Lewis & Clark Library History

In 1868, a number of prominent Helena citizens formed the Helena Library Association and established Helena's (and Montana's) first public library--four years after gold was discovered on Last Chance Gulch. Judge Cornelius Hedges, Colonel Wilbur F. Sanders, J.W. Whitlach, and Ben Stickner, Jr., solicited subscriptions, drafted a constitution, and set up the library in the first floor of the Whitlach Building. This would be the first of many homes. From 1870 to 1874 the library was housed in a stone and brick building owned by Holter and Hedges on the west side of Main Street. In 1874, fire destroyed much of the Helena business section, including the library. Over 2,500 volumes and all the important donor records and documents from those first important years were lost to us forever.

Within a few months the Association was functioning again. The Helena library functioned as a subscription library for eighteen years before, on May 8, 1886, a vote of the people founded the Helena Public Library as a free library. The new library opened on August 7, 1886, in the Murphy Block and became the oldest free public library in the state of Montana.

In 1892 the library was moved to a building adjacent to the city auditorium on Seventh Avenue. By 1896, the collection had grown to 16,000 volumes, causing increased overcrowding in the dimly lit quarters. On June 29, 1933, the Unitarian Church very generously donated their building on Park and Lawrence to the City for use as a free public library. The gift, from the First Unitarian Society, was conservatively valued at $75,000. An additional gift of $18, from Mrs. Adelaide Childs, trustee of the Unitarian Society, was used to remodel the building. The library flourished in the new facility, becoming a depository for government documents, maintaining an excellent Montana collection, and, by 1946 boasting a collection of about 52,000 volumes.

In 1974, the voters of Lewis and Clark County were asked to approve a $1.8 million bond issue to construct a new building which would become a joint city/county library. The new facility, completed in 1976, marks a new era in the history of the oldest library in Montana. It is the first building specifically built to house a library and it was designed with growth and expansion in mind. Today, the Lewis and Clark Library has over 115,000 volumes, including books, records, magazines, video and audio materials. Nearly 50,000 people are served through the main library in Helena and the branches in Augusta and Lincoln. A new facility was built in Augusta in 1978 and the Lincoln branch was remodeled and expanded in 1989. These new facilities continue the long and proud tradition of library services in Helena and Lewis and Clark County.