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1990

Homestead on the Range: The Emergence of Community in Eastern Montana, 1900-1925

Rex C. Myers South Dakota State University

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Myers, Rex C., "Homestead on the Range: The Emergence of Community in Eastern Montana, 1900-1925" (1990). Great Plains Quarterly. 395. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/395

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. HOMESTEAD ON THE RANGE THE EMERGENCE OF COMMUNITY IN EASTERN MONTANA, 1900,1925

REX C. MYERS

Mary Tanner saw homesteading as "a togeth­ stead boom represented separate decisions by erness" learned from neighbors. l In 1915 she thousands of would-be farmers to take up in­ and thirty-two families shared that togetherness dividual plots of land and seek private fortunes. at Round Butte, Dawson County, Montana, At the same time---and more important-a sense clustered around a school and post office that of "community" or cohesiveness quickly grew bore the same name. Neighbors got together where these sodbusters took up residence. They and threshed grain, raised barns, or brought in formed groups spontaneously, from the grass­ crops for neighbors "laid up" by accident or roots level up, and their actions demonstrated illness. That same cooperative effort extended a putting aside or combining of private desires to the formation of the Round Butte school and to achieve mutual benefit. This gemeinschaft post office, to community social organizations, characterized the reality of the movement-in and ultimately to the creation of a new county, contrast to pervasive ideologies and rhetorics of Garfield, in 1919. rugged individualism. From these activities, and like examples in Cooperation took on measurable dimensions hundreds of locations scattered across the plains in four illustrative activities: formation of school of eastern Montana, emerge divergent perspec­ districts, small fourth-class post offices, com­ tives on settlement of the West during the munity clubs, and counties. 2 With each activity northern Great Plains land rush of the early the progression from "convenience" to "com­ twentieth century. On one hand, this home- munity" is an important distinction in function. Like individualized decisions to homestead, a personal desire to have a school or post office Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor close by (to minimize travel for children or fam­ of history at South Dakota State University, Rex C. ilies), to form a club (to dispel loneliness), or Myers has published dozens of articles. His six books to create a county (for business or political spoils) include Montana: OUf Land and People (with William often originated as matters of personal conve­ Lang, second edition 1989). nience. Yet however privatized in origin, suc­ cess came only with cooperative action: one [OPQ 10 (Fall 1990): 218-2271 person could not form a school district or build

218 COMMUNITY IN EASTERN MONTANA 219 its classroom; a dance or literary society meant left the well-developed agrarian Midwest or ur­ group interaction; one voter did not create a ban social infrastructures to settle eastern Mon­ new county. Equally important, a sense of mu­ tana, a profound sense of isolation existed, not tuality quickly developed out of such actions. as absolute as the nineteenth-century home­ Settlers worked together toward common goals steader's, but no less real in the perceptions of and saw themselves as a "community," people twentieth-century participants in the process. in a specific geographic area with common Indeed, isolation on the land represented the needs----Round Butte, Garfield County. norm during each phase of the frontier expe­ As identifiable groups, or "communities" of rience. 4 like-minded people, these settlers accomplished Homesteading "broke up" the northern Great together what they could not accomplish alone. Plains literally and figuratively. United States Between 1900 and 1925, they replicated on the land policy fragmented settlement in quarter Montana plains the economic, social, and po­ section multiples. The 1862 Homestead Act litical units they had left behind. Such insti­ specified 160-acre plots and the Enlarged tutions met the collective needs of a new society Homestead Act of 1909 doubled that amount. they sought to build. Supportive federal legislation and increased farm In 1900 Montana had 243,329 people, mechanization allowed homestead farm size to twenty-four counties, and 696 school districts. grow at a steady pace from 1900 on. Montana Two decades later the number of residents had homesteaders plowed farms that averaged 134 more than doubled to 548,889; county numbers acres in 1901 and 265 acres in 1925. 5 reflected a similar growth to fifty-four; school State historians have focused on the political districts increased more than three-fold to 2,270. fragmentation that resulted from this popula­ During that same twenty year period, 1,091 new tion movement, pointing to the proliferation of post offices came into existence to serve a grow­ communities and counties. The economic bust ing population. The dramatic increases between of the 1920s and 1930s-drought, bank failures 1900 and 1920 resulted from a homestead and out-migration-heightened historical scru­ "boom" primarily in the eastern two-thirds of tiny of the homesteading process and those who the state-the population of eastern Montana engaged in it. The positive efforts of Montana's grew from 93,000 (38 percent of the state's to­ 1900-1925 homesteaders, who formed sponta­ tal) to 314,000 (57 percent). Derisive and de­ neous communities of self-interest to meet their scriptive names characterized the new settlers­ mutual needs as they settled the land, however, Honyockers, Scissorbills, Boomers, Sodbusters, are just as important as the later failures. Homesteaders. Collectively they claimed or re­ James C. Malin noted a similar process in claimed more than fifty-four million acres of his 1947 study of pre- and post-Civil War set­ public and railroad land during those twenty tlement patterns in Kansas: years and by 1925 had secured final title to nearly thirty-four million acres. 3 Settlers were scattered, acquaintances were Such dramatic statistics reflect significant wide, often as extensive as a conventional settlement in Montana and the last major pop­ county, and there had not yet emerged any ulation movement to "free land" in the trans­ fixed centers of organization. Individual set­ Mississippi West. This homestead boom oc­ tlers felt free to meet at different places and curred so late (compared to America's nine­ to participate in activities that might bring teenth-century westward expansion) because the them together. Later this larger area became region was marginal for agriculture. In 1900 the more differentiated, centering around a local Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads trading center for some activities, or a went through, not to, the region and no road schoolhouse or other convenient place for network existed tying together the vast lands union religious or social gatherings. 6 between transcontinental rails. For those who 220 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1990

