The Great Northern Railway extended its tracks along Montana’s Hi-Line in the 1890s, and the settlement of Chester emerged, named for the first telegraph operator’s Pennsylvania hometown. When the rail line was straightened in 1907, Chester moved a quarter mile from its original site to its present location. C. M. Atkins founded the First State Bank of Chester in 1909, and its handsome brick building, the most extravagant in town at the time, was completed in 1910. The bank served a prosperous agricultural community during the homestead boom, but like other banks across Montana, it fell on hard times as crops failed and homesteaders moved on, closing in 1920. The building then continued to serve the community in many other ways, including as a residence, rooming house, bakery, pool hall, barbershop, and hospital, where former lieutenant governor Allen Kolstad was born. Although a second-story turret was removed in the 1950s for safety, Ionic columns, swan’s neck brackets, graceful curved steps, the original oak entry doors, pressed metal ceilings, woodwork, and the bank vault remain, and the building stands as a representative of the small-town banks that once flourished across Montana and as a centerpiece of Chester’s history.