The Helena Trail Riders Club House

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Preserve Montana makes many wonderful contributions to Montana, from history to trades education to heritage tourism. In late September 2025 I had the opportunity to attend its fun fall event, the Hidden Helena tour.

Helena trail riders club house

There were many jewels to explore that day but my favorite was certainly the Helena Trail Riders club house at what was once the State Fairgrounds but now the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds.

The group began in 1939 and within a decade it had built a loyal membership and a strong regional following through its annual riding competitions. It is recognized as the state’s oldest saddle club.

The first president was the Montana artist Shorty Shope, whose imaginative depictions of the Old West became known to millions of visitors through the decorative frames on Montana Highway Historical Markers that he developed for the state department of transportation in the 1940s and 1950s.

Original Shope frame design, 1983

The Club house preserves several of Shope’s works, from metal castings to the covers of scrapbooks.

The most impressive work by far is the mural Shope created for the clubhouse wall. What an expressive example of his eye as an artist!

This clubhouse confirms my bias about most things Montana—you find the best stuff in the most unassuming places.

Changes at Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs

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In 2013 I last visited Sleeping Rock Hot Springs, just north of U.S. Highway 2 in Phillips County. The following year I posted about the obvious changes then underway to put this once vibrant mid-20th century recreational area back to greater prominence.

I returned in late September 2025 to find that, indeed, lots of improvements were made in the last ten years. A large bar/restaurant had been built, the grounds expanded and modernized, and the pool greatly enlarged.

But the hot springs’ New Deal roots were still apparent because attached to the pool facility was the pergola of the early 1930s.

This hipped roof stone structure came about due to the joint efforts of local residents and government officials. An exhibit at the Phillips County Museum in Malta (more on that place later) points out that a rancher Elbert Davison first saw the mineral springs as having medicinal qualities. He built a small pool that brought relief to his son who had polio. That effort convinced the Saco American Legion to do more and soon a local effort to gain control of the spot for public use met its success in 1931. Later that year the American Legion Hot Springs was in operation, quite a feat in Depression-era northeast Montana.

That effort caught the attention of county agent H.L. Lantz to work with the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration, then active in the Milk River Project area, to get the Public Works Administration to fund the pergola. That story is told in the marker (above) still at the pergola today.

Bruno Partzsch was the stone mason for the buildings, and some of his work is still visible in the expanded and modernized pool building of today (2025). I wonder if Partzsch is also the crafter behind the stone building at Zurich Park in Blaine County since both places have ties with the Milk River Project.

Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs is on the market in the fall of 2025. Business is tough—actually way beyond tough—in this part of Montana’s Hi-Line. I only hope that new owners who can keep the momentum going can be found and this jewel of a historic place—shaped by a partnership between locals and government—will survive well beyond its 100th anniversary in 2031.

Glasgow’s amazing Federal building

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One of my favorite, if not #1 itself, Depression-era buildings in Montana is the amazing Federal building in Glasgow. First, this triumph of New Deal design from 1939 is a powerful statement in the public architecture of northeast Montana.

As you may know, Glasgow embraces its reputation as the most isolated place in the nation, that it is the definition of the middle of nowhere (a reputation however that I really challenge). But the restrained classicism of the building is refined and tasteful, perfect of the region.

Second, I really admire the building because it is so intact after 86 years of use. Yes, there are some alterations, but when you step into the post office lobby, you do feel like you stepped back in the 1930s.

Then there is the wonderful mural, “Montana’s Progress,” by Forest Hill. Completed in 1942, as the county’s other major, and huge, New Deal project, Fort Peck Dam and powerhouse, was gearing up to maximum production for World War II.

The left side speaks to the Native American past and the nearby presence of Fort Peck Reservation. There’s even a reference to gold panning, which never happened along this section of the Missouri. Then the right side reference the coming of settlers and the parceling of once open land into regular measured surveys.

The center section speaks to the Progress, predicted to come, centered on railroads, agriculture (cattle, wheat, hay, sheep), and industry, with the commanding image of the amazing Fort Peck spillway ( already world famous to an earlier feature story in Life magazine) and in the top corner, a sugar beet refinery.

The bomber flying above it all of course spoke to the immediate present , of World War II, but it also correctly predicted the future. The town and county would have its greatest period of prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s with the Glasgow Air Force Base.

