Great Falls is the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Montana and the county seat of Cascade County. The population was 60,442 according to the 2020 census. The city covers an area of and is the principal city of the Great Falls, Montana, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Cascade County. The Great Falls MSA's population was 84,414 according to the 2020 census.
A cultural, commercial and financial center in the central part of the state, Great Falls is located just east of the Rocky Mountains and is bisected by the Missouri River. It is from the eastern entrance to Glacier National Park in northern Montana, and from Yellowstone National Park in southern Montana and northern Wyoming. Interstate 15, which runs north-south, services the city.
Great Falls is named for a series of five waterfalls located on the Missouri River north and east of the city. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805–1806 was forced to portage around a stretch of the river in order to bypass the falls; the company spent 31 days in the area, performing arduous labor to make the portage. Three of the waterfalls, known as Black Eagle, Rainbow and the Great Falls (or the Big Falls), are among the sites of five hydroelectric dams in the area, giving the city its moniker, "The Electric City". Other nicknames for Great Falls include "The River City" and "Western Art Capital of the World". The city is also home to two military installations: Malmstrom Air Force Base east of the city, which is the community's largest employer; and the Montana Air National Guard to the west, adjacent to Great Falls International Airport. The federally recognized Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana are located in Great Falls.
Great Falls is a popular tourist destination in Montana, with one million overnight visitors annually, who spend an estimated $185 million while visiting, according to the Great Falls Montana Tourism group. Among Montana cities, Great Falls boasts the greatest number of museums, with 10, including the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center near Giant Springs and the C. M. Russell Museum and Original Log Cabin Studio on the city's north side. Great Falls was the largest city in Montana from 1951 to 1970, when it was eclipsed by Billings in the 1970 census; Missoula assumed second place in 2000.
History For much of prehistory, no permanent settlements existed at or near Great Falls, though Salish Indians seasonally hunted bison in the region.Malone, Michael P.; Roeder, Richard B.; and Lang, William L. Montana: A History of Two Centuries. 2d rev. ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Around 1600, Piegan Blackfeet Indians, migrating west, entered the area, pushing the Salish back into the Rocky Mountains and claiming the area now occupied by Great Falls. The area remained territory of the Blackfeet until long after the United States claimed the region in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase.Federal Writers' Project. Montana: A State Guide Book. Washington, D.C.: Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration, 1939. Fleming, Thomas J. The Louisiana Purchase. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2003.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition into the newly purchased territory from 1804 to 1806. The expedition came upon the "Great Falls of the Missouri River" on June 13, 1805.Ambrose, Stephen. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. ; Gilman, Carolyn. Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2003. ; Lavender, David. The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent. New York: Harpercollins, 1988. Pritchett, Michael. The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis. Columbia, Mo.: Unbridled Books, 2007.
Politically, the future site of Great Falls passed through numerous hands in the 19th century. It was part of the unincorporated frontier until May 30, 1854, when Congress established the Nebraska Territory.Luebke, Frederick C. Nebraska: An Illustrated History. 2d ed. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. On March 2, 1861, the site became part of the Dakota Territory.Lamar, Howard Roberts. Dakota Territory, 1861–1889: A Study of Frontier Politics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1956; History of Southeastern Dakota. Sioux City, Iowa: Western Publishing Company, 1881. The Great Falls area was incorporated into the Idaho Territory on March 4, 1863,Rees, John E. Idaho Chronology, Nomenclature, Bibliography. Chicago: W.B. Conkey Co., 1918. and then into the Montana Territory on May 28, 1864. It became part of the state of Montana upon that territory's admission to statehood on November 8, 1889.
Founding and early years The founding of Great Falls was the brainchild of Paris Gibson, a Maine-born entrepreneur who became acquainted with railroad magnate James J. Hill in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By the 1880s, Gibson was a sheep man in Fort Benton, Montana. He visited the Great Falls of the Missouri River in 1880 and was deeply impressed by the possibilities for building a major industrial city near the falls with power provided by hydroelectricity.Roeder, Richard B. "Paris Gibson and the Building of Great Falls". Montana: Magazine of Western History. 42:4 (Autumn 1992)."Great Falls, Montana". In Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. David J. Wishart, ed. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Myers, Rex C. and Fritz, Harry W. Montana and the West: Essays in Honor of K. Ross Toole. Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Publishing Co., 1984. ; Martin, Albro. James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest. St. Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991. He returned in 1883 with friend Robert Vaughn and some surveyors and platted a permanent settlement on the south side of the river. The city's first citizen, Silas Beachley, arrived later that year. With investments from Hill and from Helena businessman Charles Arthur Broadwater, houses, a store, and a flour mill were established in 1884.Malone, Michael P. James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest. Reprint ed. Stillwater, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. The Great Falls post office was established on July 10, 1884, and Gibson was named the first postmaster.Lutz, Dennis J. Montana Post Offices & Postmasters, p 24, p. 200. (1986) Minot, ND: published by the author & Montana Chapter No. 1, National Association of Postmasters of the United States. A planing mill, lumber yard, bank, school, and newspaper were established in 1885. By 1887 the town had 1,200 citizens, and the arrival of Hill's Great Northern Railway in October of that year helped cement the city's future. Great Falls was incorporated on November 28, 1888.
