Building contractor Ernest Adler constructed these attached, flat roofed storefronts between 1914 and 1920. A German immigrant, Adler was one of Hardin’s most prolific builders. Situated on the edge of the business district, the one-story brick business block housed a plumbing supply store in the north storefront and a sheet metal warehouse and paint and wallpaper store in the south. A car garage, gas station, and electrical supply house later occupied the building’s southern portion, as did the Hardin Creamery from 1932 to 1950. The building remained a creamery, manufacturing butter and ice cream until 1960, when Bud and Doris Novark opened Bud’s Freezer and Locker Service. Several rear additions (including concrete block apartments) expanded the structure, and the front façade was remodeled in 1984. Nevertheless, elements from the historic period remain. The use of glass block for the transom suggests that Hardin in the 1910s was an up-to-date and forward-looking community. A material originally developed in the early 1900s, glass block was first used in manufacturing plants to brighten up the interior with natural light while providing durability and insulation.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Hardin women began raising money for a library in 1909. Numerous fundraisers followed, and in 1912 a hundred-book library opened in the home of Walter and Ella Fearis. After the city passed a mill levy in 1914, Walter Fearis wrote library benefactor Andrew Carnegie to solicit funds for a library building. Fearis argued that farmwomen needed somewhere to go while their husbands conducted business. He also believed a library could keep young men from frequenting the community’s saloons. Carnegie’s secretary initially refused the request because the young town of Hardin did not appear on his outdated map. Ultimately, however, Carnegie donated $15,000 on condition that the county provide a building site and $1,500 in annual support. The county did so, noting that a “Free Library would be a good thing.” Architect C. L. Pruett designed the Neoclassical one-and-one-half-story building in accordance with Carnegie guidelines. A 1987 addition expanded the library while shifting the entrance from the west to the south. However, visitors can still distinguish the original hipped-roof structure, welcomed amid much fanfare when it opened its doors in 1919.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Hardin women began raising money for a library in 1909. Numerous fundraisers followed, and in 1912 a hundred-book library opened in the home of Walter and Ella Fearis. After the city passed a mill levy in 1914, Walter Fearis wrote library benefactor Andrew Carnegie to solicit funds for a library building. Fearis argued that farmwomen needed somewhere to go while their husbands conducted business. He also believed a library could keep young men from frequenting the community’s saloons. Carnegie’s secretary initially refused the request because the young town of Hardin did not appear on his outdated map. Ultimately, however, Carnegie donated $15,000 on condition that the county provide a building site and $1,500 in annual support. The county did so, noting that a “Free Library would be a good thing.” Architect C. L. Pruett designed the Neoclassical one-and-one-half-story building in accordance with Carnegie guidelines. A 1987 addition expanded the library while shifting the entrance from the west to the south. However, visitors can still distinguish the original hipped-roof structure, welcomed amid much fanfare when it opened its doors in 1919.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Hardin’s first railroad depot was moved from Fort Custer after being cut into small sections and transported by train over the Big Horn Bridge. That depot was expanded in 1909, but was deemed inadequate after the homestead boom dramatically increased freight and passenger traffic during the teens. Modeled on Burlington depots in Nebraska, the 1923 depot is a hollow clay tile structure with a brick and stucco veneer. The interior included a general waiting room, men’s waiting room, ticket office, and baggage and express room. Segregation was in effect in Hardin, and in addition to men’s and women’s bathrooms, there was a separate bathroom for Indians. Like other depots, the back of the building (facing the town) is equally as prominent as the building’s front (facing the tracks). Declared by the Hardin Tribune to be “one of the best depots” for a city Hardin’s size “between the Missouri river and the coast,” the building, at an estimated $100,000 price tag, showed the railroad’s faith in Hardin’s future.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Captain Edward Ball, leading two companies of the Second Cavalry from the Montana Column, was ordered to scout along the Bighorn as far south as the 1868 ruins of Fort C.F. Smith. The detachment was then to cross over the divide to the Little Bighorn, and return to Fort Pease via Tullock's Creek.

