Completion of the “Milwaukee Road” brought hundreds of homesteaders to Ingomar during the 1910s. By 1914, wood-frame homes and a small commercial district proclaimed the town a permanent settlement. On July 2, 1914, the Ingomar Index announced that a bank would soon open, marking an important milestone in the community’s development. Investors H. B. Wiley, C. W. Greening, and E. B. Clark hired bookkeeper W. T. Craig. All, declared the Index, were businessmen of sterling reputations. When the new building was completed that October, the newspaper declared it a “pippin,” noting that “cashier Craig feels like a kid with a new toy.” It was Ingomar’s first brick building. The bank indeed prospered, reorganizing and expanding in 1917 as a state bank, and reorganizing again in 1921 under federal charter. Economic reversal led to the bank’s sudden closure later that year. Craig was convicted of misuse of bank funds, a ruling that was later overturned on appeal. The bank stood empty, a painful reminder of delinquent loans and failed homesteads. In 1933, the Oasis Bar opened in the building and the Jersey Lilly Bar and Café moved here in 1948. The former bank has since served as a community gathering place with a devoted clientele. Original pressed tin ceilings, bank vaults, and the outline of teller cages on unfinished hardwood flooring suggest the building’s previous function. Its dignified outward appearance reflects the time when Ingomar was the commercial and social center of a vital agricultural community.
]]>As hundreds of farmers and ranchers homesteaded the arid, treeless plains of northwestern Rosebud County, the townsite of Ingomar was platted along the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway in 1912. That year, one teacher and a borrowed building served Ingomar’s first public school students. By the following year the western one-room portion of the present building was completed and fourteen students attended classes. In 1915, the school district contracted with Melstone builder Neils Hanson to construct an addition. At a cost of $9,000, the enlarged schoolhouse would serve not only local children, but would also provide a place for community functions. The teachers and their thirty-seven scholars presented a dedication program on November 24, 1915, for the visiting State Inspector of Schools. The school continued to be well attended during the 1920s and 1930s partly because of the closure of other area rural schools. A second building, no longer standing, was built in 1922 to accommodate elementary students, and this building was then converted for use as a high school. It served as such until 1951 and again briefly during the 1960s. Activity at the site ended permanently when Ingomar’s school district closed in 1992. Today the spacious, well-lighted classrooms with hardwood floors, wood wainscot walls, and pressed tin ceilings remain intact. One of the area’s few surviving examples of public architecture, it is also eastern Montana’s most outstanding example of post-frontier prairie schoolhouse design. This splendid landmark is all the more remarkable because time and service have left its appearance virtually unchanged.
]]>J. Abraham “Abe” Bookman came from Ireland with his wife, Anna, and brother-in-law, Simon Sigman. By 1912, they had settled in Ingomar, where Bookman operated the town mercantile and Sigman served as postmaster. The business was so prosperous that once, when Bookman was at the depot to receive a shipment of groceries and clothing, settlers waiting for the next train bought every single item before it could be carried to the store. In 1914, Bookman’s success allowed him to finance Sigman’s opening of a general store in nearby Vananda. Although Rosebud County’s economy was obviously in trouble by 1921 and many homesteaders had moved on, Ingomar’s commercial area remained relatively stable. When fire devastated the small district that year, this prominent brick building with its lively diamond pattern of polychromatic brick was built to replace Bookman’s original store. Now connected to its neighbor through an interior doorway, the well-preserved vintage building is a classic example of the commercial structures once common in small prairie settlements. The intact survival of its two-bay storefront is particularly noteworthy. Although most Ingomar businesses closed during the 1920s and 1930s, the Bookmans struggled through hard times and loss of their property at sheriff’s sale in 1933. They repurchased the store in 1935, and Abe hung on to the business until his death in 1941. Anna retired two years later, closing the store for good. Its closure marked the true end of Ingomar’s pioneer era.
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