Mondak is a ghost town in Roosevelt County,

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

, United States, which flourished c. 1903–1919, in large measure by selling alcohol to residents of

North Dakota North Dakota ( ) is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota people, Dakota and Sioux peoples. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minneso ...

, then a dry state. Mondak—a portmanteau derived from

and adjacent

—was created in 1903, mostly by local investors who realized that profit could be made by selling beer and liquor to North Dakotans. Because of its strategic location on the

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

and the Great Northern Railway, Mondak quickly became a thriving village. The first building was constructed in 1904, and Mondak soon boasted a bank, two hotels, three general stores, and several

grain elevator A grain elevator or grain terminal is a facility designed to stockpile or store grain. In the grain trade, the term "grain elevator" also describes a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor, which scoops up grain from a lowe ...

s. It also eventually had a church, a newspaper, a two-story brick school, and a part-time electric generating plant. Locally raised grain and cattle were shipped to

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

on the Great Northern, but the town's most profitable business remained alcohol sales. During its heyday, Mondak had at least seven saloons and a number of warehouses to store alcohol. Gambling and prostitution were never legal but always winked at. There were many accidents involving inebriated men, and the crime rate was high for the size of the community. On April 4, 1913, a black construction worker, J. C. Collins, shot and killed Sheridan County Sheriff Thomas Courtney and a deputized citizen, Richard Bermeister, when they tried to arrest him at the company's office. Hours after Collins was jailed in Mondak, a mob of local residents stormed the building and lynched him, hanging him from a telephone pole and then making "a futile attempt to burn his body." Mondak's prosperity was short-lived. The area entered a drought cycle in 1916; and the Snowden Bridge, completed in 1913, reduced ferry traffic across the Missouri. In 1916, a fire destroyed several saloons and a warehouse and badly damaged a hotel and a general store. In 1919 Montana instituted

prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...

. Although Mondak was never entirely dry, prohibition "cramped Mondak's style." When the county seat, provisionally located in Mondak, moved to Poplar in 1920, Mondak's decline accelerated. In early 1924, the railroad station closed, and the bank, the town's last viable business, closed in 1925. In 1928 another fire destroyed many remaining buildings. The remains of the ghost town are on private property and include several foundations, depressions from removed foundations, and a large open well. The townsite is within a mile of

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site is a partial reconstruction of the most important fur trading post on the upper Missouri River from 1829 to 1867. The fort site is about two miles from the confluence of the Missouri River and its t ...

and within two miles of Fort Buford State Historic Site, North Dakota.

Notes

{{Roosevelt County, Montana Ghost towns in Montana Geography of Roosevelt County, Montana Geography of Williams County, North Dakota Lynching deaths in Montana Populated places established in 1903 1903 establishments in Montana Borders of Montana Prohibition in the United States