Carbon County Historical Society & Museum
Red Lodge, Montana resides in Carbon County, in the Billings metro area. Located south central Montana, next to the Absaroka-Beartooth ranges, this ranching community looks onto 28 peaks rising over 12,000 feet. The famed Beartooth Highway lies to the south of Red Lodge. The 69-mile drive with dramatic switchbacks reaches heights of nearly 11,000 feet and looks over snow-capped peaks, glaciers, alpine lakes and plateaus. Historic downtown Red Lodge features businesses built from the 1880s to 1915. more info
The history of Red Lodge is much like that of other surrounding mountain towns: Indians, settlers, ranchers and miners. In the early 1900s, Red Lodge was a union town, with bountiful success and a diverse community with citizens from all over the world. The Carbon County Historical Society and Museum are responsible for upholding the rich history left behind over a century ago. This non-profit organization all works to restore and renovate historic buildings, which many are located in the Red Lodge township. One of the many buildings in Red Lodge listed on the National Register for Historic Places is the old Carbon County Bank Building which was robbed by the Sundance Kid in 1887.
Alice Greenough created the first Carbon County Museum in Red Lodge in 1959. The original purpose was to house the collection of her world-renowned rodeo family. Over the years it has grown to include exhibits on homesteading, mining, Native Americans, moonshining, cowboy artifacts, the town's first telephone switchboard, fire wagons from the 1890s, and the original homesteading cabin of Jeremiah Liver-Eatin Johnston. In addition to the regular exhibits are a number of historical videos shown on request.
The Carbon County Historical Society is responsible for organizing name and historical indexes, articles, and various materials dealing with the colorful history of Carbon County. They also have books containing original old newspapers, dating back to the late 1800s. Today, the Carbon County Historical Society and Museum, working in conjunction with one another, highlights historic Red Lodge and Carbon County area with the Greenough rodeo collection, Waples family historic gun collection, interactive coal mine exhibit and much more. The museum also houses the Carbon County archives and assists with genealogical and historic research.
Currently, the non-profit organization has ambitious plans to restore the Labor Temple building, built in 1909. The Carbon County Historical Society and Museum owns the old building and has a vision of restoring the magnificent three-story structure, located across the town's main street from the railroad depot. The plans for the Labor Temple building are to restore it to the splendor of its glory days, when the mines boomed and the unions ruled and a half-dozen languages could be heard in the town's shops and streets. The society plans to raise $3.2 million in the next five years to restore and renovate the Labor Temple and another $1 million for an endowment to provide maintenance and operating funds for the facility in perpetuity. Red Lodge could become a center of historic tourism. People from all over the world traveled to this Montana town to work the mines and left their marks for future generations.
Season: All Year
Hours:
Summer
Monday - Saturday:
10:00am - 5:00pm
Winter
Tuesday - Friday:
10:00am - 5:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am - 3:00pm
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Carbon County Historical Society
Information on Carbon County Historical Society and Museum.
