Following the arrival of the Milwaukee Road (The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad) in 1908, an influx of settlers raised the local population to the point that in 1913, they successfully petitioned for a county of their own, separated from Custer County (14) and named for Benjamin O'Fallon, an early Indian Agent and nephew of William Clark. Over the next few years, the new county lost area in the formation of Wibaux County (52), Prairie County (45), and Carter County (42). (Note: Fallon County's website says that Carter County was formed from land taken from Fallon in 1913. Most other historical records show that Carter County was not created until 1917.) Almost from the beginning the town of Baker, Fallon County's largest community has been the seat. When the county was first created, the towns of Baker and Ekalaka (now seat of neighboring Carter County) fought for the honor of being county seat. Ekalaka won the first vote, but a year later a second election was held and Baker won. By this time, the citizens from the Ekalaka area had already decided to form their own county, so they didn't fight to keep the Fallon seat in their town.
City-County Administration Building
Baker, Montana
The original Fallon County Courthouse was a three-story white frame building (two stories above ground and a full daylight basement) built in 1915. In 1975, that building was torn down and the current City-County Administration Building was constructed. Just around the corner is the original Fallon County Jail, now home of the O'Fallon Historical Museum. The O'Fallon Historical Society, formed in 1968, is the sponsor of the Museum, and in 1975 the Society published a book O'Fallon Flashbacks, a history of the county to date. That book is available for sale at the Museum as a fund-raiser for the Society, and it has been digitized as part of the Montana Historical Society's Montana Memory Project. I haven't (yet) read all 549 pages, but the one question I would dearly love answered is why, if the county was named for a man named O'Fallon, did the O' get dropped?
The Original Fallon County Jail
Now the O'Fallon Museum
Baker, Montana
Today, according to Wikipedia, there are just three communities in Fallon County. Baker is the only "city," and Plevna, the only "town," but there is also an unincorporated community named Willard some thirteen miles south of Baker on Montana Highway 7, the only north-south highway in the county. Up until 1995, Willard had a U.S. Post Office, and it still has its own Zip Code (59354), but there's not much else left of the town. Nonetheless, it has its own chapter in O'Fallon Flashbacks, appropriately titled "Willard--The Birth of a Community." Turns out the area was settled largely by a group of folk recruited by the Milwaukee Railroad in Minnesota. The land around Baker, where the railroad ran cross country, was largely what we in Montana call "gumbo," and unsuited for farming. South of town, however, the gumbo gives way to good arable land, and that's where the Minnesotans settled. In 1909, one of these settlers, Fred Anderson, decided to apply for a Post Office Permit. The name "Anderson" had already been taken, so he proposed using his own middle name, and thus was the community of Willard born. With help from folks in Baker, the people of Willard built a community hall which hosted dances, dinners, and church, the building being used on alternate Sundays by the Lutherans and the Wesleyan Methodists. The community even boasted its own baseball team, but over time, drought killed the farms, the young people moved away for other opportunities, and the town withered.
Plevna, thirteen miles west of Baker on U.S. Highway 12, started out as a railroad town. The Milwaukee Railroad brought in a number of Bulgarian workers who named the community for their hometown, Pleven (Плевен), today the seventh largest city in Bulgaria. The Montana town is not as distinguished, with a 2013 estimated population of 179 (up from an all time low of 138 recorded in the 2000 Census). According to the Plevna chapter in O'Fallon Flashbacks, the name comes from a Russian (I'm guessing Slavic) word for churches, and at one time, Plevna had six churches, as well as a store, a bank, and a post office. The Wikipedia article for the Bulgarian city of the same name gives the etymology of the name as Slavic for either "barn" or "weed," both of which are plentiful in eastern Montana.
South Sandstone Reservoir
(one of my favorite photographs)
South of Plevna, Montana
Turn south off US 12 at Plevna, and you'll drive across the rolling grasslands so prevalent in eastern Montana. Just east of the county road lies South Sandstone Reservoir, one of the largest bodies of water in Fallon County, covering 679 acres. There is a fishing access on the lake, and a small campground. I spent a nearly sleepless night tenting alongside the reservoir, wondering all the time if my tent was going to blow away, taking me and the tent to Oz, or worse, North Dakota. Wikipedia maintains that there are six bodies of water that could be classified as "lakes" in Fallon County, but the only other one that I have seen is Baker Lake found, appropriately enough, on the eastern edge of the city of Baker. Both Baker Lake and South Sandstone Reservoir are popular local recreation sites, but to paraphrase one Fallon County writer, the county is so remote from the rest of the world, that it's usually only locals visiting the various sites in the area. Personally, I feel this is unfortunate, although as near as I can tell, Benjamin O'Fallon himself never set foot in the county named for him. There is a lot to see and do in Fallon County, and while the photo above gives credence to the wide spread belief that eastern Montana is flat, the fact is that there are hills, small mountains even, throughout the area. Seven Up Butte and Bearhorn Butte flank the dirt road that leads from Plevna to Montana Highway 7 near Willard. At 3,455 and 3,553 feet respectively, they're the 2859th and 2812th highest mountains in all of Montana. We won't tell where they rank nationally.
Southern Fallon County Landscape
Don't tell me it's flat
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