Bearcreek, Montana

Montana is dusted with towns that never made it. Although founded with the greatest expectations, these communities succumbed to economic depression, drought, or lack of interest, dwindling until they all but disappeared from the landscape. Only in rare instances have such places managed to survive. One such town is Bearcreek, located about sixty miles southwest of Billings. A once prosperous coal-mining town until tragedy shaped its fate, Bearcreek is finding new life as a bedroom community for nearby Red Lodge.

In 1905 Billings surveyor George Lamport and his sonin-law Robert Leavens platted a town just east of the Bear Creek coal mines, which had opened in 1897. As mining expanded, lots sold quickly in the new community. "Bearcreek is showing signs of thrift and activity each succeeding day," the Red Lodge Picket reported in 1906. By December of that year, the town had incorporated, erected a post office, and began construction of concrete sidewalks, a telephone system, and a city water system. Electric streetlights already shone along Main Street. The "Little city of Bearcreek," the newspaper optimistically boasted, "is destined to become one of the greatest coal mining camps in the entire western country."

By the end of 1906, 250 miners-many of them immigrants from Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Italy, and Scotland-worked in the district's four mines, the Smith, Bear Creek, Smokeless and Sootless, and International. As in other mining camps, ethnic groups settled in their own neighborhoods but worked together in the mines and drank together in the saloons. The numerous languages spoken on its streets and in its ten saloons gave Bearcreek a cosmopolitan feel. Twenty-three businesses, including a first-class hotel named for George Lamport, lined Main Street. Despite this growth, Bearcreek did not develop a police force, reel-light district, or a church, suggesting, perhaps, that sin and sinlessness are necessary commodities for enduring urban existence.

Bear Creek coal was used for heating and cooking throughout Montana, and it also fed the furnaces of the Great Western Sugar Company in Billings and the Anaconda Copper Mining Company smelter in Anaconda. The local economy, however, was dependent on the Montana, Wyoming and Southern Railroad to ship the coal to markets, and this small railroad relied on the Northern Pacific Railway to provide coal cars. Since the Northern Pacific regulated the number of railcars available, the railroad held the fortunes of Bear Creek district in its control. Even so, Carbon County was the dominant coal producer in Montana in the early twentieth century.

The coal industry in south-central Montana waned after World War I as homes and businesses switched to natural gas and electricity. Bearcreek's commercial district remained largely intact during the 1920s, but hard times during the 19305 caused a profound change in the town's appearance as owners moved their homes to other places throughout the area. In 1935 the Bearcreek high school newspaper reported, "Such a thing as passing a house on the road is not unusual to anyone around here. At the rate the houses are being moved, we may need a traffic cop to 'let the houses go by!'" Many owners burned down their buildings for the insurance money, others just quit paying property taxes. Some simply left their buildings to rot. While some buildings found new owners, the county eventually demolished those that became structurally unsound.

The Smith Mine disaster on February 27, 1943, was the final straw for Bearcreek's already shaky fortunes. An explosion in the mine killed seventy-four men, many of whom lived in Bearcreek. Most of these miners' families left town, abandoning their properties. Within a few years, Bearcreek was teetering on the edge of oblivion. Crews tore out the last railroad tracks in 1953. By 1960 only sixty-one souls remained in Bearcreek. Only one business, a bar, remained open to serve a population of forty-five by the late 1980s.

Surprisingly, after nearly seventy years of decline, homebuyers rediscovered the little town in the late 1990s as the high cost of property in Red Lodge drove many people over the hill to Bearcreek. Two Bearcreek businesses now thrive, a restaurant serving what is arguably the best banana cream pie in the world and the Bear Creek Saloon, whose history is a story unto itself. Between 1913 and 1915 Sam Stiller and Jacob Morich constructed the saloon with bricks manufactured at the Bearcreek Brick and tile Company. Owner George Lusin, president of the Bearcreek Liquor Dealers' Association, intended to use the building as a combination grocery store and saloon. Before the building was completed, however, Lusin died of blood poisoning and left the property to his live-in housekeeper and paramour, Lucy Putzell. After Lusin's death, his nephews filed a claim against the will, contending their uncle was not in his right mind when he rewrote his will the day before he died. At the probate hearing, Lusin's executor, J. Harry Wright, revealed that Putzell, an illiterate German immigrant, had financed the construction of the property in question and two adjacent buildings for sixteen thousand dollars. For the most part, the building has functioned as a saloon since its construction. In 1989 owner Bob "Pits" DeArmond began sponsoring pig races at the saloon to raise scholarship money for local college students.

Today Bearcreek is an interesting mixture of historic buildings and modern homes. Not quite the "scar of a town" recently described in one publication, it is by no means a beautiful city. Decaying buildings and dilapidated foundations line the main street, but the two residential areas are still mostly intact with a nice mixture of historic homes and more modem construction. The little town is beating the odds.

Bearcreek is located seven miles east of Red Lodge on Montana secondary Highway 308. The remains of the Smith Mine and other evidence of the area's mining past are unmistakable along the highway. The community can also be reached from Montana Highway 72 that runs through Belfry. Once the headquarters of the Montana, Wyoming and Southern Railroad, Belfry is now the home of the Bats, the local school's sports club. For more information about the famous pig races at the historic Bear Creek Saloon, call (406) 446-3481, Thursday through Sunday, Memorial Day to Labor Day.

JON AXLINE is a cultural resource specialist-historian for the Montana Department of Transportation and a frequent contributor to the magazine.

Copyright Montana Historical Society Autumn 2004
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