History

Construction on Fort Peck Dam began in 1933, as one of the first large-scale New Deal public works projects authorised by the Roosevelt administration. At its peak the project employed thousands of workers, who lived in a series of construction camps and government-built towns on the otherwise sparsely settled Montana High Plains. Fort Peck, the official government town, was the administrative centre: it contained dormitories, a hospital, schools, and civic facilities including the theatre, all designed and built by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The theatre was completed in 1934 and immediately became the social heart of the dam community. It hosted films, dances, theatrical productions, and public events — the full range of organised leisure for a workforce living far from any city. The design, by Corps architects, applied Art Deco decorative conventions — geometric ornament, streamlined massing, symmetrical façades with vertical emphasis — to a modest wooden structure that had to be both economical and durable enough for frontier conditions. Fort Peck appeared on the cover of the inaugural issue of LIFE magazine in November 1936, in a photograph by Margaret Bourke-White that made the dam and its surrounding town internationally known.

After the dam’s completion in 1940 the construction workforce departed and the boomtown contracted sharply. The theatre survived as the anchor of the small permanent community that remained. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and continues to operate as Fort Peck Summer Theatre, hosting a professional summer stock season that draws audiences from across the region.