What a historic document of its time and what an amazing building, still serving the community almost 90 years later.

Great Falls’ Historic Jewish Cemetery

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Over the past couple of years, I have documented several historic cemeteries in Great Falls. But I had missed one, the city’s Jewish Cemetery, and it too is on Highland Road south of the city, and east of the older Highland Cemetery. It’s a bit difficult to find as there are no signs but a metal entrance “gate” shows you the way.

The Jewish community in Great Falls established the cemetery in 1916, a few years after the establishment of the much larger and nearby Highland Cemetery. The Great Falls Hebrew Association owns the property, which according to tax records has ten acres. A 2003 story in the Great Falls Tribune estimated 20 burials but no number is certain. The majority of the intact grave markers are clustered in a row in the western end of the cemetery.

But other markers are scattered across the top half of the cemetery while other family plots had been damaged before the efforts at restoration over the last ten years.

A low metal, open fence marks a family plot erected for Anna and Abraam [is it a misspelling and should be Abraham as newspaper stories suggest?] Bass, probably installed 1931-1932.

Abraam “Abe” Bass was “well known in sporting circles” and identified as a gambler, according to the Great Falls Tribune of May 10, 1931. He had earlier in 1931 been forced to end a lottery that he operated from the Star cigar store in Great Falls. He left the town looking for opportunities in Nevada but died in an automobile accident about 30 miles from Reno, Nevada. His wife Anna had died earlier.

Years of neglect mean that some markers have been damaged. Or perhaps moved, as in the case of the Baby Grossman marker of 1927.

The year 1940 appears to mark the end of the cemetery’s first generation of burials. Max Gold, a retired carpenter, was born in Russia. He lived in Cut Bank for 15 years but as his death in late 1949, the family buried him in Great Falls.

In the 21st century families again began to bury their dead here, with Irving Greenfield in 2000 and Allan Bruce Silverstein in 2012. Perhaps those burials encouraged the Association to begin regular oversight of the property, following its restoration by Max Daniel Weissman as his Eagle Scout service project in 2015.

The Great Falls Jewish Cemetery is an important but once forgotten historic place in Cascade County. We can hope that the good efforts of maintenance continue and that more research is directed to the histories of those buried there.

The new state history exhibit: looking to the future but feet planted firmly in the present.

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Like hundreds of others who crowded into the new wing of the Montana Historical Society to get a sneak peek of the new state history exhibit, titled Montana Homeland, I expected to be dazzled. After all it had been 40 years since MHS had last updated its primary history exhibit.

The architects gave the exhibit designers a huge lofty space and there are tipis galore, their height dominating everything around them, challenged only by a reproduction headframe.

The headframe is in a corner and fades into the background unlike the tips which literally command most views within the exhibit, even at the end.

The message of the exhibit team is not subtle—Indigenous people dominate the past of the lands that today comprise Montana—but the hand of people in the last 100 years also dominate the built environment. The exhibit is missing the one lofty structure that is still found everywhere, representing a property type that also ties together so much of the state’s history—the Grain Elevator. Wish there was one in these lofty spaces. It helps to explain the impact of agriculture, the homesteading era, railroad lines, and town creation.

20th century Montana is thus far greatly underrepresented in the exhibit, almost as if the attitude was that nothing matters that much after the homesteaders—let’s wrap this baby up!

But by so doing you downplay the huge impact of the engineered landscape on the homeland, especially the federal irrigation programs that produced mammoth structures that reoriented entire places—Gibson Dam comes right to mind, and then there’s Fort Peck.

Irrigation also is central because of the diversity of peoples who came in the wake of the canals and ditches. Not just the Indigenous, not just the miners but the farmers and ranchers added to the Montana mosaic. A working headgate—would that help propel the story?

Right now the answer is no. There are many, many words in this exhibit, and, as people seem to want to do nowadays, the words are often preachy. I wondered about the so 2020s final section, where visitors are implored to live better together by accepting diverse peoples.

Montana is nothing but a melding of diverse peoples, from 14 tribes, the 17-18 ethic groups at Butte, the Danes of the northeast, the Finns of the Clark’s fork, and the Mennonites of the central plains, etc etc. if they had started challenging character of the actual Montana landscape had been front and center, then let history unfold to show how many people of all sorts of origins and motives tried to carve a life from it—you would have a different exhibit and one not so preachy.

