Homestead on the Range: The Emergence of Community in Eastern Montana, 1900-1925

Authors

Rex C. Myers, South Dakota State University

Date of this Version

1990

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly [OPQ 10 (Fall 1990): 218-227] .Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

Mary Tanner saw homesteading as "a togetherness" learned from neighbors. ¹ In 1915 she and thirty-two families shared that togetherness at Round Butte, Dawson County, Montana, clustered around a school and post office that bore the same name. Neighbors got together and threshed grain, raised barns, or brought in crops for neighbors "laid up" by accident or illness. That same cooperative effort extended to the formation of the Round Butte school and post office, to community social organizations, and ultimately to the creation of a new county, Garfield, in 1919.