Zoyd Money saw the process happening in number of newly created school districts and the area around Geraldine during 1911. "In a post offices reflected the same general pattern, new country," he said, "when it's first settled, with modest peaks between 1903 and 1904 fol­ there is more hospitality and everybody is more lowed by 1906 lows of sixteen districts/twenty­ congenial toward each other than they are in three offices, respectively. In 1910, however, an older country . . ." Geographer John C. the pattern showed the dramatic impact of the Hudson noted in his study of North Dakota 1909 Enlarged Homestead Act. Settlers with­ prairie development that this sense of hospi­ drew more than 5.9 million acres from public tality transcended even ethnic lines. The "dis­ domain and purchased another 300,000 acres similarity of origins was overshadowed by the from the Northern Pacific. 9 In 1910, Montan­ conventions of neighborliness" as a "common ans established fifty school districts. enterprise" pulled together people who had come "When you built a school the government hundreds or thousands of miles to "adjoining didn't buy it for you," Mary Redfield and her homesteads. "7 neighbors around Opheim discovered. "You went Historian Paula M. Nelson found a like pat­ around and solicited everybody.... Those who tern in western South Dakota during the de­ had kids got together and talked it over. We cades before World War I. Most settlers had left elected officers ... [and] each one put in what behind well developed social institutions­ was needed." Montana statute required a min­ schools, services, and civic activities. They imum of ten students to form a school district. thrust themselves suddenly and separately­ Five families of children lived within a fifteen often alone or with only immediate family­ mile radius of the Redfields. They met the min­ into the vastness of a prairie landscape that imum and got the district. 10 accentuated the potential for loneliness. "If they Nine miles north of Fort Benton, Pleasant were to have the comforts of communality, they Valley residents gathered at the home of Will had to initiate the effort as individuals. "8 Stellmon in late May 1911. They formed what became school district No. 63 and sent their petition to Helena for approval, citing the need FORMING SCHOOL DISTRICTS for a building to serve as a school and for "public Schools frequently focused the first collec­ meetings and a community center." Eighteen tive activity in a region. Since achieving ter­ people contributed a total of $165 to erect the ritorial status in 1864, Montana residents had sixteen by twenty-eight foot structure. When formed an average of twenty school districts a completed, the building represented a true focal year and established twenty-one post office lo­ point for social life in Pleasant Valley. Sunday cations annually, but between 1900 and 1920 mornings the Presbyterians used it for services formation of school districts and establishment and church school; Sunday afternoons Meth­ of post office locations took place in almost odists did likewise. A literary society met in the direct relationship to the number of homestead evening. Over time, Pleasant Valley residents entries in Montana. In 1901, settlers entered built a baseball diamond and established a cem­ 357,000 acres of public domain and purchased etery near the school to serve other needs of 526,567 acres of Northern Pacific land. That the communityY same year, Montana established eighteen new The Montana superintendent of public in­ school districts (of approximately seven hundred struction approved 131 new school districts dur­ in the state) and thirty-eight new post offices. ing 1911 and another 148 the next year. Each During the first decade of the present cen­ district illustrated the most basic political or­ tury, the number of settlers entering land began ganization on the homestead frontier-a com­ to increase modestly from the 1901 level, peak­ ing together more formal than card parties, taffy ing briefly in 1903 at 2.4 million acres, and pulls, shivarees, or dances at someone's home. dipping down to 553,000 acres in 1905. The Buildings, like Pleasant Valley's, played host to COMMUNITY IN EASTERN MONTANA 221 a wide variety of "community programs, social events and literaries ... "12 These structures helped hold together scattered homesteaders by focusing social life at a single point.

