The town of Three Forks, born to serve as a division point for the Chicago, St. Paul, and Milwaukee Railway, took root in 1908. As the town grew to a sizable settlement of 2,300, the Empire Theatre opened to serve local audiences. Manager David R. “Slim” Byrd attracted traveling troupes on their way to other destinations. In August 1912, Byrd held a grand re-opening of his newly remodeled “amusement house.” He renamed it the Ruby Theatre after Ruby Langdon, a local teenager who not only knew how to recruit talent but was also a well-loved local singer. A few weeks later, David Byrd married nineteen-year-old Ruby and soon sold the theater. New owner E. C. Waddell brought the first silent movies to Three Forks including “The Idler” (1914), “Anna Karenina” (1915), and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” (1915). Theater[M1] -goers also enjoyed live road shows, traveling magicians, and high school plays. The present building of concrete faced with red brick replaced the old frame theater in 1916. Butte architect Wellington Smith designed the building—a grand undertaking for a small community. The new Ruby Theatre had an auditorium seating 400 and two commercial storefronts while the second floor housed professional offices. As “talkies” replaced silent movies, the Ruby continued to offer community entertainment linking Three Forks to the world through newsreels, epic movies, and famous actors. The Ruby provided entertainment until the 1970s. The historic theater retains most of its original design elements including its pressed metal cornice, original nameplate, decorative brickwork, and arched second-story windows.
]]>Rancher Steve Hutchinson’s granary acted as the Upper Madison School’s first classroom. There Jennie Rice taught area children during a three-month summer term held in 1887. In 1890, Steve and his wife Katherine donated an acre on the northeast corner of their ranch to the school district, where Steve built this wood-framed gable-roof school. Following the best practices in school design, he placed windows on only one side of the building to prevent “cross-lighting,” which experts believed harmed pupils’ vision. Since all students were required to write with their right hands, placing the band of windows to the students’ left meant sunlight could illuminate their papers without creating shadows. Outside, two privies, placed over 80 feet apart for modesty’s sake, served the boys and girls respectively. In the 1890s, teachers were paid $35 a month for the five-month term. Parents took turns providing the teacher room and board at no charge. Ten pupils attended the school in 1893, the year Upper Madison began to receive state funding. The building also served as a social center. An itinerant minister arrived by bicycle to hold Sunday services. Fiddle dances--usually fundraisers--were also common. During the 1930s, farm consolidation left fewer students in rural areas, while automobiles and improved roads made travel easier. As a result, many of Montana’s one-room schools closed, including the Upper Madison School in 1940. Not long after, the Madison Valley Women’s Club took charge of the building, which continues its role as an important community gathering place.
]]>Solid bank buildings were designed to assure customers that their money was safe from both theft and bank failure—a tenuous premise in the days before Federal Deposit Insurance. Here Romanesque arches, rusticated sandstone, thick masonry walls, and cavernous entryways marked the first-floor façade and symbolized the bank’s ability to endure, just as had the stone buildings of the Middle Ages. The less elaborate brick second story provided offices for Three Forks’ professionals, including doctors, dentists, and lawyers. Built in 1910, when the town was less than two years old, the sturdy building—financed by John Q. Adams, who founded Three Forks for the Milwaukee Land Company—also expressed its owner’s faith in Three Forks’ future. The bank changed hands several times before American National Bank purchased the seemingly prosperous enterprise in 1917. Soon after, however, extended drought and low commodity prices shattered the homestead economy. Thousands of farmers lost their land, land values dropped by fifty percent, and over half of Montana’s banks failed, including American National in 1923. Two years later, an earthquake shook Three Forks. The quake’s effects can be seen in the blond replacement brick and truncated cornice on the building’s west side. After the bank closed, Adams’ son Benjamin used the building for his real estate office until 1942. Thereafter, it housed a variety of businesses. In 1960, it became a bank once more when Security Bank of Three Forks opened the town’s first bank in thirty-seven years. The building became home to the Headwaters Heritage Museum in 1982.
]]>Arrival of the Milwaukee Railroad caused Three Forks to move (1908-1910) one mile up the Missouri River from its 1863 townsite, as happened with many sister towns in the developing West. Milwaukee Railroad purchasing agent John Q. Adams saw need for a hotel to serve travelers and residents, and he thriftily purchased the Madison House (built 1862) and had it moved from the “old town” on log rollers. The Madison House’s front half is the apartment wing on the northeast end of the hotel, and its rear half forms the main kitchen, a dining room, and staff rooms in the southeast wing. The 1910 construction houses the main lobby and hotel rooms. With the Milwaukee Railroad depot across the street, the Sacajawea Hotel promptly became a business and social center for the area. Only five years later, the railroad removed most of its facilities, slowing Three Forks’ growth. The formal exterior proclaims the Sacajawea as a classic pioneer town grand hotel, but its Arts and Crafts style interior is warmly informal and welcoming, as intended by Bozeman architect Fred Willson.
