Taber Residence

Civil engineer Charles Taber helped survey the original Northern Pacific line through Forsyth in 1881, then soon returned to Forsyth and became the town’s first mayor after incorporation in 1904. He purchased this two-story Queen Anne style home in 1906 and lived here with his family into the 1930s. Built circa 1892, the cross-gable residence features bay windows, turned porch supports, carved porch brackets, and a small spindlework frieze. Railroads brought such precut architectural elements to towns along their tracks, allowing builders to personalize homes for their clients. Inside is a narrow, sharply curved wooden staircase that, according to local legend, came from a steamboat wrecked on the Yellowstone River. Although very few boats traveled the Yellowstone after the Northern Pacific completed its railroad line in 1883, the staircase does resemble those found in nineteenth-century steamboats, and at least two steamboat wrecks occurred on the Yellowstone in the 1870s, when Montanans commonly salvaged freight, machinery, and building materials from wreckage.

Forsyth, Montana · United States