CREATION OF POST OFFICES

Post offices served as larger units of com­ munity organization. Although the United States Post Office Department initiated Rural Free Delivery in 1896, such service required a system of better roads than existed in rural east­ ern Montana. The Department thus continued FIG. 1. Montana Counties 1901. Reprinted from to use fourth-class post offices to meet the need Montana Postal Cache, February 1976, courtesy of for service. A post office could be established Dennis J. Lutz. with the filing of a two-page "Location of Pro­ posed Post Office" form. Applicants had to demonstrate a need for service and an absence of a competing post office nearby. A map grid applying for a post office was a business deci­ on the second page asked for geographic details sion, not because the post office itself generated in a nine township region-an area eighteen much revenue but because it drew people to the miles by eighteen miles square: "Plot showing store. Another postal historian, Wayne E. Fuller, the proposed location of the post office with called the rural post office/store the "heart" of the adjacent post offices, villages, roads, rail­ America's rural mail system. "The very life of roads, mail routes, rivers, and creeks." Forms their communities pulsated beneath [local post­ submitted to the Post Office Department in masters'] fingertips . . . "15 Washington, D.C., were approved almost au­ In the three years following enactment of tomatically. Not until about 1919 did Rural Free the 1909 Enlarged Homestead Act, 224 new Delivery become the Department's delivery post offices came to life in Montana-eighty­ method of choice for eastern Montana. 13 eight in 1910 alone, more than in any previous According to geographer John Hudson, the year. As a postmistress from 1910-15, Pearl R. service area of a post office/store was larger than Reeves understood the fourth-class stations and a school district, and the post office was usually the homesteaders they served north of Chinook the social focus for this larger region. As settlers at places like Cherry Ridge, Hydro, and Soma. scattered themselves across eastern Montana, Settlers came to the post office/store for their they wanted to maintain communication with mail or supplies, "and those of neighbors, too, the more settled world they had left. When Jim as long as someone was making the trip. "16 Stephenson, Fred Scott, and Fred Lambie came The peak in Montana homestead entry and from Minnesota in 1910, they founded the Red­ resultant community activity took place during water store and post office northeast of Circle, the years 1913-15 when settlers claimed ap­ Montana. "[Homesteaders] used to come there proximately 14.4 million acres of land-5.3 in for the mail," Mary Stephenson remembered 1914, the most active year. During the same years later. "You'd be surprised, that post office, three year period, state residents created 528 the people that would come there. "14 school districts and 280 new post offices (114 Most typically, the person who applied for in 1914). In land entry, school district forma­ and received a post office at a specific locale tion, and the creation of post offices, these fig­ also operated the general store. Geographer and ures represent the highest levels of activity in historian Richard W. Helbock observed that the state's history. 222 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1990

Sond Creek

Weldon •

Hamblin. Davidson. Horse • Creek Redwater .Sullivan Phone • fRose Volley • eru~etl CIrcle • e . Keplervill • ~ Bloomfield o('.f~ .Stony 'Jordon ~. Butte 'Smoky Sulle

Cohogen, -Snow Belt

Chold,o.

Bruneldo _ HillSIde' DAWSON, RICHLAND & WIBAUX CO.'S 1914-1919 FIG. 2. Dawson, Richland, and Wibaux Counties, 1914-19. Reprinted from Montana Postal Cache, May 1976, courtesy of Dennis J. Lutz.

