Montana Properties Nominated for Historic Register
A grocery store-turnedcafe, the Gardiner Bridge, a Girl Scout camp lodge, a park that once housed war prisoners and a general store/post office are among the places recently nominated for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s quite a diverse list of historic places in Montana, which reflects our state,” said John Boughton, the National Register coordinator for the Montana Historical Society.
Constructed by the federal government in 1930 and widened in 1975, the Gardiner Bridge was the first Bureau of Public Roads-designed deck truss bridge in the state and is associated with the transformation of Gardiner from a railroad terminus town into a tourist destination because of its proximity to Yellowstone National Park. The bridge significantly changed Gardiner by making it more automobile accessible and less reliant on the railroad and provided a more direct route to Yellowstone Park’s north entrance..
Castle Rock Lodge near Butte is the centerpiece of the 73-acre Camp Castle Rock donated to the Butte Girl Scouts in 1924. The camp sits in the Little Basin Creek Drainage in the Highland Mountains, and the lodge has served as an important focal point of the group’s southwest Montana mission by welcoming thousands of girls to the area through its 100year use.
The Streamline Moderen style Regis Grocery (now a café) was built in 1942 in Red Lodge and is a distinctive corner grocery store, serving the neighborhood for 57 years.
After the death of owners Joe and Viola Regis, a group of local women purchased the property for a café and community center. After renovations in 2001, the Regis Grocery opened as the Regis Café and is still in operation today.
The Regis represents the once ubiquitous corner grocery stores that are now a vanishing resource within neighborhood landscapes.
Riverside Park in Laurel represents a locally significant public landscape with historic resources associated with community development, New Deal programs, military history, and community recreation activities.
Riverside Park’s beginnings date to 1923, when a private owner constructed a dance hall. Within a year after the City of Laurel’s purchase of the property in August 1934, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration’s Transient Relief Service and later the Works Progress Administration and National Youth Administration initiated a period of building construction and occupation that lasted through 1939.
Manley’s General Store in Garneill (Fergus County) is five miles north of the town of Judith Gap, between the Little Belt and Big Snowy mountain ranges.
Manley’s Grocery Store stands as a local landmark representing one of the last remaining vestiges of the homestead community and the place where the town and surrounding area found identity through common experience.
Built in a commercial brick style in 1911, the rectangular brick building has served the community as a general store, post office, and community hall.