Let’s hope the Final Cut has many less words, many more objects and a greater embrace of the state’s 20th century transformations.

Billings’ Minnesota Avenue, 1990

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When Billings was established in 1882, there were two primary streets: Montana Avenue on the north side of the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks and Minnesota Avenue on the south side of those tracks. The street names came from the Minnesota and Montana Improvement Company, which developed the town.

By the turn of the 20th century Montana Avenue had become the dominant corridor and has never looked back. Still, in 1990, Minnesota Avenue still had a bit of its railroad past as a row of bars and flophouses faced the tracks.

I took these 3 slides (including the cover slide) in 1990–and today this block has changed dramatically. But boy do I miss the neon!

Minnesota Avenue 2021

Transforming State History: the new Montana Historical Society museum

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At the state history conference in Helena next month, the almost complete new museum at the Montana Historical Society will be unveiled. (The completed museum will have its full public opening in December.) while we won’t be able to see everything yet I’m still looking forward to a peak behind the curtain.

It will be a transformational change for state history—a new platform to explore, interpret and preserve the state’s past. Why do I have such confidence—I was already part of such a project in the creation of a new Tennessee State Museum from 2016-2018. The new museum in Nashville has created a huge new platform for all types of activities in state history and everyone is benefiting, especially the state’s robust heritage tourism industry.

But before we get too excited about the future, let’s remember how this new change at MHS is just the latest chapter in how this amazing institution has served Montana. For this post I’m using some photographs but mostly postcards that I collected in Montana in the 1980s.

The Veterans and Pioneers Memorial Building dates to 1953. Here are two views, one emphasizing the Liberty Bell installation from the Bicentennial and the second reminding us how the tour train, established in 1954, started its tours there and connected visitors to downtown.

Some of us are old enough to remember the early exhibits—and the dominance of dioramas, dioramas, dioramas!

“The richest hill on earth”
Virginia City
Oil in Eastern Montana
Power lines on the plains
Lewis and Clark diorama, the museum opened during the 150th anniversary of the expedition
That diorama has had a second life at the Beaverhead County Museum in Dillon. Rudy Autio, the famous art potter associated with the Archie Bray Foundation and University of Montana, was the sculptor.

The highlight of the collection, then and now, was the Charles M. Russell gallery, although his work seemed out of sorts with the modern style of the building.

Then in the 1970s came the first transformation—placing Territorial Junction in the basement, a series of period rooms themed to a certain business or activity.

This installation had a tremendous influence on the many county museums that were built in the 1970s and 1970s as so many had their own territorial junction sections.

Mondak Heritage Center , Sidney, 2013

In the mid-1980s MHS staff planned and installed a new history gallery, named Montana Homeland. I visited it in 1988 and took a few slides—and in the dark light my images aren’t great but there’s enough to see how the approach had changed.

The new exhibit highlighted objects from the extensive and valuable MHS collections on Native American history.

Everywhere, from the sections on steamboats to the Victorian era to a 1930s kitchen, objects dominated the senses. It was a visual feast, an approach that I expect the new museum to continue but probably in a much more interactive way.

Yes, no doubt I will miss the old MHS museum but I’m pumped about the new one. What an opportunity! I will report more on this topic after September’s conference.

The evolution of Billings’ Montana Avenue

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I was last in Billings in early July and, as usual, I immediately walked around Montana Avenue to see what was going on—doing that walk has been a tradition for me for over 40 years.

Do you remember what Montana Avenue was like in 1985–well here’s two views if you don’t recall, or were even around in 1985. It was a mix of second hand, rummage, stores, “antique” stores, flophouses, and an emerging galley scene, led by Toucan Gallery.

Rex Hotel 1985

There was an oasis—the restored Rex Hotel, with one of the city’s best restaurants, and next door, the Rainbow Bar, an oasis of a far different type. Thankfully both businesses, with some changes, remain anchors to the district today.

On the opposite side of the street—despair. The imposing 1907 Northern Pacific Railroad depot was boarded up, forgotten and deteriorating. The reality was a puzzle to me because already in Great Falls and Missoula investors had restored and reopened historic Milwaukee Road depots. Why not Billings?

Five years later, 1990, it had gotten worse instead of better at the depot. When graffiti begins to mark a historic building the end is often near. On the other side of the street, however, new investment kept the historic buildings moving forward.

