Welcome to the Scobey, Montana Picture Tour

Scobey’s history is like many Montana towns. A prominent rancher or businessman picks a location for a new town only to be forced to move the town to another location to be near the newly arrived railroad.  This happened to Geyser, Montana  to the southwest and the neighboring Montana towns of Flaxville and Peerless.

How did the town get the name?

Ranchers Mansfield Daniels and his brother-in-law Jake Timmons,  asked Major Charles Robert Anderson Scobey, a friend and agent for the Fort Peck Indian reservation, to aid in obtaining a post office for the small settlement on the Popular River. When the post office opened, Daniels named it in honor of Scobey and Mrs. Daniels became postmistress. For more Scobey area information read the National Register of Historic Places paper on the old Mansfield A. Daniels Residence. 

Pioneer Town

Thank goodness for Nevada City in the western half of Montana and Scobey’s Pioneer Town in East.  Both locations are the new home for historic original Montana structures that were either falling into disrepair, or were scheduled to be torn down.  To date, Scobey’s Pioneer Town has forty-two original structures that beautifully recreates an early 1900’s homestead community. Next to the collection of rare buildings is one of the finest homestead era museums of its kind.

See the New and Old

Today, Scobey is known as the center of one of Montana’s most productive grain-growing regions. You can also see the past by riding outside of town during sunset. In the middle of the broad expanse of undulating fields and rolling hills you can easily see how this area near the Poplar River, is on a prehistoric north-south travel route. One of the routes called the Old Wood Mountain Trail began by Fort Union, near present day Sidney, Montana and crossed into Canada northwest of Scobey.