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Town leaders seek ways to keep residents

April 8, 2002 /

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FORT BENTON – Towns along Montana’s Hi-Line are struggling to diversify their
farm-based economies, acknowledging the effects drought and poor crop prices have
had on their small communities.

By BECKY BOHRER
Associated Press

It has been a frustrating and sometimes futile effort, but local leaders in the
once-thriving "Golden Triangle" – about 2,000 square miles – say they are not about to give
up.
"The attitude here, I think, is one of hope," says Valerie Morger, a Fort Benton real estate agent and
president of the local Chamber of Commerce. "There’s a saying, ‘You can’t keep a good man down.’ Well, you
can’t keep a good town down either."
Communities all along Montana’s Hi-Line have seen their populations decline in the past decade, a trend
few small farm towns across the West and Midwest have avoided as agriculture prices decline. But here, where
drought conditions have been especially harsh, officials say the exodus has occurred even faster.

In an effort to counter that, community leaders are
trying to capitalize on other strengths to lure new
residents, businesses and tourists.
"We’re not just sitting on our pity pots saying, ‘Woe
is us,’ " said Havre Mayor Bob Rice. "We’re trying to do
things. The drought has forced us not to be dependent
on one option."
In Fort Benton, along the Missouri river northeast
of Great Falls, officials hope to capitalize on history
and tourism with the upcoming bicentennial of the
Lewis and Clark expedition.
In Havre, leaders are tidying up the city’s main
drag – Highway 2 – with a park. They tout tourist sites
and the advantages of small-town life and are
considering special discount days to lure Canadian
shoppers across the border, some 40 miles north.
"We can do things to make the town more
attractive, even if we just get them to stop at first for
lunch," Rice said.
Havre leaders have been particularly aggressive
in efforts to get Highway 2, a narrow, two-lane roadway
across the Hi-Line, expanded into a four-lane highway.
Many believe it is key to making the area more attractive to new businesses and tourists. It is a project
supporters have pushed for years, so far with little luck.
Rice admits that while expanding the highway could help the area, it is "not our salvation. … So we are
looking at other things."
"There are so many driving forces out of our control," said Rick Morris, mayor of Fort Benton. "Everybody
understands the problems but solutions are hard to come by."
For Fort Benton, one idea is to capitalize the upcoming Lewis and Clark bicentennial. The Missouri River
flows by town, where local leaders are finishing a riverside walking trail and the Bureau of Land Management
plans to build a visitor center to coincide with the celebration.
Morger, of the Fort Benton Chamber of Commerce, said
the drought demonstrates small towns cannot simply
continue depending on the agricultural economy many were
built around.
In tiny Chester, where choking dust storms in late
February made it difficult to see across the street from the
Superior Feeds store, few options exist for diversifying the
agriculture economy, Mayor Wayne Wardell said.
But, as Wardell sipped coffee at Spud’s Cafe, he said he wasn’t worried about the future for the Liberty
County seat and home to 870 people.
"It’s been dry before. It’ll be dry again. It’ll be wet again," he said. "The town’ll be here. It made it through the
’30s."