Although no recent Indian signs were observed during the 175-mile march (April 24 to May 1, 1876), the scouting expedition was not without incident. On the return to Fort Pease, the detachment came upon a large Lakota campsite from the previous summer, a few miles north of present Lodge Grass. Later in the day, the two companies halted along the Little Bighorn where, left than two months later, over a thousand Lakota and Northern Cheyenne lodges would occupy an uninterrupted two-mile stretch in the valley.

The scouting party then veered to the northwest near present Crow Agency eventually camping in the upper reaches of the Tullock''s Creek drainage. The final two-days march down the creek was uneventful with journals of both officers and enlisted men making note of the alkali water, the limited forage, and the crooked stream requiring numerous crossings.

Upon arrival at the fort, Captain Ball's scout raised little excitement because there were no recent Indian sightings to report. However, the information regarding water and forage availability in the Bighorn basin was certainly discussed on June, 21st when General Terry, Gibbon and Custer conferred on the steamer Far West four days before the battle.

Immediately after the Custer disaster, Captain Ball was ordered to follow the trail left by the departing village up the Little Bighorn Valley. Near the mouth of Lodge Grass Creek, Captain Ball discovered that the big village began to disperse - some lodges going towards the Bighorn Mountains and others heading in a more easterly direction. Captain Ball also came across a substantial trail less than a week-old heading north. The trail that Custer followed up Rosebud Creek was not the only trail adding to the huge village just prior to the battle.

Erected by Custer Circle Project 2017 and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

Captain Grant Marsh (1834-1916), one of the most skilled riverboat pilots on the Upper Missouri during the steamboat era, figured prominently in both the events leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn and its aftermath.

The steamboat Far West piloted by Captain Marsh was one of several steamers chartered by the U.S. Government in support of its 1876 military campaign against the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne. As the Dakota Column marched west to the Yellowstone River, the Far West moved upriver in support of the command that now included the Montana Column.

On June 21, 1876, General Terry, Gibbon, and Custer held their final strategy meeting on board the Far West just below the mouth of Rosebud Creek. Custer was to lead the Seventh Cavalry up Rosebud Creek while the Montana Column marched west along the Yellowstone and then south to the Bighorn and Little Bighorn Rivers.

On the afternoon of June 24th, the Far West ferried Terry and Gibbon's columns across the Yellowstone River just below the confluence of the Bighorn River. Captain Marsh continued up the Bighorn eventually mooring a few miles above the confluence of the Little Bighorn River, a remarkable feat of river navigation. Captain Marsh did not learn the fate of the Seventh Cavalry until the early morning of June 29th when a courier from General Terry arrived, directing him to prepare the Far West to receive scores of wounded from Reno and Benteen's columns. Throughout the day the forty or so wounded were transported to the steamers from the battlefield on makeshift litters by troopers from the Montana Column. A few days later, Captain Marsh set off from Fort Pease on a 54-hour, 710 mile, day-and-night dash to the present Bismarck, North Dakota where the fate of the decimated Seventh Cavalry was telegraph to a nation still celebrating its centennial. America was stunned by the news and the story stayed on the front pages of newspapers for weeks.

Erected by Custer Circle Project 2017 and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

As Hardin’s residential neighborhoods began to take shape during the 1910s and 1920s, the new Craftsman style emerged as a favored design. Its popularity was partly due to the ready availability and low cost of the machine-made, mass-produced materials the style utilized. The Eder House displays the characteristic elements of the Craftsman style: a heavy horizontal emphasis to the composition, projecting shed dormers, a combination of narrow lap siding on the first level with wooden shingling in the gable ends, and a gently pitched roof with overhanging bracketed eaves. A flat-roofed sunroom with rows of six-over-one double hung windows further enhances the Craftsman characteristics. The home’s first owner was prominent local businessman Charles S. Eder, who operated a hardware business in town from 1911 to 1950. Charles also owned Hardin’s first Ford automobile dealership and helped promote automotive transportation in the young town. In 1913, Charles and his bride, Marie, commissioned local builder Peter Beck to construct a new home. Like many early Hardin builders, Beck probably relied on mail-order plans and ready-made materials for the design. The residence appears today much as it did when the newlyweds moved into their new home in 1914.

