Montana

HISTORY

Richard Sallet reports that by 1920, there were 4,500 Evangelical and 266 Catholic Volga German immigrants of the first and second generation settled in Montana. They had come there following the development of the Huntley Project, an irrigation project in southern Montana that was established by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in 1907. This irrigation brought water to vast areas of the Yellowstone Valley and spirited development of the sugar beet industry there.

PRIMARY SETTLEMENT AREAS

Ballantine
Belfry
Billings
Bridger
Chinook
Culbertson
Custer
Edgar
Forsyth
Hardin
Harlem
Havre
Huntley
Laurel
Missoula
Park City
Pompeys Pillar
Roundup
Sidney
Silesia
Worden
Zurich

Sources

Sallet, Richard. Russian-German Settlement in the United States (Fargo, ND: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974): 112.

"Volga Deutsch made mark in Billings sugar beets" (The Billings Outpost, 18 September 2013).