Our History

1892

The Great Northern Railroad arrived in Kalispell. There were very few families of Euro-American descent in the Flathead Valley. Most homesteading was north and west of Kalispell because the ground was drier and had fewer trees. Creston was considered too wet for farming. To the east, men trapped and prospected in the forest and mountains. 

1897

The Great Northern Railroad actively promoted growth and homesteading in the communities along its route. Thousands of recent immigrants and land-seeking farmers from the East moved into the Valley. Homesteading in the virgin timber of “the Gulch” started in 1897 with Adolph and Fritz Krause (Germany) in the Krause Road area and neighbors Ed Bauer (Germany) John Alsterbeck ((Sweden), Oscar Schmidt (Germany), and a few other bachelors. Bachelor Grade Road is named after the five friends who constructed that road to transport logs to the lumber mill at Jessop. 

1900

In the early 1900’s, families with children moved into what would become Mountain Brook. In 1901, Abraham and Neva Brown homesteaded on the east side of Foothill Road on both sides of Brown’s Gulch.  Abraham’s brother, Henry Brown, homesteaded on the west side of Foothill Road. Peter and FannyMurer Sutter arrived by train in 1904. The Eicher and Ruckdashel families arrived around the same time.  Without a local school, students walked almost four miles to Cayuse Prairie School.

1908

The first Mountain Brook School was a one-room log schoolhouse built by local families in 1908 on the west side of Foothill Road. The site was lent by Henry Brown. It featured a dirt floor, homemade chalkboard, and windows on the sides. The students—from 8-12 of them—wrote on slates. 

Frances Leary was the first teacher. She was followed by a different teacher every year.  Teachers either boarded with their students’ families for a month at a time or stayed with the Abe Brown family. The length of the school year varied from five to nine months and possibly depended on how much money was available to pay the teacher.      

Box socials, picnics, and dances centered around the school.  Everybody came, especially the bachelors.  The Mennonite Church sometimes held services there before they built a church at the corner of Creston Hatchery and Mennonite Church Road in 1913. 

The log schoolhouse still stands, inside a local home.  

1922

The community built a wood framed one-room school house on Abraham and Neva Brown’s property on the eastern side of Foothill Road. The building had multiple windows, a wood floor, a woodstove, an outhouse, and a teacherage. Water was hauled in buckets from the creek. The original shingles are still visible inside the building over the “south room.” Also visible is the plaster and lath ceiling and the bricks of the two chimneys—one chimney for the woodstove in the classroom and one for the wood cookstove in the teacherage.  The walls were insulated with wood shavings between the studs.

Five years after the school was built, on June 22, 1927, Abraham and Neva Brown donated the acre it stood on to Mountain Brook School District 62.  They sealed the deal with the exchange of $1.00 and the stipulation that if the property ceased to be used for school purposes, it would revert back to the Brown family. 

In 1933-1934 The Federal Emergency Relief Administration enlarged the school house and built a new teacherage. The community held occasional Saturday night dances in the school house.  Sometimes there were church services on Sunday.

Students played “Pump-Pump-Pull Away” and “Red Rover” beside the school house.  They played “Hide and Seek” in the woods, and sledded anywhere they could, including in the road. Abe Brown’s pasture was their baseball field.  In 1937 a small school yard was cleared. The patented stump puller quickly broke. Cy Murer and Redford Turner put their teams of horses to work and the school board bought dynamite to blast out the last few stumps.

In 1938, a porch was added. Running water came in the 1940’s with the help of Rienholt Mathwig and Mr. Roberts. Construction of Hungry Horse Dam in 1946 brought electricity to the community.

Below is the Wednesday, August 30, 1922 clipping from the Daily Inter Lake.

1954

In the summer of 1954, the school district bought $2,000 of building materials and community labor built the “new room” on the north side of the schoolhouse.  Every Saturday, neighborhood families worked together.   The local history book Babblings From Mountain Brook recalls it: “The women brought bountiful dinners at noon with extra goodies for a 4 o’clock coffee break. Everyone enjoyed the good food and fellowship. Children picked up boards and nails, and some of the Ladies took a turn with the hammer. Despite hard work and sometimes lack of know-how, it was a happy summer.”

