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Glasgow

Travel Montana

Great Northern Development Corp., 2000

Glasgow Directory Listings

A view from 1939:

GLASGOW, (2,095 alt. 2,216 pop), the seat of Valley County, is one of the oldest communities in northeastern Montana; since the beginning of construction at Fort Peck Dam, it has been one of the busiest. Everywhere is evidence of prosperity; the population more than doubled between 1933 and 1937. Streams of people arrive and depart daily on business connected with the dam development. Hotels and tourist cabins are crowded.
The town-came into existence in 1887 during the building of the Great Northern Ry., which at first called it Siding 45—it had the forty-fifth siding west of Minot, N. D. When it was platted in the following year it was named in honor of Glasgow, Scotland. By July 1888 it consisted of 8 saloons, 3 restaurants, and 1 store—all but 2 housed in tents. During this rather feverish period Charles Hall, the first settler, sold most of the town site without the formality of ownership.

In time Glasgow became the cattle-, sheep-, and grain-shipping center of an extensive area but it did not have much other importance until September 1932, when two U. S. Army engineers took its mayor out along the Missouri River, and spoke casually about building a dam. "Why, it would cost a million dollars!" gasped the mayor. "Yes," said the engineers, "probably 75 million." The project was approved, a half dozen shanty towns mushroomed nearby, and Glasgow shook itself awake to the fact that it was to be, for a few years at least, a small metropolis. The life that immediately began fermenting in and around it almost put to shame the hell-roaring activities of its frontier days. The magazine Life, in its first issue (1936), presented a pictorial record of the revival of a wild west atmosphere. (Frequent bus service to dam; two planes make flights over dam area.)

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.