Nearly a ghost town, Bearcreek manages to survive, in spite of a lack of local industry and the nearest agriculture 7 miles to the east. At some time in the past, someone climbed up the rise to the south of the hamlet and assembled a large
"B" for all to see. Possibly the expectation was that, when the final Bearcreek resident left for greener pastures, the large
B would still be there to mark the town that once was. We are left to wonder from whence the builder of the
B managed to find the rocks to build his
B. They appear to be white limestone, rocks which aren't strewn about the hillside, meaning that they must have been hauled up the hill from another location.
The
B is at 45.156661 -109.153391. A good viewing location is at the Waymark coordinates.
Constructed in 1906, the one time Bearcreek Bank is one of the very few structures which remain in the hamlet, which for most of the first half of the twentieth century depended on the nearby Smith Creek Coal Mine for its livelihood. That all came crashing to an end with the
Smith Mine disaster of 1943, a huge underground explosion which took the lives of 74 mine workers and one rescue worker. The disaster spelled the end for the mine, which never reopened, and essentially the end for Bearcreek.
Even before the explosion the town had been mostly dismantled and many of its buildings hauled to Bridger, Belfry and Red Lodge. The fortunes of coal mining in Montana had, since the end of World War I, been on the downswing, except for those of larger strip mines in eastern Montana. If the 1943 explosion had not occurred, the days of the mine, then the last of four large mines in the Bearcreek area, were probably limited in any event. Most of those who still resided in Bearcreek by 1943 left for greener pastures, leaving just a handful of people and buildings.
The bank itself had long since failed, this occurring when the International Coal Company defaulted on a $170,000 loan in 1921. Opened as the
Bearcreek Bank, it operated under that name until June 27, 1911 when the name was changed to the
Clark - Wright Bank in Bearcreek. It continued in operation under that name until its failure in 1921. It was reopened in 1922 by former mine foreman Tom Frasure as the
Miner’s State Bank, lasting until 1928, at which time it closed permanently. For some years after, the building housed a restaurant then, in 1967, was renovated to become the town hall for the little community of Bearcreek, which it remains today.