Judith Gap getting set to celebrate its 100th birthday at a big party this summer

The years and the wind and the rain have taken their toll, but Judith Gap has survived for 100 years and its citizens – residents who view themselves as hardy survivors – are about to celebrate. Judith Gap residents want the world to know they are still here, that theirs is a vital community. They want it known they have prevailed over drought, Depression, abandonment, bitter winters – every hardship imaginable, and now they want to party.

One thing for sure: They love to talk about the town, which has been a part of their lives for so long. Jim Brook said he’s been there 80 years – that’s how old he is.

“It kinda grows on you,” said Brook of Judith Gap.

Roy Brewington has been there going on 93 years. That’s how old he is. His grandparents came to the area in 1884. They homesteaded on Swimming Woman Creek east of Judith Gap. His wife, Lola, has been there all of her 88 years.

“I never had enough money to leave,” said Brewington, laughing.

These three, along with Bob Snelling, Harry Peck and Carol Gaugler, got together recently in the Judith Gap city hall/fire station and talked Judith Gap history. They were doing so to promote the town’s 100th birthday party.

Peck said the birthday party will be held on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 16 and 17, which is an appropriate time. Although the town was dedicated on July 8, 1908, town lots were not sold until August of that year. Before the lots were sold and the train depot and roundhouse built, what is now Judith Gap was just windblown prairie.

Every one of the old-timers said there was nothing at Judith Gap, not even a honyocker’s soddie. That spot was chosen, they insisted, not because it was particularly habitable but because it was about half way on the Great Northern Railroad between Laurel and Great Falls.

The railroad gave birth to the town, caused it to grow and when the railroad left, the town began to fade. Judith Gap reached about 1,200 residents at its peak in 1915, Peck said. A railroad still provides freight service to the town, the BNSF Railway Co., but it’s no longer a division point; there’s no roundhouse, no crews changing trains there.

Passenger service on both the GN and Milwaukee ended in the mid-1950s and the Milwaukee pulled out in the early 1970s, the group recalled.

“We don’t ship much from here, but grain and other supplies come in on the train,” said Peck.

Five years before there was a Judith Gap, there was a railroad near the future townsite. It was the “Jawbone Railroad,” more formally called the Montana Central Railroad, which became the Milwaukee. It ran from Harlowton to Lewistown and points beyond in each direction.

Once the town was built in 1908, anyone wanting to take the Milwaukee had to travel about a mile west to a small Milwaukee depot. The Milwaukee offered passenger service to Billings and Great Falls, as did the Great Northern when it arrived in1908.

Peck said his grandfather had a general store at Garneill, where, among other items, he sold tents. The tents were taken to Judith Gap to house the railroad workers. At first the town was a tent city, but soon more substantial structures arose. An ad in an early newspaper shows that lots sold for $400. The ad can be seen in bound copies of the original newspapers from early Judith Gap, owned by Gaugler.

Gaugler read aloud an ad that promised settlers a Garden of Eden if
they came to Judith Gap. It would grow fruit trees and gardens. It was portrayed as the land of milk and honey, she said. “The truth is not much would grow here,” she said.

Snelling said Judith Gap was no different from many other little towns in this part of Montana. These towns all tried to lure people to settle there (with the ads) “and there was not a bit of truth in any of them.”

Once the town was established, Judith Gap gained a reputation as a wild place. There was the Bucket of Blood Saloon, whose name belied its more prosaic activities of drinking and gambling. Peck said so far as he knows no one was ever killed in the Bucket of Blood.

There was more action at the Dolan Hotel where Cora Bring had several working girls. They cleaned and cooked as well as “taking care of that business,” according to Brewington. Cora ran the hotel and restaurant while her husband ran the lumberyard.

Apparently most of “that business” was restricted to the hotel; Judith Gap didn’t have a red light district, Brewington said.

Snelling said he had an uncle who ran a pool hall downtown. He said there were 11 saloons in Judith Gap, about as many restaurants, and they were open around-the-clock. He said one of the best-known restaurants was the beanery where you could eat and play the slot machines.

Along with the wild life, Judith Gap also had an active church life. The town had the same two churches that are there now, Catholic and Methodist. The Protestant church changed to Congregational for a while but it is back to Methodist now, Peck said.

Brewington recalls that he rode his horse the six miles to school every day from what is now the Dean Peterson place.

“If the weather was bad, and it had to be real bad, like you couldn’t see and 40 below, I would leave the horse at the dairy and stay overnight in town. I’d wash dishes for Shorty Howard, who ran a restaurant, for a place to sleep,” Brewington said.

All of the old-timers remembered the tough winters of earlier years. Many times, the town was completely shut down and no one moved. But no one starved, they said, because they had the grocery store and other stores. The weather these days, they said, is nothing like it was in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

In 1919 and the years that followed, drought hurt the town and the population declined. Then in the late 1940s, the railroad abandoned the roundhouse as diesel engines replaced steam. Those are the two influences that reduced Judith Gap to the 100 or so residents it has today.

“You’ve got to be darn tough to live here,” said Snelling.

Brook has his own ideas about why a few have survived, why they have stayed.

“We wanted to see if we could stand it,” said Brook.

Lola Brewington noted the number of houses that have been moved to Harlowton. She said there may have been 60 or more.

Peck said Judith Gap has remained because it serves quite an area. It is the center of a community, he said, that stretches from Harlo to Hobson.

Judith Gap’s decline can be seen in school enrollment. For decades, the school had 40 to 50 kids in high school. That’s down to 14 to 15. At one point, in the 1960s and 70s, when the sawmill was going, there were 100 students in Judith Gap School’s grades K-12.

But those who remain are not discouraged. They have some reason for optimism, they said. For one thing, Montana’s largest wind farm has been built just next door and there are plans to make it bigger. For another, new homes are appearing on the flanks of the nearby Big Snowy Mountains. People are moving into the Judith Gap area and they will need the services of the town, the old-timers say.

Gaugler, whose roots go deep at the town and who married into an old- time family – she owns the old Severance ranch, the oldest ranch near Judith Gap – said a celebration like the 100th birthday party this summer “is important because it helps us maintain our heritage. As you get older, it becomes more important.”

“It’s community and everybody works together,” said Peck. “This is a well-knit community and while we struggle for numbers, we still feel this is a vital place to live. It’s a community that works.”

Brewington, the oldest resident of the area, said the birthday means a lot to him because he’s just about as old as the town. He was born in 1915, just seven years after the town started.

Brook said, “We have had celebrations ever since I can remember. These events bring everyone together.” Brook is on the same ranch, five miles east of Judith Gap, that his grandfather was on.

“This celebration will be a good time to see what the future will bring by looking at the past,” said Snelling. “We have a lot of history yet that needs to be written down. It’s time to look at that history and get an idea what it’s going to be like in another 100 years.”

by JIM DULLENTY 
 
News-Argus Staff Writer 

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