Wilsall Celebrates 100 Years in 2010!
The Town of Wilsall
In 1883 the first permanent settlers arrived in the Wilsall area. At first, it was a collection of homesteaders that settled near the head of Shields River. These men were named Riley Deadmond, John Gesel, and George Grayson. After the drowning death of Riley Deadmond while trying to save a lady that fell into the river, the others around him sold their land and moved to other parts of Montana and Wyoming.
Shields Valley attracted several people in the coming years and one of them was Fred Sumner, who was at the time a well-known person, so they called the area Sumner. Later the Jordan and Robertson families purchased the Sumner’s land. The name of the town was changed to Wilsall, a combination of the names of Mr. Robertson’s son and daughter-in-law. Wilsall was officially recognized as a town in 1910 when the first post office was built.
In the great Montana tradition the first building in Wilsall was a saloon. Growth was slow until the announcement of a Northern Pacific branch line through the valley. This was completed in 1909. Soon after the completion of the railroad the Occident grain elevator was built eliminating the need for farmers of the area to travel to White Sulphur Springs, a five-day trip, or to Dorsey, a three-day trip. Later two more elevators were built (which are still standing today) and Wilsall became the grain-trading hub for the upper Shields River Valley. A school was also built in 1915. The first graduating class was in 1919 with for receiving their diplomas.
There has been a great deal of change in Wilsall since the Shields River Valley was first founded. At one time there were three hotels, two banks, a drug store, hardware store, three merchandise shops, a grocery, barber shop, two livery stables, a blacksmith shop, flour mill, a newspaper, a hospital, one church and three saloons. Many of these buildings have been lost to fire and never rebuilt. It is still an agricultural community that counts its people as its greatest asset.
The town of Wilsall, Montana was founded around 1887 when the principals of the Jordan-Robertson Company, Frank Corwin Robertson and W.B. Jordan, donated the plot of land on which the town now sits. The new town was named after W.B. Jordan’s son Willy and his wife Sally. In 1905, Jordan and Robertson gave the right-of way to the Northern Pacific Railroad and lots were sold by the Wilsall Town-Site Company to settlers. When the railroad came in 1909, the town with its new businesses and buildings began to grow. The first church was built in 1912 and the first schoolhouse in 1914.
By 1916, the railroad and the Homestead Act began to bring in new settlers in greater numbers. The population of Wilsall in the late teens and early twenties was nearly six times the present population of about 250. It’s hard to believe that in its heyday Wilsall was a teeming community with two banks, three grain elevators, three stores, two hotels, a Chinese restaurant, a bakery, three garages, two butchers, two hospitals, a flour mill, three lumber yards, three churches, and perhaps most incredible of all – a paid baseball team.
But the depression hit Wilsall early and hard, a