Clearly individual homesteaders came to­ their formation took place not only from the gether to establish school districts and petition grass-roots level but also without specific ex­ for post offices. In short order, they also came ternal guidelines-neither school district re­ to identify themselves by those districts or ser­ quirements from Helena nor postal regulations vice points--the Redwaters and Round Buttes from Washington, D. C. Form and format of the and Pleasant Valleys of eastern Montana. Sand clubs as well as the physical structures they Creek residents twenty-five miles north of Cir­ erected reflected local needs for "social enjoy­ cle secured their own school district and post ment and literary advancement. "18 office. Hobart McKean understood the need: In the late 1920s, J. Wheeler Barger of the "The people had the natural elements to com­ rural life studies program at Bozeman's agricul­ bat and they . . . had to enlist the aid of their tural experiment station examined these groups fellow man-any of them who were available­ and the facilities they built, analyzing the pro­ and we all lived together and worked together cess as it developed in rural Montana after the and we cooperated as people should."17 Sepa­ tum of the century. Barger studied seventy-five rately they could not meet their desire for schools community halls and 111 active or inactive and postal service. community clubs. He defined a community hall as a structure other than a school or church "owned by the community as a whole or by some FOUNDING OF COMMUNITY CLUBS fairly inclusive organization within the com­ Rural community clubs in many ways provide munity, which serves as a place where people the best example of cooperative effort because commonly assemble for all types of meetings. " COMMUNITY IN EASTERN MONTANA 223

Barger categorized community clubs as groups higher interests through literary and educa­ formed for social, economic, and general com­ tional work."23 munity betterment. He felt that such buildings Choteau's club founded a library; Baker's built and clubs had a "profound influence in pro­ a school; community club members in Broadus moting community solidarity, increasing neigh­ established a park. The dozen or more members borliness, providing recreation for young people, of Opheim's Wild Rose Women's Club quilted, and giving rise to many worthwhile cooperative made baby baskets for one another as the oc­ endeavors which otherwise would not be at­ casion arose, held demonstrations on various tempted. "19 household topics, and made garments for sol­ Irene McManus and the women of Bole, near diers during World War I. Mary Redfield fondly Choteau, needed a place to hold regular dances remembered the activities as outlets for the iso­ and house their small library. Through a series lation of homesteading. Club activity, Cho­ of bazaars, theatrical productions, and dances, teau's Dorothy Floerchinger recalled, provided they raised enough to purchase an unused store an all-important opportunity for people "to come building and get started. For the club's duration, together. "24 social life at Bole centered there. 20 Many homesteaders felt the need for social COUNTY BUSTING intercourse as strongly as the need for schools to educate children and post offices to facilitate Out of agricultural development in eastern communication. Indeed, dances, picnics, and Montana a sense of coming together also man­ parties helped ameliorate the sense of isolation ifested itself in the political arena-"county on the vastness of the plains. Community clubs busting" people called it. The increase in coun­ and buildings appeared shortly after the first ties ftom twenty-four in 1900 to fifty-six in 1925 settlers. Of the 125 community buildings and fragmented the Montana map--"busted up" clubs on which Barger secured detailed infor­ massive counties and, hence, the name. T wenty­ mation, three came into existence before 1900 six of those counties appeared between 1910 (the first in 1893); four between 1900 and 1910; and 1920-0nly four during the preceding de­ fifty-eight during the peak decade for settle­ cade and the last two in 1923 and 1925. The ment; and another sixty between 1920 and nomenclature focused on the geographic divi­ 1928. 21 siveness of "busting," but the seeds and the Community club formation continued at a fruits of this political process were, at their core, sustained level during the bust of the 1920s for cohesive. the same reason it began in the first place-to secure cooperative 'activity under difficult con­ ditions. Sue O. Hill remembered the process on Lonesome Prairie west of Big Sandy in 1913: "During all this [isolation) that sounds so bad we were all having the same problems, but all those years we enjoyed many things together and helping each other in the bad times."22 Barger examined club by-laws to detail their important purposes. Two-thirds of the groups focused on social, recreational, and community improvement. The remainder had principally economic functions. Statements of purpose often included phrases such as: "To promote pros­ Fio. 3. MontaTUl Counties, 1925, with dates of county perity through farm practices, to foster ftiend­ creation. Courtesy of Dennis J. Lutz and Montana ship among our members and to advance the Historical Society. 224 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1990