Established as a military post November 1877 by order of President Rutherford B. Haynes and General Phil H. Sheridan. Garrisoned as one of the important Military posts in the Northwest until abandoned by the Government, September 1897. This Fort was named in honor of General George A. Custer, who was killed in action with his entire command at the Battle of Little Big Horn, June 25, 1876.

Dedicated by Shining Mountain Daughters of the American Revolution, Billings, Montana September 21 1930

Erected 1930 by Shining Mountain Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

In 1900, John Svaren left his home in Bergen, Norway, to join family in South Dakota. There he learned English before homesteading to North Dakota in 1909. With his bride, Betsy, Svaren arrived in Hardin in 1917 to build a home. He applied his considerable talents as a carpenter to the construction of this one-and-one-half-story Craftsman style bungalow, probably relying on a pattern book for its design. Typical Craftsman elements are the combination of lap and shingle sidings, gabled dormers, wide eaves with exposed rafter ends, low-pitched roof, and high ceilings. To these basic specifications, Svaren tastefully added doors with fine beveled and leaded glass, hardwood floors, wide interior moldings, and an upstairs wall of built-in cupboards. Francis Kopriva bought the property in 1921, and Svaren moved on to build other houses in Hardin, helping the town grow from a “mud-streeted little village” into a vibrant community. Kopriva, co-proprietor of the Hardin Mercantile Company, owned the home until 1937. The late Don Stacey purchased the home in 1989, adding custom-made wooden storm windows and a new roof. Today the well-kept residence, with its beautiful landscaping, reflects the home’s picturesque early-twentieth-century charm and reveals the continuing care of its current owner.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Long before fur trappers entered the Bighorn Valley, Crows, Sioux, and Cheyennes vied for the area’s abundant game. In 1876, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors defeated the U.S. Army at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; the following year, the Army established Fort Custer just across the river. After the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad laid its tracks into the Crow Indian Reservation in 1894, the tribe faced enormous pressure to open the reservation to homesteaders. In its last and smallest land cession, the Crows relinquished territory south of the Yellowstone River in 1904. To serve the anticipated flood of settlers, the Lincoln Land Company platted Hardin in 1907. Owned by the same men who owned the railroad, the land company founded some three hundred towns across the West. It gave Hardin a variation of its T-town plat, with Center Street forming a T with the tracks. Forty men arrived from Billings to place bids the morning town lots were sold. Edwin Spencer bought the first lot for $900, where he built a general store and post office. In the 1910s architectural fashion dictated restrained, symmetrical buildings, and solid brick business blocks, some designed by Billings architects, came to dominate Hardin’s commercial district. After World War I, low commodity prices slowed the growth of this agricultural shipping point. However, Hardin continued to serve as Big Horn county seat, a role represented by its 1937 Moderne style courthouse.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

German immigrant Anton Becker had great faith in Hardin’s future. Becker bought this lot on May 30, 1907, the day town lots went on sale. He soon constructed a two-story brick building, in front of which he installed Hardin’s first cement sidewalk. He and his wife, Katie, and their six children lived upstairs; downstairs was Becker’s Montana Saloon. In 1917, the Beckers hired Billings architect Curtis Oehme to convert the saloon into a hotel, adding a third story and extending the entire building to the alley. Oehme’s design drew attention to the hotel’s canted entrance through a square tower decorated with pressed metal, a metal roof, and an ornamental flagpole. According to the Hardin Tribune, the hotel, which cost $60,000 to build, included “a large lobby on each of the three floors, a barroom, dining room, kitchen and parlor … [and] thirty-eight handsomely furnished rooms, some of them en suite with private bath.” Ghost signs on the west and north walls still advertise rooms for “$1 up” and “$1.50 up,” respectively. Although Anton died in 1920, the hotel remained in the Becker family until 1954.

