What Happened to the Pine Grove House on the Betters Homestead?

Once I knew where the Betters homestead was and that I-90 passed right through the property, I was fairly certain that the "fine two story public house" built in 1882 had been demolished or moved to make way for the interstate highway.

I emailed the historian and archaeologist at the Montana Department of Transportation a few times over the years to see if they had any ideas about what might have happened to the house, but that effort didn't go anywhere. Finally, this year, after digging through route plans and right-of-way documents I found online, I realized that much of the right of way for I-90 was carved out of the very wide Northern Pacific Railroad (NPRR) right of way, and in that part of the canyon, I-90 was on the other side of the tracks from where I believed the Pine Grove House stood. That's when the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railroad (CM&StP) became my primary suspect.

The CM&StP (also known as the Milwaukee Road), constructed between 1906 and 1909, was the last transcontinental railroad to cross Montana. Its route largely followed the route of the NPRR, but unlike the NPRR, the CM&StP was not given government land grants, so it had to purchase its right of way from private landowners.

I started researching surveying and construction timelines for the CM&StP and was able to figure out when the CM&StP began securing right-of-way. I then searched painstakingly for newspaper articles after that point in time that mentioned the railway and the phrase, "right of way," looking for anything in the Clinton, area. I found a lot of railway-related condemnations. There were so many, in fact, that I was surprised I didn't see more public opposition to the Milwaukee Road reported in the newspapers.

My hunches and research methods were rewarded when I came across this article in the August 22, 1907 issue of the Missoulian, which was not only related to a right-of-way acquisition in Clinton but reported on the CM&StP's attempts to condemn the exact property I had been seeking information about:

About a month later (September 24, 1907), the Anaconda Standard reported on the results of the lawsuit:

What stood out to me was the appraised value of the improvements. While $7,635 may not seem like a lot today, it was well above the average cost of a home in 1907, so it's entirely possible that the McQuarries' residence was one of the improvements standing in the way of the desired route of the Milwaukee Road.

The March 18, 1908 deed for the transfer of the 7.13 acres from the McQuarries to the CM&StP (below) uses "building" in the singular form, which makes it even more likely in my mind that this was their house and not a collection of outbuildings. It's also possible that this has (or had) some kind of legal meaning that I am not aware of as a layperson.

If it was the Betters/McQuarrie residence that was condemned to make way for the railroad, I'd have thought that would have received more press than a few lines about the appraised value of "improvements" under the headline, "Fixing Awards."

In addition to receiving compensation for the improvements on the strip of land they were forced to sell to the railroad, the McQuarries were also permitted to retain ownership of all building and trees on that strip of land, provided that they agreed to "remove at their own cost and expense all of said building, trees and improvements on or before the 18th day of April 1908."

I don't know how many trees were on the property, but the place was called "Pine Grove," so there may have been quite a few in that 7.13 acres. It's also worth noting that Dan McQuarrie was a lumberman, so it's no surprise that he would have had an interest in harvesting any trees on his property before selling to the railroad.

While I still don't know definitively what happened to the Pine Grove House, I think the evidence is strong that it was either demolished or moved in 1907 and/or 1908. It's possible that the McQuarries were extremely lucky and had impeccable timing, as the Hellgate Canyon was hit with a massive flood in June 1908 that is still talked about today.

A few years later (around 1912) the McQuarries moved to Missoula. A history of the McCormick Neighborhood in Missoula indicates that they moved into a Queen Anne residence at 802 S. 6th W. that was likely constructed for them.