Each new county represented a developed detailed a petition/election process whereby re­ and developing sense of cooperation. A school gions took county creation into their own hands. district might serve five families-children Here, t09, as with school districts, post offices, within a half dozen miles of a central point like and community groups, the period from 1913 Pleasant Valley. A post office and store like Jim to 1920 became significant. Twenty-three Stephenson's served a good part of the Redwater counties found their places on the map during Creek drainage. Clubs and club houses helped those years-nine through the Leighton Act cement the bond among aggregates of like­ process and fourteen through statute rather than minded people who saw themselves as a "com­ petition, seven in 1919 alone. 26 munity" and mutually pledged themselves to Politically, eastern Montana received a more breaking down prairie loneliness and isolation. solid identity in 1917 when the legislature di­ The desire to form a new county constituted a vided the state into separate congressional dis­ logical continuation of "us"-a collection of tricts. The 1910 census had entitled the state school districts, post offices/towns, and interest to two representatives, but they were selected groups-that had quickly formed a larger self­ at large in the 1912, 1914, and 1916 general identity that extended individual social and elections. That the 1917 legislature split polit­ economic needs to the collective political arena. ical "East" and "West" acknowledged a sec­ The process took place quickly between the real tionalism with geographical and chronological start of the boom in 1910 and the onset of the roots. Their elected representative to congress bust following World War I. Forming a smaller, gave eastern Montanans a political identity as new county out of a portion of a larger, old a community separate from the older, western county meant a group of recent settlers had also part of the state. The political East-West di­ formed a new "community" with a common vision state legislators acknowledged in 1917 political identity. remains basically unchanged today. 27 Consummate county-buster Dan McKay rec­ ognized this in his rhetoric: bring government CONCLUSION closer to the people, help "grass orphans" iso­ lated from a distant county seat, combat leg­ Agricultural depression and out-migration, islative corporate domination from big dties and which affected Montana in the 1920s and 1930s, the west by adding eastern Montana legislators provided a historic and, unfortunately, often to the legislature-"us" in a new Garfield County negative postscript to the homestead boom. That and eastern Montana; "them" in older Dawson the movement suffered such reverses is not the County or Helena or Butte. Newspaper man collective fault of those who settled the area. Daniel Whetstone, a Highline veteran of the As Mary Hargreaves suggested, the bust came homestead boom and bust, remembered how about because three fundamental premises, sub­ Dan McKay "used to barge into rural school­ scribed to by homesteaders, the federal govern­ house gatherings, of a community nature, take ment, and the public at large, were simply not the floor and let loose at the perfidious Ana­ true. Agricultural development of the semiarid conda Copper Mining Company, the railway region was not practicable as a normal expansion robbers and the domineering haters of home­ of the farming frontier. Such development did steaders ... "25 McKay's oratory reminded set­ not serve the general good of the nation. Planned tlers that old political structures had not land utilization and the regulation of state, rail­ adequately served the needs of a new pioneer road, and other private promotional efforts were generation. He spoke in favor of expanding gov­ not unnecessary and undesirable. 28 ernmental institutions-more counties for east­ As the validity of those assumptions has come ern Montana. into question, so has the appropriateness of In 1911 the legislature facilitated new county judging individual actions during the period formation by passing the Leighton Act, which "failures." A second dynamic that has affected COMMUNITY IN EASTERN MONTANA 225 historians' evaluations of twentieth-century communities. Today fewer than 500 school homesteading is the "progress" that had oc­ districts function in the state. 