Erected by

Montana Historical Society.

The elaborate corbelling on the front façade and the parapet above the transom evoke the glory days of this building, which long provided recreation for Hardin residents. German immigrant Anton Becker, owner of the hotel next door, constructed the one-story building in 1910, only three years after Hardin was founded. The town’s earliest map shows the building as a dance hall, but by 1911, the brick structure housed the Pioneer Pool Parlor. Popular Hardin barber Matt Larkin shared the space from 1912 to 1918. In 1918, pool hall owner James Reid constructed a forty-foot addition at the back of the building and installed a double bowling alley. In the 1920s, in response to golf’s rising popularity, owners installed a nine-hole indoor golf course with a sand green. In later years, the space served as a meat market, grocery store, and then the Pastime Café. The plate glass storefront, glass block transom, and aluminum awnings are later modifications, but the top of the building remains as it was during Hardin’s boom years.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Montana created twenty-six counties during its 1910 county-splitting craze. Among them was Big Horn County, carved from portions of Yellowstone and Rosebud Counties in 1913. Private entrepreneurs constructed the new county’s first courthouses. In 1913, the county leased offices in the Sullivan Block. In 1918, W. O. Lee won the contract “to furnish 20 rooms for courthouse purposes.” To fulfill the contract, he hired Percy Wilcox to construct this $60,000, two-story building. The Prairie style likely inspired the handsome building’s geometric decoration, bands of windows, and horizontal emphasis. Sibley Drug Store and Stockman Bank shared the business block with the county. The bank personalized its interior with mahogany wainscoting, marble trim, and a marble floor. In 1923 the bank closed, a victim of the agricultural depression. That year, the county also moved its offices back to the Sullivan Block. A post office, a clothing store, and a dance hall (on the second floor in the former courtroom) were among the building’s later occupants. The Wilson Building sign dates from the 1960s or 1970s, when Judge Robert Wilson owned the property.

Erected by

Montana Historical Society.

A 30-car cross-country extravaganza, has been called "Montana's greatest publicity stunt". The Centennial Train, which commemorated creation of Montana Territory, also honored 75 years of statehood. The State commissioned Lyman Rice to paint 150 panels to adorn the 30 train cars with scenes intended to lure tourists to Montana. Within eight months, Rice, with assistance from Bud Wert, pained murals on 14,000 square feet of plywood.

The Centennial Train made the epic public relations journey from Montana to New York, hosted presidents and governors, and awed 380,000 at the New York World's Fair. Montana beef, specifically shipped in for the event, was served at the Commodore Hotel where famous cowboy star Montie Montana and his horse rode the elevator to the banquet hall.

When the fair ended and the train returned to Montana, the cars were distributed to Montana communities large and small. Some were adopted by towns and used as offices for Chamber of Commerce. Some were abandoned in wheat fields, their large painted panels now faded by the sun. The Centennial Car situated next to the Historic Hardin Depot is one of only two surviving

Centennial Train cars in Montana.

In 2007, volunteer artists including Harry Koyama, Bob Tompkins, Dick Moulden, Berna Loy Ost, and Joe Trakimas, painted new mural images of the Hardin rail car. The paintings were unveiled in June 2007 during Hardin's 100th birthday celebration.

