WINNETT — When a double-booking at the Fergus County Fairgrounds left the Métis Powwow looking for a venue this fall, its organizers found a welcoming home 57 miles to the east at the Petroleum County Community Center.

Nobody could remember seeing Winnett’s wide Main Street so full of traffic, and by the time dancers entered through the garage door of Carrell Hall with the sun streaming in behind them, powwow participants and spectators had doubled the population of this remote town for the day.

“It was the first time Winnett had anything like that before,” said Lance Olson, director of the center.

In early October, about a month after the powwow, Lance was giving a tour of the Petroleum County Community Center to attendees of the Reimagining Rural Roadshow, the third annual gathering to share and celebrate what’s possible when a rural Montana town reimagines what it can be.

The roadshow is organized by Montana State University Extension, with support from Montana Community Foundation (MCF). This year’s event was hosted by Winnett ACES, the nonprofit behind major projects highlighted during the roadshow. MCF has supported Winnett ACES (Agricultural Community Enhancement and Sustainability) through grants it administers, including a $2,000 Reimagining Rural grant for better signage and banners on Main Street and $25,000 for general operating support from the Otto Bremer Trust Community Responsive Fund.

“Our primary purpose is to shape Montana’s future through giving, and you saw what happens in a place as beautiful as Winnett when the future is shaped through giving,” said Jessica Stewart, MCF’s chief operating officer, during the tour. “They had a vision and they built it and they had some really strong investments, and now we get to experience it.”

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Across Main Street and down a block from the community center, work is nearing completion on what could be the nation’s first affordable housing project in an active county courthouse.

Built with Eagle Sandstone from the nearby Rims bluffs, the 100-plus-year-old building was in rough shape a few years ago. Sig Pugrud, a Petroleum County commissioner and Winnett ACES board member, said the top floor was abandoned. A hailstorm in 2015 blew out the windows, the roof leaked, the ceiling caved in, and the space had become a storage facility for discarded computer monitors, office furniture, and even someone’s old taxidermied coyote. 

“It had potential, but we just had to clean it first, and that wasn’t fun,” Sig said.

All but $30,000 of the $2.8 million project was funded by grants or historic tax credits, Sig said. Three years in, there’s a new roof and skylights; four apartments, three of which will have affordability provisions; and five office spaces already spoken for before construction is complete. And, Sig said, all the bats have been evicted.

“People can come back here, put their kids in school, and have a good business running,” Sig said, adding that the whole town is served by high-speed internet. “ … This is about us investing in the community as a whole. That’s the point if we’re going to make these communities survive. We’ve got it good here and we need to protect it.”

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On the other side of Broadway Avenue, the town’s roughly 100-year-old original Odd Fellows Hall is settling into its new home. When a flatbed showed up in 2022 to move the building, Fergus Electric Cooperative raised the power lines and children lined Main Street to cheer it on.

The whole trip took 15 minutes, said Winnett native Chelsea Hollender, a leader of the project. What followed was thousands of volunteer hours that have led to a new coffee shop on the main floor of the 3,000-square-foot building, now known as 55 Main, and a nearly finished apartment on the top. Volunteer crews restored and oiled the original doors from the Odd Fellows lodge, including covers over peepholes used to verify membership.

Local ranchers donated $100 each in exchange for getting to brand barn doors on the side of the building that open to an event space and tent camping yard. Around back there are public restrooms, a laundromat, and showers available to anyone 24/7. It’s been a hit for truckers, Chelsea said.

First-floor tenant Punchy Paint Coffee not only offers a latte that rivals anything in a more populated part of the state, but also serves as a community gathering hub for anyone from a rancher starting his day to a mother buying a new outfit for her baby from the store’s merchandise shelves featuring Montana-made items.

In the state's least-populated county, where the local growth policy says there aren’t enough jobs to provide for young families, this kind of place has an outsized impact, Chelsea said.

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Larry and Kathi Carrell’s support is a major reason why the Petroleum County Community Center was built. For Larry, the connection is personal and ties back to his days growing up along Cat Creek near town. After graduating from Winnett High School, he found success in the oil industry and later retired with Kathi near Lewistown.

“I recall that every place seemed to have a gathering facility. We had the Cat Creek oil field and Flatwillow and Valentine, all these little communities that all kind of disappeared, but I recall the significance of those facilities when I was a child,” Larry told a crowd gathered in the hall named after him at the community center. “As I came back here and saw how the population had decreased, and learned about [Winnett] ACES in particular, it became pretty obvious that a lot of people cared.”

The Carrells donated $4.5 million to the Petroleum County Community Center, along with an additional $500,000 match, and said that the benefits of his generosity went far beyond estate planning and tax benefits.

“It really comes down in my mind to when I think of the gatherings here, the smiles on people’s faces, and the feedback that we get from people from out of town,” Larry said. “It’s been rewarding to see what’s happened. …  You have to have an environment for your young people to be raised in and have them want to stay and grow and perpetuate the community. So I felt like it was worth the gamble.”