2800 Block of Minnesota Avenue

At the turn of the century this block typified the business empire of the Yegen brothers along Minnesota Avenue. On the south side, the Yegens owned the town's first savings bank, Yegen Hardware and Buggy Storage, and various stores selling clothing, furniture, dry goods and groceries. On the north side they owned three warehouses including the grocery warehouse building.

2700 Block of Minnesota Avenue

This block includes one of the few buildings remaining in Billings that was built in the early 1880s. Imagine yourself standing in the middle of this block in the Spring of 1884, just two years after the first buildings were erected in town. There are now over 400 buildings in Billings, occupied by over 1500 town residents. Downtown encompasses about a nine-block area, split about evenly north and south of the railroad tracks. All of the buildings on this block are of wood frame construction, but north of the tracks brick buildings are already beginning to edge out the first generation frame buildings. Downtown is a mixture of businesses, offices, hotels, and saloons. At first recorded count in 1883, there were 11 saloons and 3 billiard halls - nearly one establishment for every 100 people in town. This block is no exception - it has two saloons a billiard hall, a liquor and cigar company, a hardware business, tin shop and a general store (on the corner). You're standing in mud - the streets of Billings aren't paved until 1909. You might be staying in the lodging above the hardware store, part of a crew freighting merchandise on wood wagons pulled by 20-horse teams down to Wyoming. The water in the pitcher in your room is hauled on wagons from the Yellowstone River - there is no central water supply in town until 1886, when Billings Water Power Co. built a canal and water works that pumped a million gallons of water daily into the city. Your room is lit at night by a candle or oil lamp and any heat in the building comes from a wood stove. The sources of heat and light combined with wood frame construction and lack of local water supply account for fires in Billings that destroyed many of the original wooden buildings.

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