Windham - 59479

Not much is known about the beginning of Windham prior to a story which begins with the time Duncan Gilliespie came in 1914. It is known that in 1909 there was a hotel and that the Post Office was located in it. Also there was a small store. Duncan Gillespie came from Butte to Windham in 1914. At that time there was a population of about 100. He opened a drug store and operated a Dance Hall. It proved to be quite a flourishing business with Lehigh booming at that time. Victrolas were just becoming popular (more)


Geyser - 59447
It is common knowledge in the area that the old town of Geyser derived its names from the mud geysers which still mark the location of the old town.  The present town Geyser adopted the name of the old stage station when the town was moved to its present location on the railroad. In the very early days, it was a stagecoach overnight stopping place on the trail from Lewistown to Great Falls. There are few people who know who named it, and the circumstances surrounding the choosing of this name by the men who laid out the old Great Falls-Lewistown stage route (more)

Raynesford - 59469
Raynesford was the maiden name of a woman who boarded the Great Northern survey crew while the railroad was being built. The new station was between Stanford and Belt. Land for the townsite was obtained from Edmund Higgins, who homesteaded the land around here in 1891. In 1907, when the railroad was coming through, supplies for the workers came from Higgins and his wife, for whom the station was named.  (more)


Benchland - 59462
In 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition traversed this basin and they noted a very beautiful little river which, legend has it, was named Judith in honor of a sweetheart of one of them. This was how the Judith River and the Judith Basin got their names. In succession came the buffalo and Indians, trappers and hunters, miners, cowboys sheepherders, and finally the settlers and the homesteaders. (more)


Hobson - 59452
Hobson was named for S. S. Hobson, an early-day cowboy and rancher who lived between Hobson and Utica on the Judith River and owned the Campbell and Clendendan ranches. He later became state senator from Judith Basin County. (from Cheney’s Names on the Face of Montana, Mountain Press Publishing Company).
The nearby towns of Stanford and Utica have several museums of interest.  The Judith Basin Museum and the Utica Museum are two to be sure and visit while there. Also see the Prairie Past Museum for an interesting collection of old agricultural machinery.  (more)

Moccasin - 59462
Moccasin was named after a mountain range, but these mountains with low, rounded summits and densely forested with lodgepole did look a little like Indian moccasins.   Moccasin has been plagued by destructive fires—in 1916, 1919, 1922, and 1955. The town never really recovered from the 1919 blaze, the biggest of all, which burned an entire block of buildings. Moccasin is in the productive wheat-raising area of Judith Basin County and was once a station on the Great Northern.  (more)


Utica - 59452
Utica, on the Judith River, was a hangout for cowboys and headquarters for the Judith Basin Cattle Pool in the early 1880s. There was a storehouse for saddles, bridles, and other gear for roundups from one season to the next. When the riders came to town, Utica was the liveliest town around.  Jake Hoover discovered a sapphire mine in Yogo Gulch above Utica; that’s the same Hoover who gave Charlie Russell a home and some grub while the artist was fiddling around with painting.  (more)


Sapphire Village - 59452
While the Royal American Sapphire is a part of the world of big business, high finance, national marketing and aggressive advertising, the same stone, in Central Montana, is and will always be known as the Yogo sapphire. Its origin, the Yogo dike, and the country that surrounds it, is part of a different world, that of Jake Hoover, Charlie Russell and Charles Gadsden.  A visit here is a long step back in time. Most visitors come from Lewistown, driving west on US Route 87 across the farm and ranch lands of the sprawling Judith River Basin. They cross the Judith River,  (more)

Buffalo - 59418
Buffalo is located in Judith Basin County and is almost on the Fergus County line. It was named for the great shaggy native Montanan that served as a source of food, shelter, and tools for the Plains Indian. Lewis and Clark, in their journal for July 11, 1806, describe this strange new animal: “A gangue of buffalow…the bulls keep a tremendous roaring we could hear them many miles and there are such numbers of them that there is a continuous roar.” It seems appropriate that that a settlement in this rich grazing land once filled with buffalo should be named for this first occupant.  (more)