AP IMAGES/THE BILLINGS GAZETTE/LARRY MAYER
ST. MARIE, Mont. — Howling winds
sweep across the high plains. Weeds
spring up in gravel streets that bend
through the empty neighborhoods that
once housed a vibrant community of airmen at the forefront of the Cold War. Only
the sight of an occasional human dispels
the atmosphere of total abandonment.
In the early 1960s, what would later
be dubbed St. Marie grew up around
the Glasgow Air Force Base, one of
dozens of launch points for Strategic
Air Command bombers. But when the
Defense Department shuttered the base
for a final time in 1976, after an earlier
closing between 1968 and 1971, its military residents were shipped elsewhere.
A population that once numbered over
7,000 people dwindled to a few hundred,
infrastructure crumbled, vacant houses
began to fall apart, and the settlement 50
miles from the Canadian border became
a near ghost town.
There were efforts to repurpose the
once-thriving community — by the military at first, then a private developer
who sought to create a military retirement village, then another developer
who ended in bankruptcy — but they
each failed for reasons that remain hotly
disputed among today’s population of
just 264 people.
And then came the attempt that is still
roiling St. Marie.
Three years ago, much to the consternation and bewilderment of those who
lived there, odd signs began to appear
around the bleak remains of the community, posted on homes, the dilapidated
officers club, the former school and more.
“NO TRESPASS,” the posters warned.
“YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED,
THAT THE OWNER OR TENANT
OF THIS PROPERTY REQUIRES
ALL PUBLIC OFFICIALS, AGENTS,
OR PERSON(S) TO ABIDE BY ‘THE
SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND,’ THE
CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE
RATIFIED AMENDMENTS THERETO.
… ALLEGED ZONING OR CODE NONCOMPLIANCES DO NOT ESTABLISH
CONSTITUTIONAL REASONS FOR
ENTERING THIS PROPERTY.
“VIOLATORS WILL BE TREATED
AS INTRUDERS.”
The language, with its insistent references to the Constitution, didn’t
sound like a normal no-trespassing
notice. Some attributed the posters to
the recent appearance of the Montana
Aviation Research Company, a subsidiary of Boeing that maintains one of only
a handful of runways long enough to
“They showed up and paid the back
taxes on 400 condo units,” Murnion told
the Intelligence Report in November. “We
had no dealings until they showed up,
speculating on these properties and trying to make a quick buck.”
Those units were just part of the
town’s enormous inventory of empty
and blighted buildings, which include a
church, a high school, the officers club, a
land the now-discontinued space shut- Strange signage: No-trespass notices citing
tle. The firm was engaged in top-secret the Constitution were one of the early signs
research, and residents who lived among that something odd was happening in St.
Marie, Mont. Residents soon learned that two
some 1,000 empty buildings thought that “sovereign citizens” were behind the warnings.
might explain the forbidding signs.
But then they remembered how three
mysterious men had recently appeared in bowling alley and more. Huge numbers
a green pickup truck, driving up and down of the properties have been abandoned or
St. Marie’s semi-abandoned streets for are in bankruptcy proceedings, and many
unknown reasons. They initially had been were years delinquent in their taxes.
taken for just another odd set of visitors,
Under Montana law, similar to that of
maybe wildcatters or venture capitalists many states, when a property’s taxes are
hoping to capitalize on the extraordinary delinquent, the county can impose a tax
oil boom happening just to the east in lien on it to prevent its sale without the
North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Formation. tax bill being settled. Third parties are
They were, it turns out, something allowed to buy the tax lien by paying back
more than that.
taxes — a process known as “tax assignment” — and then, if the original owners
Enter the Sovereigns
can’t reimburse them within a set period,
Nick Murnion, the Valley County attor- they are given clear title to the property.
ney, remembers it well.
It all took Pat Kelly by surprise.
spring 2016 15