Great Falls quickly became a thriving industrial and supply center. A ground-breaking for a smelter in nearby Black Eagle took place in 1890, the same year that construction of a hydroelectric dam atop Black Eagle Falls was completed. The dam provided the fledgling city with electricity and marked the first major instance of hydroelectric power in Montana. In 1894, naturalist Vernon Bailey passed through and described Great Falls as "a very good town, appears prosperous and booming & I should judge contains 15000 inhabitants". By the early 1900s, Great Falls was en route to becoming one of Montana's largest cities. The rustic studio of famed Western artist Charles Marion Russell was a popular attraction, as were the famed Great Falls of the Missouri.
Among structures built in the early years were the sandstone Central High School (completed in 1896), now the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art; the ornate copper-domed Cascade County Courthouse (1903); and railroad passenger depots of the Great Northern Railway (1909) and the Milwaukee Road (1915), both overlooking the Missouri River.
Railroad and hydroelectric expansion James Jerome Hill, president and primary stockholder of the Great Northern Railway, established a subsidiary, the Montana Central Railway, on January 25, 1886. The mines in Butte were eager to get their metals to market. Gold and silver had been discovered near Helena, and coal companies in Canada sought to transport their fuel to Montana's smelters. Hill's close friend and business associate, Paris Gibson, promoted Great Falls as a site for the development of cheap hydroelectricity and heavy industry. As Hill was building the Great Northern across the northern tier of Montana, it made sense to also build a north–south railroad through central Montana to connect Great Falls with Helena and Butte. Surveyors and engineers had begun grading a route between Helena and Great Falls in the winter of 1885–1886, and by the end of 1886 had surveyed a route from Helena to Butte.
Construction on the Great Northern's line westward began in late 1886, and on October 16, 1887, the link between Devils Lake, North Dakota, Fort Assinniboine (near the present-day city of Havre, Montana), and Great Falls was complete. Service to Helena began in November 1887, and Butte followed on November 10, 1888.
Hill organized the Great Falls Water Power & Townsite Company in 1887, with the goal of developing the town of Great Falls; providing it with power, sewage, and water; and attracting commerce and industry to the city. To attract industry to the new city, he offered low rates on the Montana Central Railway. On September 12, 1889, the Boston and Montana ("B & M") signed an agreement with Great Falls Water Power & Townsite Company in which the power company agreed to build a dam that would supply the mining firm with at least 1,000 horsepower (or 0.75 MW) of power by September 1, 1890, and 5,000 horsepower (or 3.73 MW) of power by January 1, 1891. In exchange, B & M agreed to build a $300,000 copper smelter near the dam. Black Eagle Dam began generating electricity in December 1890. Water was permitted to flow over the crest of the dam on January 6, 1891, and the dam was considered complete on March 15, 1891. By 1912, Rainbow Dam and Volta Dam (now Ryan Dam) were all operating. Morony Dam was built in 1930 and Cochrane Dam in 1957–1958.
Smelting operations On April 7, 1908, construction began on a masonry/brick chimney measuring tall on the B & M's (now the city's largest employer) smelting site at Black Eagle by the Alphonse Custodis Construction Co. of New York, for dispersal of fumes from B & M's copper smelting process. B & M would soon merge with the Amalgamated Copper Company and become the Anaconda Copper Mining Company or "ACM". The B & M smelter stack was completed on October 23, 1908. The chimney had an interior measurement of in diameter at the base and in diameter at the top. At the time of its completion, it was the tallest chimney in the world (see List of tallest chimneys). With the moniker "The Big Stack", it immediately became a landmark for the community; after over 70 years of operation, the smelter closed in 1980.
The Big Stack's "sister" stack in Anaconda, also of masonry/brick construction, completed in 1919, and slightly taller at , began to suffer from cracking and the ACM decided to remove the support bands from the upper half of the Big Stack in 1976 and send them to Anaconda. This action proved to be the Big Stack's ultimate demise, since the cracks it was also suffering from rapidly worsened such that the ACM, citing concern for public safety (due to the continual deterioration of the stack's structural integrity), slated the Big Stack's demolition for September 18, 1982.