Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 71 The effect is disconcerting. It looks as if on some unseen signal everyone who lived there suddenly jumped into their cars and left en masse. Front doors stand ajar on sev- eral homes, revealing cupped linoleum tiles and faded formica counters in the kitchen, where you might not be surprised to find cold cups of coffee and perhaps an ancient cigarette slotted into an ashtray. You've found St. Marie, Montana's newest ghost town. A couple of ratty, abandoned homes might not be that striking, but string together street after street, many lined with hundreds of ramshackle houses—that's when curious turns creepy. A sign near the entrance reads, "Welcome to St. Marie: Home of the Adventurous." Consider- ing St. Marie's compelling story and hazy future, that might be a bit of an understatement. At its peak in the mid-seventies, more than seven thousand people called St. Marie home. The community was established to provide housing for the servicemen and their families stationed at Glasgow Air Force Base, a cold war airfield built to accommodate B-52 bombers and KC-135 refueling transports. The base was decommis- sioned for good in 1976 and St. Marie emptied out virtually overnight. Neighboring Glasgow saw a corresponding drop in population—by 1980 an exodus comprised of 16,000 people had left Valley County, and today it holds fewer than 8,000. Usually when a town loses its sole economic engine, the area is repackaged or razed to make way for another chapter in its history. Fate had other plans for St. Marie. It wasn't even known as St. Marie until after the base closed down. In the mid-eighties retired Air Force officer Patrick Kelly bought 1,225 empty housing units from the federal government for $520,000 and started running ads in military magazines touting the retirement community he planned to build. St. Marie, named to honor his daughter, would provide the self-contained isolation and squared away community that military retirees favored, he claimed, promising such amenities as a bowling alley, recreation center and a H EADING NORTH OUT OF GLASGOW ON MT HIGHWAY 24, YOU'RE PAINFULLY AWARE OF HOW FLAT THE LANDSCAPE IS. It's as flat as a basement floor in every direction, the horizon broken only by an occasional silo. Fifteen miles north of town, though, something begins to take shape. As you approach it, the shape becomes houses. Lots of them. A couple of water towers join the skyline. It looks like you're coming up on a little Montana town, out here in almost-no-man's-land. And it is a town, or rather, was. More than a thousand homes stand clustered along gently curving streets, creating a large neighborhood of duplexes, small apartment buildings and single-family homes. Up close, the houses are clearly in sad shape. Paint flakes off the walls, garage doors hang crooked on mangled tracks, and broken-out windows and weather-ravaged roofs signal years of neglect. Wildly overgrown yards have pushed grass through the sidewalks and into the streets. A low-slung, brick hospital looks as though a bunch of shambling zombies may burst out of the double doors at any moment. And not too far away languishes a high school that looks like it hasn't seen a student since the days of disco and Pong. ST. MARIE article and photos by EDNOR THERRIAULT Montana's Newest Ghost Town St. Marie

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