Charles and Rushann Schneider built this two-story brick business block in 1910. Anticipating the arrival of electricity by four years, the Schneiders had their building wired during its construction. The exterior’s relative simplicity reflects the styles of the day. Simple brick bands adorn the building’s façade, whose main decoration is a denticulated cornice. (The term “denticulated” comes from the Latin word dentil, meaning teeth.) In 1910, the Schneiders lived upstairs. The first floor housed both Charles’ harness shop and Rushann’s confectionery. The popular Hardin couple celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in 1913 by inviting all their friends to the store for refreshments. The confectionery, which boasted a soda fountain, proved the more successful and longer lasting of the two businesses. In 1918, only four years after expanding the building, Charles closed his harness shop to help Rushann with the confectionery. Perhaps the growing popularity of tractors and automobiles influenced his decision. Charles died in 1945. The next year, Rushann moved to her daughter’s home in Forsyth, closing the successful thirty-six-year business.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church of Hardin was founded by Jesuit missionaries to the Crow Indians. Fr. Thomas Grant of St. Francis Xavier’s Mission purchased three town lots for $425 in 1908. The Jesuits constructed a plain, gable-front wooden building at the corner of Custer and Fourth, where each month one of the Fathers would come to say mass. In 1913, Fr. Grant paid $1,000 for a block of land on which to build a permanent church. Under canon law, only masonry churches—which were expected to hold at least 250 parishioners—could be consecrated as permanent structures. St. Xavier Mission Superior Father Louis Taelman estimated in 1916 that such a church would cost $6,000 to build. Post–World War I inflation and design changes brought the building’s final cost to between $15,000 and $20,000. To help fund construction, the parish sold the temporary church in 1917. While Omaha contractor J. W. Russell began work on the new church in spring 1919, Fr. Taelman held services in the downtown Sullivan Block. Fr. Taelman held the first mass in the new church on Christmas Day 1919. The church basement served as both rectory and parish hall. Although the interior was remodeled in 1938, the exterior retains the classic Gothic Revival elements that Hardin’s early congregations favored for their churches. In St. Joseph’s case, these include a steeply pitched roof, pointed windows, simple tracery, a tall tower with an octagonal steeple, brick buttresses, and a raised concrete foundation tooled to look like stone.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

On May 4, 1917, Hardin celebrated the “formal opening of the Gay block . . . with a grand ball in the south store room of this magnificent structure.” The storage area’s hardwood floor was perfect for dancing, and construction of the two-story brick business block merited a celebration. Merchant T. E. Gay had hired the Billings architectural firm of Link and Haire to design the structure, only the second architect-designed building in Hardin. His investment in the $50,000 business block reflected his confidence in the town’s future. In the understated style of the day, Link and Haire ornamented the building with a bracketed cornice, decorative parapet, and a large glass block clerestory that visually separated the first and second floors. Recognizing that many of his customers would be farmers in town for the day, Gay had a “commodious ladies’ rest room” included in the plans. Among the five businesses occupying the first floor, Gay’s hardware and implement store was by far the largest. Tenants of the second-floor’s twenty-two offices included attorneys, physicians, and the Hardin Chamber of Commerce.

Erected by

Montana Historical Society.

Once upon a time, railroads ruled Montana's transportation landscape. When the first railroad reached Montana in 1881, it began a process where, by 1916, over 5,200 miles of steel track criss-crossed the state. The railroad transformed some communities from sleepy hamlets into bustling rail centers and also created many new towns along their routes. By 1910, three transcontinental railroads crossed Montana with branch and spur lines providing rail service to almost every part of the state. The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy (CB&Q) reached Hardin area through its subsidiary, the Big Horn Southern Railroad company, in 1894. Over the next decade, other CB&Q subsidiary companies expanded the line in south central Montana eventually connecting all of them to the railroad's main line in 1911. The growth of the sugar beet industry in the area beginning in 1921, eventually caused the CB&Q to construct a branch line north of Hardin to connect with the Northern Pacific Railway at Custer in 1941. Farmers freighted sugar beets grown along the Bighorn River south to the Holly Sugar company plant at Hardin for processing. When the factory shut down in 1971, the CB&Q abandoned the branch line.

Erected by Montand Department of Transportation.