1968

In 1968, the school board decided that a gym was needed for the school.  The students had been using Kephart’s barn to practice basketball. Loyal “Pinky” Murer, Chairman of the School Board, designed and supervised construction of the separate building in the northwest corner of the campus.  The men of Mountain Brook donated labor every Saturday during summer and fall. Again, the women brought large lunches, snacks, and often supper.  Children helped too. The day usually ended with a softball game.  The new gym was completed by the next school term—and yes, they played basketball in there against other schools. The building now serves as the Mountain Brook Community Library.

Rebecca Trablik, who taught at Mountain Brook from 1955 to 1971, wrote in Babblings from Mountain Brook: “Those were the ‘Golden Years.’ The community picked itself up by its bootstraps and put the school on the map…orchestra, choir, television appearances, operettas, Costumers Limited, scholastic excellence, sports, talent shows. Name it, we probably did it.”

In 1971 the Mountain Brook Boys Basketball team (Monty Benson, John Murer, Tim Morgan, Thomas Frank, and Peter Prison) won the rural tournament after winning all 10 games of season play. 

In 1974 a kitchen and resource room were built onto the gym.

An End and a New Beginning

On April 28, 1992, Mountain Brook was consolidated with Cayuse Prairie School. Lack of funds, deferred maintenance, and student enrollment that teetered below 50 students drove a tense election. For a couple of years, Cayuse used the Mountain Brook campus for K-2nd grades and there were still happy voices on the playground.  After new classrooms were completed at Cayuse Prairie, the playground fell silent.  For a while, Mountain Brook was still used for biology field trips to sample creek water and for special events like Holocaust Day of Hiding, Poetry Day, Pioneer Day, and Medieval Day.  Those events ceased and the Cayuse School District talked of abandoning the campus. It could not be sold, because the Brown deed was conditional on use for school purposes.

Concerned citizens from Mountain Brook met with the School Board.  They proposed keeping the campus as an asset to the School District by creating a community library. 

The Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation was formed in 2001 to manage the campus and create the library.  In 2005 the Foundation was granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. The Foundation rented the campus from Cayuse Prairie School for $12 a year, paid for utilities and the Mountain Brook portion of the school district’s insurance.  All of the books and other materials for the library were donated. Everyone was a volunteer. Cory Ravetto, a Cayuse middle school student, volunteered in the library until he graduated from high school, spearheading the cataloging of books.

The Mountain Brook Community Library committed to being open three evenings a week, staffed by volunteer librarians. People pooled their talents to hold special children’s programs including Pumpkin Carving, Geography Days, Christmas Gift Workshops, Valentines Crafts, Easter Crafts, and Summer Reading Programs. Spring and Fall Pie Socials became a favored way raise funds to support the organization. 

In 2018, the Cayuse Prairie school district decided they needed to resolve the Mountain Brook situation.  The Cayuse Prairie News, an informational flyer mailed to the community, stated:

Abraham and Neva Brown signed a deed in 1927 allowing Cayuse Prairie’s use of the Mountain Brook Campus. However, there is a clause stating, “It is understood that in case the said one acre of land shall be discontinued for school purposes the same shall revert to the parties of the first part [Abraham and Neva Brown], their heirs or assigns.” The Mountain Brook Campus hasn’t been used by Cayuse Prairie since 1990. A quiet Title now must be filed by Cayuse Prairie School District because the original owners are deceased, their heirs need to be identified and notified to determine who has an interest in the property. The Court will ultimately decide who retains ownership of the property once this process is complete.

 In early 2020, the court decided ownership in favor of Abraham and Neva Brown’s great grand-daughter, Earleen French.

Earleen felt that donating the campus to the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation was the “right” thing to do. The Foundation is most thankful for her generous gift to the Mountain Brook community on July 14, 2020.  The mission of the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation is to maintain and develop the Mountain Brook campus as a historic site and community center.  Earleen French’s gift opens a new door on the future of the Mountain Brook School campus as the center of the Mountain Brook community.