Homes of 1907

Apr 30

In 1907, to celebrate the Government’s Reclamation Project in the Sun River Valley, the Great Falls Leader newspaper published a Reclamation edition: “Being a series of articles descriptive of Northern Montana and Great Falls, its Magnificent Resources and its present and probable development.”

One section in particular focused on the homes of Great Falls and it was published as follows:

Great Falls has come to be generally known as a city of homes. No other city of its size in the West, and probably no other city of its size in the whole country, has done so much in so brief a time to beautify itself. Besides its park system which embraces a total of four hundred and seven acres, about a hundred of which have been improved, it has over twelve miles of boulevard streets, costing in the neighborhood of $125,000 for the boulevarding and tree planting. On these boulevards are growing something over seven thousand trees, which grass plats on each side of the sidewalks, the whole being carefully tended by the city. The cost of such attendance and improvements has been taxed up to the facing property. Aside from a few trees along the riverbank, the city of Great Falls was absolutely treeless when it was started twenty years ago. Today, to one looking at it from a distance, it almost appears a forest, and with each year the density of the tree growth becomes greater. Indicating the general interest in improvements of this sort among the homeowners of Great Falls, it is significant that the individuals who have had to pay for these improvements have been the first to push them. Nor are the city improvements alone to be given credit for the making of Great Falls a beautiful home city; there has been enterprise and artistic spirit on the part of private owners, and a drive along any of the boulevarded avenues is continually past carefully kept lawns and gardens.

All of the streets and avenues of the city are rapidly being lined with cement sidewalks, and it is expected that during the next year one or two of the principal residence avenues will be macadamized. Should this prove a success on them and the cost within reason, then the macadam system will be extended to all the other residence streets of the city. The water works department of the city gives every encouragement to the improvement of the grounds and the cultivation of shrubs and trees by making a low rate for irrigation. A lot fifty feet by 150 feet, the average size of residence lots in Great Falls, is supplied with unlimited water for irrigation at a cost of $2.50 per year. On these pages are shown some of the best class of residences in Great Falls, and they give one an idea of what has been done in the way of foliage on ground that before the creation of the city raised nothing but grass.