-the-century hospitality under the shadow of Emigrant Peak. The hot springs, long appreciated by native peoples, got their commercial start during the territorial period when miners stopped by to bathe…
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“Remember the Flu epidemic” declared a notice advocating support for Rosebud County Hospital. In 1918 and 1919 influenza killed over 5,000 Montanans. Flu victims in Forsyth received care at the Masonic Hall, temporarily converted into an emergency hospital, but the epidemic underscored the need for…
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A few years after Livingston Memorial Hospital opened in February 1955, the Livingston Enterprise reported, “This neat, modern building will hold a prominent position in the lives of Livingston residents for years to come. For some it will be their birthplace and hold their first memories of…
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