The Mountain View Cemetery, also known as the Big Timber Cemetery, is located in Sweet Grass County.
According to Living New Deal, Mountain View Cemetery had undergone some unspecified improvements in 1936, one of several completed projects in the community that was attributable to the New Deal.
Mountain View Cemetery is actually quite large considering the population of Big Timber is today approximately 1,650 residents. The cemetery is well maintained and is still active. Large cottonwood trees provide shade throughout the cemetery. It was very surprising how many Woodman of the World type headstones are to be found throughout the cemetery.
This is an interesting cemetery with many large old granite grave markers, full of history, with a memorial to local veterans placed by the Sweet Grass Post No. 19 of the American Legion.
There is a large veterans' section with 100s of grave markers, some from the Spanish American War.
Interestingly, there are approximately 3,986 interments, which is over double the current population. The cemetery was established about 1895 with the first interments:
Clarissa P "Clara" Cutting Baker born in 1819 in Vermont and passed away March 26, 1896 in Big Timber.
John Lawrence Connolly was born on November 10, 1893 and passed away on March 9, 1895, he was just four years old.
City of Big Timber, Montana
Big Timber is located in south-central Montana bordered by the Yellowstone and Boulder Rivers.
Captain William Clark led The Corps of Discovery into what is now Sweet Grass County in 1806, but it wasn’t until 1883, and the Northern Pacific Railroad came through, that Big Timber (formerly named Dornix) was born. A railroad station was constructed at Dornix, a small settlement at the confluence of the Boulder and Yellowstone rivers, whose economy revolved around a sawmill. Within a very short time, Dornix moved to higher ground and renamed Big Timber for the large cottonwood trees growing along the rivers. Big Timber was within the Crow Indian reservation lands until 1891 when the Crow Nation ceded their lands west of the Boulder River to the United States Government.
In 1880, two Irishmen, Charles McDonnell, and Edward Veasey drove 3,000 head of sheep from California to Montana, beginning a long history of sheep and cattle ranching in the area. In 1901 the first woolen mill in Montana was built in Big Timber, and at one time Big Timber shipped more wool than any other city in the United States. While farming and ranching are still the backbones of the area, platinum/palladium mining has become a major contributor to the economy.
From the City of Big Timber