]]>The Milwaukee Land Company, a subsidiary of the Milwaukee Road, established the town of Three Forks in 1908. Company land agent John Q. Adams chose this townsite and held a lot sale in 1908. Buyers came by the trainload, purchasing 250 lots. District Superintendent Reverend George King with Reverends Charles Crouch and Charles Rhodes purchased two lots for the First Methodist Episcopal Church. In a mess tent by the roundhouse eleven days later, Reverends Crouch and Rhodes held the first religious services in the new town. The church was chartered in 1909 with thirteen members. Reverend Fleet initiated a building program in 1911 and it progressed under Reverend McClure. The cornerstone was laid with great fanfare in 1913. Presiding Elder Jacob Mills of Bozeman donated $2,500 to assure the church a secure financial foundation, and pastors from across Montana attended the first service on Easter Sunday, 1914. Methodist and Presbyterian congregations combined between 1920 and 1953 as the Federated Church. In 1968, the Methodists merged with the Evangelical United Brethren Church to become the present United Methodist Church. Despite heavy earthquake damage in 1925, this landmark church remains a classic example of the Gothic Revival style. Impressive features include graceful pointed arches with tracery windows, a Norman style crenellated bell tower with corner buttresses, and a steeply pitched cross-gabled roof. The interior, restored in 1993, includes a soaring 30-foot wood beamed ceiling, original oak pews arranged in three tiers, and stained glass windows.
]]>Aviation captivated America during the 1920s, particularly when Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic in 1927. The United States made rapid strides and airfields opened all over the country. The town of Belgrade constructed Gallatin County’s first airfield in 1929. The opening of Siefert Field, attended by 8,000 people, even caused the county’s first traffic jam. By 1930, the U.S. proudly claimed the most advanced airway system in the world, and in 1935 Northwest Airways received federal approval to provide Montana with east-west airmail service. The U.S. Department of Commerce subsequently constructed the Airway Radio Station at Siefert Field. Federally constructed airway stations, spaced approximately 200 miles apart along the airways, provided services critical to the development of civil aviation. The station housed the radio range and ground-to-air system used by airmail pilots on the Minneapolis-Spokane-Seattle civil airway. Aeronautics Bureau employees manned the station 24 hours a day, operating radio equipment and gathering weather information, which they transmitted over teletype. As technology advanced, high frequency VHF signals proved more reliable in the 1930s and radio range equipment in the Airway Radio Station became obsolete. Gallatin County moved the station to nearby Pogreba Field in 1953, where it now serves as the Three Forks Airport terminal. The small Craftsman style building, one of two such stations left in Montana, is a reminder of early airmail service and the technology that made round-the-clock, all-weather flying feasible.
]]>John Quincy Adams of the Milwaukee Land Company, a subsidiary of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, platted the present town of Three Forks in 1908. Unlike most railroad officials, Adams and his son, B. S. Adams, took an unusual personal interest in the town’s development. Foundations were laid for the J. Q. Adams Block in 1916. In March 1918, the Three Forks Herald finally reported completion proclaiming it “one of the most beautiful [buildings] in the State.” The Neo-classical style building represents what might today line Three Forks’ commercial district had drought, World War I, and depression not intervened. Elegant brickwork and sophisticated proportion reflect the talents of an anonymous, finely trained architect. A significant representative example of early twentieth century “modern” local architecture, the clean lines and symmetry contrast sharply with Three Forks’ earlier, more heavily ornamented commercial buildings. The upper façade remains unchanged. The first ground-floor occupants were the Robertson Jewelry and Drug Company and the Adams’ Three Forks Land Company. A private men’s social club occupied the second floor. Members played billiards and pool in a large arched open space surrounded by oak panels. The club had a kitchen, dining area, and quarters for the live-in steward. The billiards room and sitting room with fireplace remain intact on the second floor. The tin ceiling, mosaic floor tiles, and two vaults survive on the main floor. The exterior masonry and windows are as originally designed except the tin storefront and glass were removed and “modernized” in 1972.
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