Five Montana Properties Nominated for National Historic Register Inclusion

• September 23 2024

A grocery store-turned-cafe, 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. “All the nominations have been thoroughly vetted by our National Register board, so we anticipate they will be listed by the National Park Service in the next few months.”

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 100-year 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. This cultural phenomenon helped to maintain the vitality of small neighborhoods by its easy “walkability” as well as vital location to hear neighborhood information.

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. The property nestles along the south bank of the Yellowstone River approximately one mile south of the Laurel Downtown Historic District.

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 (FERA) Transient Relief Service and later the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and National Youth Administration initiated a period of building construction and occupation that lasted through 1939.

The US military used the property as a World War II prisoner of war camp that occupied the district from 1944 to 1945. Subsequently, local civic organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America, Laurel Rod and Gun Club, Laurel Rifle Club, American Legion Post 123, Girl Scouts, Laurel Jaycees, and the Laurel Lion’s Club leased the buildings and park property for social and sporting activities.

Riverside Park currently operates as a recreational and camping area, a meeting spot for local social service clubs, as well as a wedding and party venue.

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. Since its construction and continuing to the present, the building serves as a reminder of the homesteading boom years of the early 1900s and the importance of a community gathering place in a small town.