In 1907, rancher Ludwig C. Lehfeldt sold 33,000 acres of ranch land to the Milwaukee Road, prompting the relocation of the Lavina townsite. Seeing the need for a hotel, he hired architects Link and Haire, who also drew the plans for the 1910 additions to the Montana State Capitol, to design an impressive Colonial Revival building. Completed for $20,000 in fall 1908 and named for his friend John Q. Adams, a Milwaukee Road vice president, the Adams Hotel faced Main Street with a secondary north entrance toward the railroad tracks and depot. It was a first-class establishment with steam heat, gas lighting, a well-stocked bar, an elegant dining room, a ladies’ withdrawing room on the second floor, and guest rooms furnished with carpeting, fine furniture, matching china washbowl and pitcher sets, pure linen sheets, and down comforters. Its spacious dining room and lobby hosted dances and social events, making it the center of local hospitality. Lavina flourished during the homestead boom, but drought, crop failures, and bank closures brought decline. The Adams lost guests in its once-opulent rooms and closed by the mid-1920s. From the 1930s through the 1970s, the Lutheran Church used the bar area as its chapel, and after several changes of ownership, restoration began in 2000.