It seems that there once was a roadhouse in or near Paradise named the Pair o' Dice. Just downstream of the confluence of the Flathead and Clark’s Fork Rivers, Paradise lies in the broad and beautiful Flathead River Valley. It was for centuries a place of settlement for the Salish and later Canadian and American fur traders.
First platted in 1908 by the North West Improvement Company, a group of investors allied with the Northern Pacific Railroad, Paradise today is one of the region’s best examples of a railroad town, being laid out in a perfect little rectangle aligned with the Northern Pacific tracks.
The town served the railroad as a switching yard and division point, with lumber being the primary product shipped along the rails. The railroad opened its own Tie Treating Plant here in 1908, producing hundreds of thousands of railroad ties each year and at its peak employing 45 workers. It was one of two Northern Pacific facilities for the production of railroad ties, the second plant being on the eastern end of the line in Brainerd, Minnesota.
The closest thing to a historic building in Paradise is the 1910
Paradise School. At the end of the 2013 school year the school was closed for lack of enrollment, as the student population had dwindled to five. It has since been restored for use as a community center and museum. It will likely make it to the National Register in the near future.
Paradise
According to locals, Paradise is a corruption of the name of a local roadhouse: “Pair o’ Dice.” Other explanations have circulated over the years, but what is certain is that the name was formally recorded as Paradise in 1883, when the Northern Pacific Railroad chose the site as a division point and the place where railroaders would change their watches from Mountain to Pacific time.
From the Montana Place Names Companion
The entry from the American Guide Series book
Montana, A State Guide Book follows.
PARADISE (R), 34.2 m. (2,499 alt., 259 pop.) huddles on a grassy flat at the base of a bare mountain. Railroad yards are L. ; Paradise is a division point on the Northern Pacific Ry., which here changes from mountain standard time to Pacific standard time. The town's name is a polite modification of Pair o' Dice, the name of a roadhouse on the trail.
From the mouth of the Flathead River the old Kootenai Trail followed the north bank of the Clark Fork to Idaho. Between 1810 and 1883, when the Northern Pacific was built, it was the main artery of travel through the lower Clark Fork Valley. Its identity was then lost, and most of the trail was obliterated.
From Montana, A State Guide Book, Page 335