This is damn interesting.

The 1920s were a heady time for the United States.

The economic windfall of booming industry seemed to have made every corner of the country flush.

The radio carried popular entertainment into every home, and professional athletics were becoming a pastime of the country flush. The radio carried popular entertainment into every home, and professional

athletics were becoming a pastime of the rich and poor alike. It was a time when anyone with a bit

of pluck, perseverance, and lots of spare cash could make the extraordinary happen in the most

unlikely of places. Nowhere was that more evident than in the town of Shelby, Montana,

a sleepy railroad junction and herding station just 40 miles south of the Canadian border.

A newly rich town with a wide open future and a blossoming population.

Shelby was home to when James Boddy Johnson Jr., an ambitious, if whimsical, local real estate

operator and son of Mayor Jim Johnson Sr. The junior Johnson had visions of Shelby as a destination

for out-of-state tourists, cross-border travelers from Alberta and oil-rich locals alike.

The way he sought, Shelby had the oil, the railroad, and the money needed to transform the

town into the glittering gem on the northern plains.

All he needed was a way to make the world take notice, and for a moment, the world did.

Crouched along the Great Northern Railroad's high line leg between Minnesota and Washington,

Shelby had only popped up in the late 1890s as a meeting place for Cowboys and Shepherds.

Prized out of what had been the Blackfeet Nation, the spot was where two major railways crossed paths,

the Great Northern Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington, and

Quincy Railroad.

As herdsmen and railroad employees continued to meet at the crossing, a few enterprising

settlers built a hotel, a saloon, and various other small businesses to capture the trickle

...