The families who settled in the rural areas of Montana throughout the late 1890s and early 1900s valued education as well and soon schoolhouses dotted the landscape. These buildings, typically crafted from locally sourced materials, served as a location for church services, dances, and elections, in addition to serving as a school. Montana families that farmed and ranched relied on these rural schools to educate their children, as the vast distances between towns made it impractical to travel to schools in more urban areas.

Montana’s rural schoolhouses were usually one or two rooms in size and resembled a typical 19th century house. Many featured small entrances with spaces to store coats and boots. At one time there were several country schools in Big Horn County, but as roads improved and automobiles became more common, more and more students rode buses to larger, consolidated schools. The 1922 school building at the Big Horn County Museum is an example of a typical country school that served children from first through eighth grade. Despite the loss of many rural schools, a strong legacy remains in Montana as it has one of the highest number of active rural schoolhouses of all fifty states to this day. Big Horn County itself still has an operating one-room schoolhouse, near the town of Decker, Montana.