The Whitetail airway beacon guided nighttime pilots flying along the National Parks Airway’s north-south airmail route. The route, designated in 1930, was Montana’s first such pathway, eventually connecting Great Falls to Salt Lake City, via Monida Pass, Dillon, Butte, and Helena. Before the advent of radio navigation, airway beacons served as a critical nighttime navigational aid, guiding pilots safely between airports. From 1926 to 1938, the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce created 18,000 miles of airway corridors and installed 1,550 airway beacons to mark them for night flying. The bureau completed a lighted route from Salt Lake City to Monida Pass by late 1934. By December 1935, workers installed ten more beacons between Dell and Helena. Just before Christmas 1935, the Montana Standard reported that Whitehall was “surrounded by beacons. From one place can be observed the Whitetail beacon on the north, the Homestake beacon on the west, and to the south, the landing field beacon.” Whitetail’s twenty-five-foot-tall, steel structure held a revolving, one-million-candle-power beacon originally encased in a glass dome. Red and green directional lights on the tower indicated the route, while flashing red course lights identified the beacon in Morse code. Gas-powered generators, once housed in a nearby shed, powered the beacon until the mid-1940s when it was connected to electrical lines. Though most of the country’s beacons were replaced with ground-based radio stations by the mid-1970s, Montana’s private pilots successfully lobbied to keep seventeen beacons lit through 2017. As of 2021, several adopted beacons still light the night sky, recalling Montana’s aviation heritage.
]]>The Lewis and Clark Caverns Headquarters building, designed by National Park Service architect O. John Ballas and built by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews in 1938, is a model example of the Rustic or “Parkitecture” style. Drawing on Arts and Crafts design ideals, architects working in western parks in the 1920s and 1930s used native materials, low horizontal forms, and earth-tone colors reflective of the natural environment. In Montana, architects Robert Reamer, Kirtland Cutter, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, and Thomas McMahon led the movement in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. Their designs translated well in this region where use of native log and stone was a natural extension of settlement building patterns. CCC crews, commissioned under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal jobs program, quarried lichen-encrusted limestone from Cave Mountain for the massive tapered stone porch piers, chimney, and fireplace. These elements, along with cedar shingles on the clipped gable roof, rough-sawn tongue-and-groove siding, and exposed-wood interior trusses show the skill and talent of Ballas and the ability of CCC crews to harmonize the built and natural worlds in this rugged mountain landscape.
]]>President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to bring the United States out of the Great Depression put millions of men to work and transformed local, state, and national public lands. While New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) are best known for their efforts to preserve and restore ecosystems on public land, the CCC also devoted millions of dollars and man-hours to building roads, trails, and buildings on the same lands they sought to preserve. Between 1934 and 1941, CCC crews built over 100,000 miles of roads and trails, developed 52,000 acres of campgrounds, and built hundreds of shelters, cabins, and outbuildings, including over 2,400 “comfort stations” (bathrooms) nationwide. Camp Cavern CCC crews used plans by National Park Service (NPS) architect O. John Ballas to build this Rustic style comfort station in 1938. The building’s massive native granite walls and log rafters, natural hillside setting, and widely separated men’s and women’s entrances aptly reflect design ideals promoted in NPS publications between 1934 and 1965.
]]>Deer hunters first brought the spectacular system of subterranean caverns within Cave Mountain to public attention in 1898. Noticing steam flowing from a natural vent, they discovered passageways and voids filled with striking geological formations. By 1901, local quarry owner Dan Morrison had enlarged the entrance, built 2,000 wooden steps into the caverns, and begun offering guided tours of Morrison Cave. Early tours, guided with ropes and torches, were primitive. Even after federal designation as a national monument in 1908, the caves remained difficult to access. Other cave systems in the United States developed under the National Park Service in the 1920s and 1930s, and Montana state officials petitioned the federal government for aid in 1934. In 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps—a New Deal federal jobs program—established Company 574 and Camp Cavern near Whitehall. Over the next six years, more than 200 crew members, along with a geologist, architect, and engineers, transformed access to the caves. Inside, crews repaired stairways, improved passages, opened new caverns, installed lighting, blasted a 538‐foot exit tunnel, and mapped the cavern. Outside, they built a steep and winding 3.2-mile access road, a granite bridge, maintenance shop, new trails, an overlook deck, and three Rustic style buildings. While still under construction in 1937, the caverns were officially transferred to state ownership, becoming Montana’s first state park well before Montana had a state parks system. The 1940 Montana Legislature authorized creation of the state parks system, and on May 4, 1941 three thousand people attended the caverns’ grand opening.
]]>Newlyweds Lot and Hilda Borden arrived in Whitehall early in 1900, and for the next seventy years, their business contributed to the local economy. At first, Lot ran a saloon and Hilda a cafe. The Bordens built the east portion of the present building in 1913 as a billiard hall, saloon, and second-floor dance hall. Its eye-catching canted corner recalls the days when Whitehall, situated along both the old highway and the Northern Pacific Railroad, was a hub for tourists. Railroad workers—who proved loyal patrons over the next fifty years—persuaded the Bordens to convert the dance hall to hotel rooms in 1916. The Bordens soon expanded, adding a one-story lobby and restaurant to the west in 1919. During Prohibition, the saloon became a commercial storefront housing the Golden Rule, the telephone exchange, and other enterprises. Upon Lot’s death in 1922, Hilda ran both the hotel and restaurant. In 1929, she commissioned Bozeman architect Fred Willson to design the attached Craftsman style residence. With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Hilda obtained the town’s first beer license and the Modern Hotel became the Borden Hotel. Business was so brisk that in 1941 Fred Willson designed a second-story addition, adding nine hotel rooms. The crisp stepped parapet, similar to the older one adjacent, architecturally melds the older and newer portions. Although tourism declined after the construction of Interstate 90 in 1961, Hilda continued in business until her death at 91 in 1971. The Whitehall community remembers her for financing the education of many a local youngster. The Borden Hotel still anchors Legion Avenue.
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