Fort Peck Theater

About

The Fort Peck Theatre was built as a temporary structure in 1934 in Fort Peck, Montana, to serve as a movie theatre. It is also known as the Fort Peck Summer Theatre. The theater was designed in a pseudo-Swiss-chalet style as an amenity for the 50,000 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers workers and their families at the Fort Peck Dam project. The interior features open-truss wood construction, with handcrafted light fixtures fabricated in Corps of Engineers workshops. The theater survived to become a permanent facility, and as of 2026 houses an annual professional summerstock theatre company.

The building includes a stage, a 1209-seat auditorium, a lounge, a foyer, a lobby, a manager's office, and four dressing rooms. It was designed and/or built by Eugene Frank Gilstrap and the C.F. Haglin Co.

Its NRHP nomination compares it to the architecturally significant Timberline Lodge in Oregon.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.