Hi-Line Living: Small towns in focus: Rudyard

The small Montana town of Rudyard sits on the Hi-Line and has a colorful, varied history.

Rudyard sits 40 miles west of Havre on U.S. Highway 2 and has a population of 275, according to the 2010 census.

An old sign for the town reads "596 Nice People and 1 Old Sore Head!" but the population of the town has dwindled since it was erected. However, they still name an official Old Sore Head at bigger events.

The town has a few businesses, including a theater, restaurant, beauty shop, two service stations, a Tire-Rama, McNair Furniture and others.

The theater shows a "mystery movie" every Wednesday. The owner keeps the film a surprise until the showing and it could be anything from a Marilyn Monroe film to a 1980's blockbuster.

Bob Christenson has been living in Rudyard since 1964 and now runs the museums in town. The Rudyard Depot Museum and Hi-Line Vintage Motors offer Rudyardites, Hi-Liners and tourists a glimpse into the history of the town and the Earth.

The Depot Museum holds both antiques from American history and archeological finds and displays of dinosaurs. A fossilized gryposaurus, which is a duckbilled dinosaur, lies in the center of the dinosaur exhibit, surrounded by informational displays of other dinosaurs that roamed the area before their extinction. The gryposaurus fossil was unearthed about 20 miles north of Rudyard.

Some of the items in the museum, including the gryposaurus, were unearthed by a science teacher in Rudyard, but famed paleontologist Jack Horner took over the project and his name was attributed to the find, Christenson said.

Much of what is displayed in the museum was donated from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.

Hi-Line Vintage Motors has an interesting story of how it was founded. A German tourist, Michael Fleissner, who visited the town saw that there were many antique vehicles in the area. Christenson said the visitor offered to buy the 1947 historical implement building if they would work to renovate the building to house the vehicles. Christenson and others agreed and the museum was founded in 2007.

The building is now chock-full of antique vehicles. Christenson said the among the rarest vehicles in the building are a 1932 Ford V8, a 1921 Cadillac and an old Packard.

Christenson said Fleissner still visits the area and recently had his birthday party there, where he invited his friends from Germany.

The museums are open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, or by appointment with Christenson. He said the museum sees anywhere from 500 to 1,000 visitors a year.

Christenson said he moved to Rudyard originally to run a grain elevator at the fertilizer plant in town. He worked it from 1964 to 1973.

"I came here for a job and I got stuck here," he said.

Tire-Rama and McNair's are two of the biggest employers in town now, he said. When Rudyardites want to unwind, they may visit the bowling alley in town, which is also a bar. Otherwise, Christenson said, they go to Havre or Great Falls for fun.

The town also has its own school, North Star School. Its students come from Hingham, Gildford, Sandy Creek, Kremlin and surrounding areas. The school has several Class-C teams, including basketball, volleyball and football.

Despite the town's shrinking population and the "old sore head," the die-hard Rudyardites still keep their community full of history, both in recording the past and creating anew.

Rudyard, Montana

Population: 275 Median Age: 43

Median income: $28,393

Rudyard has the distinction of being the only community in the United States that sits directly across the world from a point of land, Kerguelen Island, rather than ocean.