Rex Hotel and Montana Avenue 1990
Rainbow Bar 1990
Hotel Carlin block, 1990
McCormick Block, 1990

Changes were afoot at the McCormick Block where two adjacent one story 100 year old buildings had been torn away to create a parking lot.

And the district had a new east end, with the conversion of a 20th century building into the Coulson Bar. I loved the reference to the river town that was a precursor to Billings.

The 1990s was when the historic preservation movement transformed Montana Avenue. The Montana Avenue Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, thanks to the vision of property owners supported by the city and the State Historic Preservation Office and the work of Chere Jiusto.

When I next visited in 1998, I found the depot, finally, restored and serving as a new anchor.

The new courtyard at the Rex was quite the place to be and be seen. I even saw Hollywood stars there in 1998. the 21st resurgence of Montana Avenue was ready to begin.

How many of you used the Internet cafe at the McCormick Block? I did in 2000 when I took the image above.

Fast forward to July 2025. The once neglected district is a city downtown hub, hosting a street event and businesses booming. What a change from 1985.

Hamilton’s historic public architecture

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In the first half of the 20th century few Montana county seats matched the quality and diversity of public architecture of Hamilton, the seat of Ravalli County.

The oldest, the Ravalli County Courthouse of 1900, remains the most distinguished, although the county left the building for a new courthouse in the mid-1970s. Fifty years later, its conversion into an excellent county museum has kept this landmark of Romanesque infused design as a vital part of county life, especially during the city’s Saturday market in the summer. Designed by architect A.J.Gibson of Missoula, the courthouse graces a grand public space in the 21st century city, a space made even more meaningful by the Doughboy tribute monument that stands on guard in front of the building.

Installed in 1921 the monument itself is over 100 years ago and is a rare courthouse yard tribute to World War I veterans.

In 1906, only a block away, the city built a Victorian style flavored town hall for almost all city affairs, from governance to police in fire fighting and even the public library.

The library was not long for the Town Hall. Within 10 years it had its own Classical Revival building, due to the diligence of the Hamilton Woman’s Club and the funding of Margaret Daly, the widow of copper magnate Marcus Daly, who lived across the valley at her grand Colonial Revival mansion.

Margaret Daly was not done. In the mid-1920s she funded the Colonial Revival style Marcus Daly Hospital just blocks away from the library.

The New Deal added to the city’s Colonial Revival traditions of public architecture. Those depression years of the 1930s added a more restrained take on the colonial style in the new post office by Louis A. Simon.

Then after World War II public architecture charted a new course into modernism although Hamilton took cautious steps in its blocky modern design of the present city hall and community building, a very effective bending of uses.

Days before I visited Hamilton on July 4, 2025 plans were finalized to begin the serious work of converting the historic town hall into a new library facility. Even as we celebrate the town’s public architecture, change is coming later this decade.

Change in Wisdom

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A truism often found in writings about Montana’s rural towns is that nothing ever changes. Maybe that’s true, for a few places but over the last ten years I have found change to be a constant in rural Montana.

Take Wisdom in Beaverhead County. This place was one of my first overnights in the Big Sky Country and I fondly remember a night we spent at Fetty’s, a classic bar/cafe. Sometime before 2012 Fetty’s burned down but someone rebuilt on the site, calling it The Crossing at Fetty’s or Fetty’s at the Crossing—I don’t remember which one.

The Crossing in 20132

The Crossing was ok but a bit stuffy, just not the same feeling as Fetty’s. By 2025 order had been restored. The same modern building was there but name had changed to just Fetty’s. And the local vibe was back.

Change also marked the town’s historic general store, a 2-story commercial landmark. In this decade it tried to make a run as Hook and Horn, a combo bistro, boutique, coffee shop. It didn’t make it.

Hook and Horn, 2025

But its sedate, calm rustic appearance was certainly at odds with the garish but you can’t miss it facade of Conover’s Trading Post from 2012.

Conover’s Trading Post 2012
Wisdom 2012

I didn’t miss the trading post but I did like the Wisdom Market back in 2012. That now was a vacant lot.

Wisdom Market 2025

But then my faith was restored when on the other side of Fetty’s there was a new Wisdom Market, complete with its dark stained log false front. Not all change is bad, and if you don’t look you might not realize it.