The establishment of the huge silver and copper mines in western Montana in the 1880s called for a large and stable workforce, supplied mostly by immigrants. The mines demanded workers, and Europe had workers to spare. The population of Montana grew 365 percent from 1880 to 1890, largely as a result of immigration into Butte and Anaconda. Large numbers of Irish, Germans, Slavs, Italians, Finns, and “Cousin Jack” miners from Cornwall poured into Butte to work the mines. These foreign workers settled into separate ethnic neighborhoods, where traditional food, customs, and languages prevailed. Some Jewish immigrants moved to the thriving mining centers and set up retail establishments. In 1910 black settlers in Montana, most of whom lived in mining towns, numbered almost 2,000. Only after the establishment of Air Force bases near Glasgow and Great Falls in the 1960s were there more black residents in the state. Chinese immigrants were also attracted to Butte, where they set up laundries and restaurants. Although Butte’s preeminence in Montana has dimmed, the early growth of immigrant populations in the mining communities established Roman Catholicism as the state’s dominant religion, and Butte set a standard of openness to immigrants that is still observed by Montanans.
The railroads brought settlers to the plains of eastern Montana. Ambitious campaigns by the Great Northern and the Milwaukee Road succeeded in luring thousands of farmers to cultivate the dry prairie. Between 1900 and 1910 the number of farms and ranches in Montana doubled, and while many American-born homesteaders settled in Montana during this time, immigrants had an especially strong influence in eastern Montana. By 1910 one quarter of all Montanans were foreign-born. Entire communities of Germans, Russians, and Scandinavians were founded as farms and towns sprung up alongside rail sidings, as did the telltale Lutheran church. Scots and Irish continued to settle the plains as ranchers and herdsmen. Today in northern and central Montana the names in small-town phone books read like similar directories in Norway, Sweden, or Scotland.
Even though droughts and the Great Depression worked to depopulate the Montana plains, the foreign character remains in communities founded by immigrant farmers and ranchers. Fifty thousand foreign-born settlers moved to the state from 1900 to 1920, while 120,000 American-born settlers did so. But during the droughts and bad markets of the 1920s, 10 times more American-born homesteaders than immigrants gave up and moved on. By 1930, people of foreign birth or first-generation Montanans made up 45 percent of the population.
Some foreign settlers moved to Montana expressly to form communities. Mennonite groups settled in Montana during the homesteading years, but many left after the state legislature, urged on by an organization called the Montana Council of Defense, drafted laws during World War I that forbade speaking the German language. Hutterites maintain 22 communities in Montana and currently number more than 2,000 adherents.
War policies have not always driven Montanans from the state. During World War II, Japanese internees from California were shipped to the state to work in sugar beet fields. Some found Montana to their liking; farming communities along the Yellowstone are still home to Japanese families.
Like other Western states, Montana is now home to a growing population of Hispanics, many of whom work on farms and ranches. Hispanics now make up more than two percent of the state’s population.
© W.C. McRae & Judy Jewell from Moon Montana, 7th Edition