Havre, MT Beneath the Streets

3 June 2017

After leaving the Fort Peck Dam, we headed to Havre, MT.  We spent the night just outside of town at the Hansen Family Campground.  It was an overnight campground with friendly owners and a lot of animals running around.  Our plans for a social evening fell apart with the cool temps and a steady wind of 25 MPH blowing the whole time we were there.

On our way to Great falls, MT, we stopped in downtown Havre.  We had heard about the underground town tour and decided to check it out.  The town was established in the late 1800’s as a railroad hub that helped open up the West.  It was truly a wild west kind of town in those early days and continued to prosper thru the hay days of the railroads.

In 1904 the town suffered a huge fire in the downtown district that destroyed many of the businesses in the district. Rather than close shop during the reconstruction of the buildings, the businesses moved into the underground basement of the destroyed structures above.  These underground structures remained active long after the surface buildings were rebuilt.  As late as the 1920’s it was an active area involving bootlegging and bordellos.

Today these underground businesses have been preserved as an interesting part of the town’s history.  We had a guided tour with reenactors answering questions about what it was like living and working in the underground town.