Red Lodge

The board's festival came out of the war years. Each nationality had kept its own celebrations until the Depression and then the Second World War threw the town together, and in 1951 a variety show of the town's ethnic backgrounds filled the new Veterans Memorial Civic Center, dedicated the year before. The Festival of Nations ran until 2017, when it lapsed for want of volunteers. The Carbon County Historical Society brought it back as a tribute on the last weekend of June 2025, marking seventy-five years.

What the plaque says

Red Lodge Coal was discovered in the Rock Creek Valley nearly two decades before Red Lodge was established as a mail stop on the Meeteese Trail in 1884. In 1887, the Rocky Fork Coal Company opened the first large-scale mine at Red Lodge sparking the community's first building boom, consisting mostly of "hastily constructed shacks and log huts." The completion of the Northern Pacific Railway branch line to Red Lodge in 1890 resulted in the construction of many brick and sandstone buildings that now line the city's main street. Like all mining camps, Red Lodge had a large population of single men and an abundance of saloons. For many years, the notorious "Liver-eating" Johnston kept the peace as the town's first constable. Red Lodge also boasted several churches and social clubs for those not inclined toward the city's more earthier entertainment. Hundreds of people came to Red Lodge in the 1890s and early 1900s. Immigrants from all over Europe worked shoulder-to-shoulder in the coal mines, but settled in neighborhoods called Finn Town, Little Italy and Hi-bug. Their cultural traditions endured and are celebrated at the city's annual festival of Nations. Production in the coal mines declined after World War I, eventually leading to their closure by 1932. The completion of the scenic Beartooth Highway in 1936 revitalized Red Lodge by linking it directly to Yellowstone National Park. Today, Red Lodge's past is represented by its historic buildings and by the pride its citizens take in its history and traditions.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Smith Mine — 3.0 mi
  Rusting buildings beside the highway, all that is left of the mine where Montana's worst coal disaster emptied a valley.
• Beartooth Highway — 12 mi
  A road over the top of the world, built because a coal town's mines closed and it needed tourists instead.

More markers nearby

• The Beartooth Plateau — steps away
• The Red Lodge Country — steps away
• Liver-Eating Johnston's Cabin — 1.2 mi
• The Smith Mine Disaster — 3.1 mi