Cut Bank: Oil Capital of Montana

Cut Bank started as a Great Northern Railway station in the eighteen nineties, a cold, windy waypoint near the Blackfeet Reservation on the northern Montana plains. Then oil arrived. Discoveries in the nineteen twenties turned the town into an oil town.

More finds in later decades extended the boom. Production has long since diminished, but Cut Bank still serves as a regional hub for the Blackfeet Nation, agriculture, and lingering energy industry work. It also holds a weather record it would rather not keep: the town is frequently one of the coldest spots in the contiguous United States, sitting at the eastern foot of the Rockies where Alberta air masses funnel straight in.