In 1913, as workers laid track on the spur line from Harlowton to Great Falls, Milwaukee Road surveyors platted towns along the new route, including Geraldine. By October 2, Farmers State Bank opened in a wooden building on Main Street. Among the bank’s first acts was to offer loans to area farmers with grain on hand, so that they could hold their crops until the grain elevator was completed. The bank’s support was the beginning of a long commitment to the community and area agriculture. As the homesteading boom brought more farmers to the area, the bank prospered. Construction of a new building of Lewistown brick began in 1914. When it was finished, the two-story bank building—Geraldine’s first masonry structure—sported a stately cornice and a triangular pediment over the main door. Its solid construction and dignified neoclassical façade asserted stability and permanence, offering visual assurance to customers that their money was safe. In the 1920s, ten of Chouteau County’s thirteen banks failed when extended drought and low commodity prices caused record numbers of farmers to default on their loans. But this conservatively managed bank—by then renamed the First National Bank of Geraldine—survived both the agricultural depression of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Due to the bank’s sound management, it was among the first in the United States allowed to reopen after the Federal Bank Holiday in 1933. The bank (under several different names) has continued to serve Geraldine into the twenty-first century.
]]>Fort Benton’s first school opened in 1868, over twenty years before statehood. As Montana’s population grew, so did its commitment to education, fueled by the belief that a successful democracy demands an educated populace. Upon statehood (1889), the Enabling Act attempted to set aside sections 16 and 36 in each township to financially support education. Because some of these sections (or portions thereof) were already claimed, “in lieu” selections were offered, including the tract on which the Eagle Butte School is located. Chouteau County established the Eagle Butte School District in 1912. That year, approximately twenty-seven children attended school for one to two months in abandoned homestead shacks. School construction began in 1914. A storm demolished the partially completed building, but this clapboard-sided school with attached teacherage (living quarters for the teacher) was ready for students in August 1915. The schoolhouse followed best practices for small school design. Near the entry were two cloakrooms (one for boys and one for girls). A single band of windows left two large unbroken walls for blackboards while avoiding “cross lighting,” which experts believed harmed pupils’ eyes. Craftsman style detailing added a touch of sophistication and expressed the district’s ambitions. Nevertheless, in its early years, the school suffered high teacher turnover as isolation and low pay took their toll. After 1918, drought and agricultural depression led to declining enrollments. The school remained open by merging with South Eagle Butte School in 1924. Prosperity returned after World War II, and the school operated until 1964, when Geraldine Elementary annexed the Eagle Butte district.
]]>The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway completed its line across Montana in 1909 as settlers began to populate rural areas under the Homestead Act. In 1913, a branch line stretching from Harlowton to Great Falls was nearly finished. Midway between Lewistown and Great Falls, the brand-new town of Geraldine, named for the mother and daughter of Milwaukee Railroad financier William G. Rockefeller, anticipated a bright future. The Geraldine Review reported that Milwaukee officials planned to make the town “the show place of the new line.” Workers put the finishing touches on the only custom-built depot on the central branch and a gala New Year’s Eve dance ushering in 1914 christened the building. Its hardwood maple floors were pronounced “splendid.” The special design, described as “a rustic bungalow of the California pattern,” featured two waiting rooms, a ticket room, freight room with scales embedded in the floor, nickel-trimmed hot-blast stoves, and a ventilating system that changed the air every five minutes. Geraldine was a busy stopover serving two daily passenger trains and freight crews until passenger service ended in 1965. All the other depots were sold and, after the Milwaukee’s demise in 1980, salvage companies removed the rails from the Great Falls-Geraldine section. The nonprofit Geraldine Historical Committee acquired the depot from Central Montana Rail in 1995. A model of expert workmanship and quality materials with most original details intact, the depot is still Geraldine’s centerpiece and central to the town’s history.
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