Abandoned White Brick Building on I94W/H10E Between Terry and Fallon

I see this building every time I drive from Billings to Glendive and back. I have acquired some great photos of it, but found myself wondering what the real story behind it was. I had been told that it was an old school building, an old jail, and even an old church. None of these seemed right, however, which just added to the mystery and the feeling that a lot of people had seen this building but not known the history behind it.

Thanks in part to the Visit Terry, MT Facebook group as well as the Prairie County Museum, I was able to discover the true history of this building… kind of. No one has an accurate idea of when this white shack was built, but we do know that it’s original purpose was a telephone shed for Mountain Bell, used to house gear and repair materials. At some point, Mid-Rivers Communications took over the building.

Now, it’s abandoned, except for the multitude of birds. Seriously, SO MANY BIRDS.

The fact that the telephone shed is now home to antiquated pidgeon-mail equipment (I’m assuming they are pigeons, they might be some other sort of demonic bird) is amusingly ironic to me.