Montana Hotel

Anaconda | Deer Lodge County

Montana Territory approached statehood in the late-1880s, and its legislature was tasked with selecting the new capital city. To improve the chances that his own town of Anaconda would win the honor, copper king Marcus Daly hired Chicago architect W. W. Boyington to design the luxurious Montana Hotel. Completed in 1888, the four-story, 185-room hotel featured a façade with French Renaissance and Romanesque details, framed with two dramatic turrets. Though Helena became the capital, Anacondans took great pride in the hotel. Its opulence rivaled any other such establishment, from New York to San Francisco.

In the later twentieth century, the building ceased to be a hotel and lost its top two floors. Today, the Anaconda Restoration Association (ARA) is reinvigorating the Montana Hotel for mixed use. RMRH dollars supplemented ARA’s own funds to replace the failing west lobby floor structure so the massive lobby can host events and function as Anaconda’s social hub once again.

REVITALIZING MONTANA’S RURAL HERITAGE

In 2019, the National Park Service awarded a Paul Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grant to the Montana State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). SHPO reissued these funds to organizations working to revitalize Montana’s rural heritage. SHPO awarded nearly $500,000 to eight substantial and pivotal preservation projects in rural communities across the state as part of its Revitalizing Montana’s Rural Heritage (RMRH) grant program.