30 curred since the beginning of Great Plains ag­ Community clubs continued to form during ricultural settlement. Isolation produced the the 1920s as hardship provided an intensified natural sense of "community" Malin saw in need for sociability among those who stayed. Kansas, and despite technological advances, Yet out-migration presaged failure for such clubs eastern Montana Honyockers felt the same iso­ and after 1930 they began to disappear as did lation north of Circle. The lack of hard-surfaced many of the homesteaders who had founded roads and branch railroad lines forced home­ them. Irene McManus and surviving members steaders to focus on school districts and post of the Bole Women's Club eventually sold their offices not far from the family soddy or claim clubhouse to the highest bidder for $2,500, shanty. Although a late "frontier" in terms of donating most of the proceeds to activities in chronology, eastern Montana was not an al­ neighboring Choteau and Fairfield. 31 together different frontier from its historic an­ "The social instinct of people demands tecedents in terms of perceived isolation and expression," J. Wheeler Barger observed in his the felt needs for cooperative effort among its study of Montana community clubs. 32 In the participants. Settlers viewed the condition as more settled regions from which twentieth­ temporary and worked to establish institutions century homesteaders came, a variety of groups to mitigate loneliness and isolation, but after and organizations existed to satisfy that instinct. two and one half decades of settlement (1900- Thrown together in the geographic and 1925), "sparsity of population remained char­ psychological isolation of the northern Great acteristic on the plains. "29 Plains, homesteading was "a togetherness" Furthermore, improved technology made learned from and shared with neighbors. Settlers sparsity a permanent condition. Technological developed a sense of gemeinschaft, manifested improvements in farm machinery encouraged first in cooperative acts such as threshing and farming of ever larger land areas. More suc­ bam raising, then continued in other activities cessful farmers bought out less successful neigh­ designed to meet specific felt needs-school bors; fewer people on the land needed fewer districts to educate children, post offices to school houses and traveled farther on better maintain contact with the outside world, clubs roads to get mail and supplies or had Rural Free for social contact and personal betterment, Delivery bring letters and mail-order catalog counties for greater political clout. Within those goods to their farms on the same improved roads. frameworks, the homestead period in Montana These demographic and technological is a study of "community" action on the changes became apparent early in the 1920s. American frontier. With most land previously claimed and the va­ lidity of dry farming in doubt after the 1917-19 NOTES drought, new homestead entries declined as pre­ vious homesteaders simply made final proof on 1. Mary Tanner Oral History, Montana Historical existing farms and bought land forsaken or Society Archives, Helena (MHS), OH 307. foreclosed. New post offices averaged fewer than 2. I have not included churches in this study because extant records do not allow the researcher nine a year during the 1920s. About thirty-five to distinguish between spontaneous efforts that fit new school district applications a year arrived my definition of "community" and sponsored or in Helena until 1924 when the Superintendent prompted church formation by missionary societies of Public Instruction tallied an all-time high of and itinerant preachers. 2,384. In succeeding years, consolidation rather 3. U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Of­ fice, Census Reports, Vol. 1, Population, Part 1 than creation became the norm as the improved (Washington: GPO, 1901); U.S. Department of roads that brought mail also removed children Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census in buses to elementary and high schools in larger of the United States, 1920, Vol. 1, Population, Number 226 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY. FALL 1990

