The Incredible Story Behind a Hangar in Lewistown, Montana

Sometimes you catch yourself scrolling through news and social media posts and it is just junk after junk after junk. But then there's something cool that catches your eye.

I happened to see a post on "The 406!" Facebook page by Evan Fritz.

Evan writes: "While I was in Lewistown for the Chokecherry Festival, I learned that the airport there was used to train bomber pilots during WW2, which explains why there's a giant hangar there. I also learned that storage building for the then-top-secret Norden Bombsight (the tiny building in the second picture) is possibly the last one standing in the whole nation."

You can click here to go to the full post by Evan, along with updated photos of both the hangar and the bombsight.

According to an August 2023 report by the Non Stop Local TV stations, "The National Park Service announced the designation of 18 new communities across the United States as American World War II Heritage Cities, and one of those cities was Lewistown, Montana."

The article points out how similar hangars were constructed in Glasgow, Cut Bank, and Lewistown.

It was cool to read several of the comments on "The 406!" page as well. Here's some that stood out.

Larry Thill: "Here's an article on the Cut Bank Army Airfield which was similar to the ones at Lewistown and Glasgow. https://www.historynet.com/b-17-training-montana-wwii/"

Gerald Dempster: "They mined natural glass for the Norden Bombsight about 10 miles from Big Timber"

Synthia Vollertsen: "My Father met my Mother in Lewistown while he was working on building the pictured airport. He was a Navy Fighter pilot. My Mom was born and raised in Lewistown and the family ranch in the mountains North of town. I was born there and my Grandparents are both buried there after homesteading the ranch and worked it until they passed! The Yogo Inn was quite the fancy place when built there."

Other folks also shared some photos of the other locations here in Montana.