Red Lodge and Bearcreek: Two Carbon County towns coiled around coal
To understand the history of Carbon County is to understand its 120-year-old roots in coal mining. Carbon County coal produced two bustling towns in the late 1800s: Red Lodge and Bearcreek. These two Carbon County coal mining towns were home to such high-producing coal mines that Carbon County quickly surpassed all of Montana in coal production.
Carbon County coal was first discovered near Bearcreek in the 1860s but wasn’t successfully mined on a large scale until the 1890s when the Montana Fuel & Iron Company opened an underground mine in Bearcreek. The town of Bearcreek was established soon thereafter, in 1905. The first company to mine coal in Red Lodge was the Rocky Fork Coal Company, which opened shop in 1887.
These two mines helped put Carbon County coal on the map and paved the way for other Carbon County coal mines to follow. By 1907, four companies were mining in Carbon County, helping Bearcreek develop into a successful mining town.
Both Bearcreek and Red Lodge produced Carbon County coal until the mid-1940s when a tragic accident struck Smith Mine, bringing the already slowed coal mining industry to a halt and leaving behind a wealth of high-quality Carbon County coal reserves in the area. By 1970, only 31 residents remained in the Bearcreek area.
Red Lodge, by comparison, is a thriving town today thanks to a well-established tourism industry. Historic buildings around Red Lodge pay daily homage to its coal mining past. Strolling downtown you’ll find landmark buildings from the Carbon County coal rush. And you can’t think of the history of Carbon County coal and not take note of Red Lodge’s first log hut, which was used as the post office beginning in 1884. The Carbon County Courthouse was built in 1899 and still stands out in its architectural beauty.
Carbon County’s largest coal mining towns now only have their history in common. When the Yellowstone Park Railroad connected these two Carbon County coal mining towns it seemed they would be forever linked. But now only Highway 308 and historic memories link these two towns.
Thankfully the history of Carbon County coal lives on and it honored annually by the Red Lodge Festival of Nations. This festival represents all of the different nations that were brought together in Carbon County during the coal rush. In the early 1900s, high-quality coal was being mined in Carbon County but the camaraderie between the community members didn’t exist until the festival came on the scene. The festival gave all the Carbon County coal miners a chance to come together and celebrate their differences as well as the shared experience of living in Carbon County during the coal boom.