Circle, MT

Circle High School Art Students designed logos for banners to go down Main Street and along Hiway 200. One of the projects that rose to the top during Horizons was capitalizing on tourism as Circle is the hub of several roads. Why not encourage people to meet here or stay longer? On Town and Country Days in September, the townspeople voted for their favorite logo. The winner - a circle of wheat with the words Circle Montana inside in Maroon and gold, CHS colors. Under it was ” A great Place to Be ARound, edged in a barb wire design. The banners were put up by McCone Electric. Thanks to Nels Boe for all his research to find a banner company and brackets to hold them. The students got pizza out of their efforts and the whole community got to participate in choosing the banners representing their home town.

A GREAT result of the Horizons process and community meetings was the creation of the Redwater Community Foundation (RCF). The RCF formed a partnership with the Montana Community Foundation ( http://www.mtcf.org/ ). This partnership created a local community foundation that will make available to the community (the entire area of McCone County) a permanent method of making available some funding for local needs and projects. It also makes available the opportunity for those that are willing to donate a way to permanently give to the community to help meet its needs.

The Foundation has been active and has as of 4/1/08 raised: $20,000.00

And has Given:
$3,000 - Brockway Fire Truck
$1,000 - Multi-purpose building at the Fair grounds
$750.00 - New ambulance
$250.00 - Playground equipment at Prairie Elk School

The RCF has also receive a grant from Montana Community Foundation in the amount of $15,000
to build the concrete foundation for the new Multi-Purpose building at the Fair Grounds.

The RCF has generated a number of nice short stories in the local Newspaper and has been a wonderful asset right from the beginning.

The local area Chamber of Commerce has worked with the group to develop a web page:
http://www.circle-montana.com/foundation.html

When Circle was going through the Horizons program and LeadershipPlenty, one of the activities was writing a postcard to someone in the community that had made a difference. Peggy Iba picked up the local postcards at Chapin Drug. The postcards were so old, they were in black and white with the Baldwin School still standing. It was torn down in the late 1970s. Eldon Moos and Julie Howard spearheaded the project to get new postcards for Circle to encourage tourism. They were taken by Eldons daughter via plane in June of 2005. Have you ever seen Circle so GREEN?

The postcards were popular, especially for class reunions. Now they are a collector’s item as the elevator and Chapin Drug have since burned down.

The Circle web site: http://www.circle-montana.com/index.html