Shelby

Travel Montana

Shelby Directory Listings

A view from 1939:

SHELBY, (3,283 alt., 2,004 pop.), seat of Toole County, is strung out along a narrow main street that parallels the Great Northern Ry. tracks. It has developed through a succession of booms—the cattle boom of the i88o's, the dry-land boom of the early 20th century, and the oil boom of the 1920's.

The town came into existence in 1891, when the builders of the Great Northern, forging across the prairies toward Marias Pass, threw off a boxcar at the cross trails in the coulee and named it Shelby Junction for Peter P. Shelby, general manager of the Great Northern in Montana. The manager, thus honored, is said to have remarked: "That mudhole, Godforsaken place, . . . will never amount to a damn!"

But Shelby became the distributing center for a trade area extending 50 to 75 miles in every direction. Chuck wagons drove in from the south, from points up and down the Marias River, and from the Sweetgrass Hills to the north, and went out loaded with supplies. Cowboys and sheep-herders, after months on the range, rode in for a fling at the honky-tonk night life. In the late 1890's Shelby was the sort of town that producers of western movies have ever since been trying to reproduce in papier-mache. Yet this wild and woolly place with its spurs and chaps and ten-gallon hats never had any stockyards. Stock was loaded a few miles down the track near Galata—at a safe distance from Shelby.

In 1893 the town playboys were featured in the Police Gazette after holding, up an opera troupe passing through on a railroad train. The various versions of the story agree that they shot out the engine headlight, the car windows, and the red signal lights, and forced the conductor, to execute a clog dance.

In 1921 Gordon Campbell, the geologist who discovered oil in Montana, drilled successfully near Kevin, about 8 miles north of the town, and before long the Kevin-Sunburst field, reaching from Shelby to the Canadian Border, was notable. Shelby's population increased by leaps and bounds and money flowed freely. Some citizens, yearning for more front-page publicity, suggested the promotion of a heavyweight championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons. The idea, first put forward as a joke, struck Shelby's fancy. Negotiations were opened, and at length the fight was scheduled for July 4, 1923. The town built an arena designed to hold 45,000 cash customers; unfortunately only 7,000 attended. The local promoters took it on the chin, along with Gibbons, who didn't get a nickel for the beating. A gaudy signboard marks the spot where the arena stood.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.