and Distribution of Inhabitants (Washington: GPO, 8. Nelson, After the West Was Won. p. 62. 1921). Information on school districts came from the 9. Hargreaves, Dry Farming, pp. 376-77, 408; Bu­ Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction reau of Land Management, Homesteads, p. 16; MSPI. (MSPI) annual and biennial reports from First Annual 10. Mary Redfield Oral History, MHS, OH 291. Report (1890) through Twenty-First Biennial Report 11. Frank Elliott, "Pleasant Valley School" in the (1930) and from conversations with the MSPI staff. Pleasant Valley Histories, MHS, Small Collection The completeness of published reports varies and (SC) 647. some averaging was necessary for statistical compar­ 12. Maud Moody Luce, MHS, SC 647. isons. Information on establishment of Montana's 13. Richard W. Helbock to Rex C. Myers, 6 July post offices came from Dennis and Meryl Lutz, "Mon­ 1988 and Dennis J. Lutz to Rex C. Myers, 13 June tana Post Offices: 1864-1974," in Montana A Postal 1988, in author's possession; Wayne E. Fuller, The Cache (February, May, August, November 1975): m- American Mail; Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: 1 to m-103. The same data on Montana post offices University of Chicago Press, 1972); Wayne D. Fuller, is available in Dennis J. Lutz, Montana Post Offices RFD, The Changing Face of Rural America (Bloom­ & Postmasters (Minot: Privately printed, 1986). Sta­ ington: Indiana University Press, 1964). tistics for initial amounts of land claimed by home­ 14. Hudson, Plains Country Towns, p. 123; Mary steaders came from compilations in Mary W. M. Stephenson Oral History, MHS, OH 209. Hargreaves, Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains. 15. Helbock to Myers; Fuller, RFD, p. 84. 1900-1925 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 16. Lutz, "Montana Post Offices"; Pearl R. Reeves 1957), pp. 376-77,408. These statistics include pub­ Oral History, MHS, OH 298. lic land and land the Northern Pacific Railroad sold 17. Hobart McKean Oral History, MHS, OH 208. from its land grant holdings. U.S. Department of the 18. The Women's Study Club movement was a Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Homesteads national phenomenon by the tum of the century. (Washington: GPO, 1962) lists final homestead en­ Montana groups had joined the General Federation tries from 1868 through 1961. Conversations with of Women's Clubs in 1904 and held their first state­ James Muhn, land law historian for the U.S. De­ wide meeting in 1905. By 1908, eighteen Montana partment of the Interior, Bureau of Land Manage­ communities had Federated Women's Clubs includ­ ment, Billings, were helpful in clarifying homestead ing the eastern Montana communities of Forsyth, settlement patterns. Harlem, Havre, and Malta. In all probability, many 4. Mary W. M. Hargreaves, "Space: Its Institu­ of the women who homesteaded in other eastern tional Impact in the Development of the Great Montana communities had some familiarity with the Plains," in Brian W. Blouet and Frederick C. Leubke, movement and sought to replicate club social and eds., The Great Plains. Environment and Culture (Lin­ literary activities in their new environment. Montana coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 207. State Federation of Women's Clubs. Annual Reports, 5. The Bureau of Land Management publication 1904-1905, 1907-1908; Judith Club, Lewistown, Homesteads and Hargreaves, Dry Farming, pp. 329- Montana, Minute Book, MHS, SC 1838 (quoted). 82, are useful in clarifying the history of federal The Judith Club incorporated 23 January 1905. See homestead legislation. also Theodora Penny Martin, The Sound of Our Own 6. James C. Malin, The Grasslands of North Amer­ Voices: Women's Study Clubs, 1860-1910 (Boston: ica, Prolegomena To Its History with Addenda (1947; Beacon Press, 1987). rpt. Glouchester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1967), 19. J. Wheeler Barger, Rural Community Halls in p. 316. See also Robert V. Hine, Community on the Montana, Montana Agricultural Experiment Station American Frontier: Separate But Not Alone (Norman: (MAES) Bulletin No. 221 (January 1929; quoted pp. University of Oklahoma Press, 1980) for community 4,43); J. Wheeler Barger, The Rural Community Club development throughout the American West; John In Montana, MAES Bulletin No. 224 (January 1930; C. Hudson, Plains Country Towns (Minneapolis: quoted, p. 6). University of Minnesota Press, 1985) for small town 20. Irene J. D. McManus Oral History, MHS, formation in North Dakota, principally associated OH 766. with railroads; and Paula M. Nelson, After the West 21. Barger, Bulletin No. 221, p. 43. Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western 22. Sue O. Hill Reminiscence, "Neighbors and South Dakota, 1900-1917 (Iowa City: University of Friends Who Homesteaded on Lonesome Prairie West Iowa Press, 1986). Taken with Hargreaves's book and of Big Sandy, Montana," MHS, SC 1256. article, these last two works provide detailed studies 23. Barger, Bulletin No. 221, p. 6; Bulletin No. of areas adjacent to eastern Montana that experi­ 224, pp. 6-7. enced the same twentieth-century land boom. 24. Emily S. Crary Oral History on Choteau, 7. Zoyd Money Oral History, MHS, OH 188; MHS, OH 754; Lorene Kirschten Oral History on Hudson, Plains Country Towns, p. 123. Baker, MHS, OH 334; Edith B. McLain Oral History COMMUNITY IN EASTERN MONTANA 227 on Broadus, MHS, OH 893; Redfield, Oral History; and values that emerged out of the homestead period Dorothy B. Floerchinger Oral History, MHS, OH in eastern Montana when compared to the remainder 673. of the state. Congressional redistricting following the 25. Daniel W. Whetstone, Frontier Editor (New 1990 U.S. Census may once again tum Montana York: Hastings House Publishers, 1956), p. 100. into a single district. 26. Ellis Waldron and Paul B. Wilson, Atlas of 28. Hargreaves, Dry Farming, p. 540. Montana Elections, 1889-1976 (Missoula: University 29. Hargreaves, "Space," pp. 211-13. of Montana Publications in History, 1978), pp. 72- 30. Bureau of Land Management, Homesteads, pp. 73. 18-20; MSPI; Lutz, "Montana Post Offices." 27. Ibid., pp. 73, 152-53. The authors use the 31. Irene McManus Oral History. phrase "Life Style Regions" to characterize the traits 32. Barger, Bulletin No. 221, p. 3.