Historic Places & Research
Information on Historic Places in Lewis & Clark County.
Files on historic places are located at the Helena / Lewis & Clark County History Center office at 316 N. Park Ave, Helena and available by appointment. There is not yet another way of accessing such information.
Other Collections on Local History: Neither Helena nor Lewis & Clark County have a local historic research facility or museum. Traditionally, local residents have turned to the Montana Historical Society, located here in Helena, to collect and house papers and artifacts related to such history. Currently, both the Helena / Lewis & Clark County History Center and the Lewis & Clark County Historical Society are accepting materials they believe they can appropriately care for, given their limited resources.
Links:
Lewis & Clark County listed National Register of Historic Places sites are found here. Insert Montana and Lewis & Clark County in the search boxes provided in this National Park Service Site: Local National Register Sites
A fine on-line photographic collection of Helena places and memorabilia: helenahistory.org.
Historic Photographs and Documents from the Library of Congress. Type Helena Montana or Lewis & Clark County in the search boxes.
The Montana Memory project displays digitized images from library collections around the state. This link is to the state photo archives but many more sites are available. A search box is at the top. The drop-down source listing is below the headline.
To conduct historic research on Helena or Lewis & Clark County subjects, try the Montana Historical Society Library on-line service. Or for more general on-line sources information see their Resources page.
Research Sources:
The Lewis & Clark County Genealogical Society is an excellent source of information on people once living in the area. Marriage, birth and death records are part of their collection along with summations of certain individual families and personalities. On this site are links to the Montana Census and other significant collections.
Lewis & Clark Library: Copies of local publications, pamphlets and other source types are at the library along with the Polk Directories and their predicessors. These city directories served as early locator and, later, telephone books for Helena. They serve to connect addresses with individuals and their professions.
Helena City Offices for Building & Engineering. City engineering has sewer hook-up data that identifies when a property was linked to the lines and who the owner was at that time. The Building office has information on building permits from roughly the time of the 1935 Helena earthquakes.
County Offices. The Clerk and Recorder has records on deeds, mortgages, mining claims, subdivisions and other land-related subjects. These are in the City-County building at 316 N. Park Ave, Helena.