After the Milwaukee Railroad arrived in 1908, Lavina became an important regional center, with D. W. Slayton’s Mercantile and L. C. Lehfeldt’s Adams Hotel as cornerstone businesses in the bustling community. Slayton and Lehfeldt, joined by Arthur C. Bayers, H. J. Ries, and L. Sandsmark, established a bank to serve the growing region, and this two-story frame building, built in 1908, became its home. In April 1909, the bank moved in its furniture, installed a safe, and distributed shares. Chartered in 1911, it opened a branch in Ryegate and during the prosperous first half of the 1910s aided homesteaders and ranchers. When drought first struck the region in 1918, the bank helped most homesteaders survive, though Slayton wrote in his diary that it “charged off a lot of bad notes.” As drought and depression deepened, the bank closed in 1923, like hundreds of others across Montana. The sturdy building then continued as the post office and, as a natural social center, became the heart of the community where neighbor met neighbor. In 1938 the Freemasons bought the building, added to the rear, and converted the upstairs for lodge meetings. Lavina Lodge #107, founded in 1916, met on the second floor, and the post office remained in the storefront until 1960. In 1995, Ryegate Temple Lodge #101 and Lavina Lodge #107 united as Lavina-Temple Lodge #101, leading to careful restoration of this community treasure, whose crisp, clean presence on the streetscape evokes another era.