Cascade County, MT

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Before American settlement, the area now known as Cascade County was the homeland of the Blackfeet Nation, with the Missouri River serving as a vital corridor for trade and travel. The Blackfeet, along with the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre, used the vast plains for bison hunting, and their presence shaped the landscape long before any permanent non-Native structures were built. The first significant American incursion came with the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1805-1806), which passed through the region, but it was the discovery of gold in Montana in the 1860s that spurred the first wave of permanent settlement.

The city of Great Falls was founded in 1883 by the Great Northern Railway, which saw the Missouri River’s waterfalls as a source of hydroelectric power for industry. The railroad brought a diverse mix of workers: Irish and German immigrants laid track, while Scandinavian settlers (Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes) took up homesteads in the surrounding countryside, particularly around Belt and Cascade. The Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which built a massive smelter in Great Falls in the 1890s, drew a second wave of immigrants—Italians, Poles, and Eastern European Jews—who settled in working-class neighborhoods like the “Smelter City” area near the plant. By 1910, the county’s population had surged to over 28,000, fueled by copper smelting, railroad maintenance, and agricultural homesteading under the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909.

The Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s brought a smaller but notable influx of “Okies” and “Arkies” from the Southern Plains, who found work on farms and ranches around Ulm and Vaughn. World War II and the subsequent Cold War transformed the county’s economy: Malmstrom Air Force Base was established in 1942, bringing a steady stream of military personnel and their families, many of whom stayed after retirement. This military presence, combined with the decline of copper smelting in the 1960s, shifted the county’s economic base from heavy industry to defense and services, a transition that defined the post-war era.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had a minimal direct impact on Cascade County, as the region did not attract the large-scale immigration seen in coastal or Sun Belt areas. The foreign-born population remains tiny at 0.6%, and the county’s racial composition has changed only modestly since 1965. The most significant demographic shift has been domestic: the closure of the Anaconda smelter in 1980 led to a population decline from a peak of 81,804 in 1960 to a low of 77,372 in 1990, as workers left for jobs in other states. Since then, growth has been slow but steady, driven by the expansion of Malmstrom Air Force Base and the rise of Great Falls as a regional healthcare and retail center.

Hispanic residents now make up 5.1% of the population, a share that has grown from near-zero in 1980, primarily through migration from the Southwest and Mexico for agricultural work in the county’s sugar beet and hay fields around Fort Shaw and Sun River. The Black population (1.4%) is concentrated in Great Falls, largely tied to military families stationed at Malmstrom. East and Southeast Asian communities (1.1%) include a small but established group of Vietnamese and Filipino families, many with military connections. The Indian subcontinent population (0.1%) is negligible, consisting of a handful of professionals in healthcare and education. Suburbanization has been limited: Great Falls’s core remains the primary residential area, with newer subdivisions spreading south toward Black Eagle and west along the Missouri River, but the county lacks the sprawling exurbs seen in larger metropolitan areas.