$4,000 grant will fund new roof at fairgrounds schoolhouse

The 108-year-old Faber School, the one-room schoolhouse now preserved on the Great Northern Fairgrounds has gotten a new lease on life with a $4,000 grant from the Montana Historical Foundation.

The school was in bad need of major roof repairs, and will get it with the grant, said Amy Sullivan, spokeswoman for the historical foundation.

The H. Earl Clack Museum Foundation applied for the grant. The whole cost of the project will be $5,820.

The school was built in the Bear Paw Mountains in 1905, she said. Years before the Homestead Act attracted lots of farmers to the area.

It is a log cabin building.

“There aren’t many of those left,” she said. Most one-room schools are wood-frame buildings, she said.

The building was moved to the fairgrounds about 40 years ago.

The Havre project was one of 19 totalling $45,000 announced on Thursday for preservation projects around the state.

Sullivan said there is an emphasis on restoring old schoolhouses.

Money to refurbish schools is a priority with the foundation, she said.

Author-photographer Charlotte Caldwell is donating the proceeds of the her book, “Visions and Voices: Montana’s One-Room Schoolhouse” to the history foundation for further grants.