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Cut Bank

Travel Montana

Cut Bank Directory Listings

A view from 1939:

CUT BANK, (3,740 alt., 845 pop.), seat of Glacier County, is the booming center of Montana's youngest oil and gas fields. Great steel drums and stilted tanks tower above it. Gas piped from this region is used in the homes of Great Falls, Helena, Butte, and Anaconda, and has replaced pulverized coal in the copper-reduction plants. The Blackfeet described the stream that flows through the town as "the river that cuts into the white clay banks." From this, white men derived the name Cut Bank.

Right from Cut Bank on a dirt road to the Cut Bank Oil and Gas Field. Wells, oil derricks, and pumps are scattered over the prairie for 16 miles. Gas comes out of the ground so cold that it forms inch-deep ice on the piping. The flow is registered by large meters. Oil must be pumped into feeder lines; as many as 6 and 7 wells are pumped from one power plant. One 4-inch pipe line leads to Sweetgrass on the Canadian Border, where the oil is sold for export to Canada.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.