St. Marie

Driving on Hwy. 24 to Opheim one expects to see little more than endless rolling wheat fields. The sign pointing to St. Marie suggests a small one-elevator town on an old railroad siding. But a quick glance in that direction tells you there’s something different about this community. Gigantic buildings loom on the horizon. Several water towers fill the skyline. What appears to be a community larger than any other in this part of Montana sits eerily quiet only a few hundred yards from the highway. Driving into this town, one gets the feeling that they are entering a community where a strange virus has wiped out the population, or aliens have abducted the entire populace.

Row after row of weathered, abandoned buildings in disrepair suggest a hasty retreat by the residents. The spooky thing is that the buildings aren’t from a past century, but appear to have been built in the 1950s, 60s or 70s. A good sized hospital sits abandoned, along with a sizable school building and a large number of other buildings. A baseball field has knee-high grass on its infield. Clearly not too long ago, people got up every morning and went to work here, children went to school, and at night families sat down to dinner.

Looking toward the huge buildings to the north of town an air traffic control tower is visible hovering over runways suitable for a large international airport in a large metropolitan area. A city with an airport! Abandoned! Roads leading to the airfield are blocked by ominous signs warning that trespassers will be prosecuted (mysteriously disappear?). The authority behind the signs is Marco Aviation Research. A CIA front. And where are they? There appears to be no sign of life on the airfield.

Occasionally an automobile or two can be seen parked amid the maze of streets lined with abandoned houses. Suddenly a lone jogger appears. When asked about the nature of this town she replies “I think it used to be an Air Force base.”

What was the name of it?

“I really don’t know. I guess I should, but I don’t. We’re bringing it back though.”

The Story Behind the Town
In the 1950s the Air Force built Glasgow Air Force Base, and along with it a thriving community of over 10,000. There were schools, churches, a hospital, a movie theater and a bowling alley. All of the elements of a normal, healthy, community are still there today, with the exception of one-the people. The air base grew and prospered during the Vietnam War until 1976 when the war ended. Major cutbacks in military spending forced the base to close, and virtually overnight, the people were gone.

Efforts to revive the town over the years have more or less failed. AVCO, an ammunitions-support business, moved in for a while. They moved out in a few short years. The Mountain-Plains/Family Training Center, Inc. tried to open a center for training low income citizens and welfare recipients. That lasted about ten years. More than a dozen businesses have tried to survive here and failed. As each effort ended, the town slipped more and more into disrepair.

The federal government, eager to get it off their hands, gave complete ownership to Valley County. In 1985, a developer purchased the whole town, airstrip and all, from Valley County. The developer named the town after an infant daughter he and his wife had lost. His plan? To build a retirement community, complete with a golf course, fitness center, and medical facility. He did sell about 200 of the 1,200 units. But a number of these units were hauled off to other parts of the state, and following the death of the developers wife, the town was sold to another developer in 1966. The new developer generated substantial debt and enough legal tangles to fill the town with lawyers.

So what did the jogger mean when she said “we’re bringing it back?” Perhaps she was referring to the talk that NASA is looking at the site as a base for its next generation of Space Shuttles (Venture Star). And why not? The 13,500 foot airstrip is one of the longest anywhere, and it was built extra thick to handle the northern Montana winters. The large amount of water needed to cool the new space craft is nearby in Fort Peck Reservoir. It’s isolated (the government loves secrecy), and it has an infrastructure in place. The power, water, and sewer systems are in place, and a little paint and spackle will bring the churches, schools, hospital, and houses back to shape in no time.

The community is 17 miles north of Glasgow on Hwy. 24. Drive in and look around, but heed the warning signs. You are being watched.