Belt Commercial Historic District

The panel gives Mattie Castner a single clause. She was born enslaved in Newton, North Carolina, worked about a decade in St. Louis as a domestic, nanny and hotel maid, and reached Fort Benton in 1876, where she ran her own laundry. She married John Castner in Helena in 1879, and their log cabin at the Belt Creek ford grew into the hotel the town formed around. In 1886 she went back to Newton to look for her family, and later sent for her sister. When she died in April 1920 she was the largest single landowner in Belt.

What the plaque says

Belt Commercial Historic District Pennsylvania native John Castner discovered rich coal deposits along Belt Creek in 1870. Within just a few years, he and Fort Benton trader T. C. Power opened a commercial coal mine near here. The partners sold coal for use by the Great Northern Railway, the Boston & Montana Refinery in Great Falls, and for domestic uses in central Montana. Belt originated to serve the mine, attracting men from throughout the United States and Europe to work side-by-side underground. In 1885, Castner and his wife, Mattie, one of Montana's early African-American businesswomen, established a stage station and hotel at this site on the Lewistown-Great Falls Road. The expansion of the mine by its new owner, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, in 1894 caused a profound change in Belt. Its commercial district relocated to the area adjacent to the stage station on what became known as Castner Street. By the early twentieth century, a jumble of wooden false-front commercial buildings and saloons lined the street, keeping in character with the community's origin as a mining camp. The expansion of the mine and the surrounding area's increasing dependence on agriculture in the early 1900s significantly changed the appearance of Belt's commercial district. The old false-front buildings gave way to the more substantial stone and brick-front buildings that line the street today. Although many lack architectural ornamentation, collectively the buildings gave the appearance of a prosperous and stable community. The commercial district represents the metamorphosis of Belt from a mining camp to a modern city. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of Interior In cooperation with the Montana Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Giant Springs State Park — 17 mi
  The spring William Clark called the largest he ever saw, and the 201-foot river a fifth-grade class got into the record books.
• C. M. Russell Museum — 19 mi
  The cowboy artist's house and log studio, and the story of Nancy Russell, who turned his bar-tab paintings into a career.

More markers nearby

• Mountains, Belt Butte, and the Great Falls Coal Field — 3.0 mi
• Coal Mines and Railroads — 11 mi
• Lewis & Clark Portage Route — 16 mi
• Malmstrom Air Force Base — 16 mi