"Square Butte School House 1918" - Square Butte, MT (OE)

East of the Highwood Mountains in Central Montana, the Square Butte School is a stately reminder its small town's heyday. After early homesteading, the community of Square Butte became established with the laying of a Milwaukee Road line from Harlowton to Great Falls. With nearly mineral-free water, the town was used as a stop for locomotives. The town also grew through the quarrying of Shonkinite, a rare volcanic rock that looks similar to dark granite. You can see the material in the trim of the school's door and date plaque. Built in 1918 after a fire burned down a brand new 1917 school, the impressive structure was a marker of the town's optimism and pride. The building was spacious for a rural school, with two rooms (one for grades 1-4 and the other for 5-8) and a basement for the teacher's living quarters--occasionally for students as well. Though a series of harsh growing seasons the Great Depression negatively impacted the potential of rural towns like Square Butte, its school maintained a steady attendance of around 20 for decades. In 1967, the school consolidated with the nearby Geraldine district.

Turned into a residence following its closure, the school remains an icon for the area; per the National Register nomination, "the act of rebuilding a new school almost literally from ashes of the previous school stands as a tribute to the tenacious, resolute, far seeking and hardy people that settled this area."