A Spin of the Globe, a Train Robbery, and 5,208 Square Miles of Prairie: Landlording in Phillips County
Malta got its name because a Great Northern Railway official spun a globe and his finger landed on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea. That was in 1887, when James Hill’s railroad was building across Montana’s Hi-Line and needed names for the sidings it established at regular intervals along the route. Saco and Dodson, Phillips County’s other Hi-Line communities, grew from neighboring sidings. A post office was established in Malta in 1890, and by the turn of the century the town had attracted enough ranchers, homesteaders, and frontier characters to achieve a certain notoriety: on July 3, 1901, Kid Curry (Harvey Logan), riding with Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, robbed a Great Northern train just west of Malta near Wagner, making off with approximately $40,000 in unsigned bank notes — one of the last great train robberies of the American West.
That combination of railroad pragmatism and outlaw romance captures something essential about Phillips County’s character. This is a place that was settled by the railroad, populated by homesteaders who were drawn by the promise of free land under the Homestead Act, and then largely depopulated when the 160-acre and 320-acre claims proved too small to sustain a family on semi-arid prairie that receives 10 to 14 inches of rain per year. The county’s population peaked at 9,316 in 1920 and has declined in nearly every decade since, reaching 4,217 at the 2020 Census. The homesteads that failed were consolidated into the large ranching operations that define the county today — the average farm in Phillips County is 3,613 acres — and the communities that survived did so because they were on the railroad or served as county seats or school district centers.
Malta: The Hi-Line Hub
Malta is the commercial center for a territory that extends well beyond Phillips County’s boundaries. Its position at the intersection of U.S. Highways 2 and 191 — with US-191 running north to the Canadian border at the Port of Morgan and south toward Billings — makes it a crossroads for agricultural commerce, Canadian border traffic, and travelers on the Hi-Line corridor. The BNSF Railway runs through town, and Amtrak’s Empire Builder stops daily in Malta, providing passenger rail service on the Chicago-to-Seattle/Portland route. The Phillips County Carnegie Library, a National Register of Historic Places building, anchors the town’s Main Street.
Malta’s institutional employers provide the stable, non-agricultural employment that sustains the town’s rental market. The Phillips County Hospital delivers healthcare services to a vast geographic area. Malta Public Schools serve K-12 students from across the county. County government offices, the local USDA service center, and the BLM and Fish and Wildlife Service offices that manage the enormous federal landholdings in the county add federal and state employment tiers. These institutional workers represent the most reliable tenant pool in Phillips County, and landlords who maintain habitable rental properties in Malta will generally find steady demand from this population.
The Public Lands Landscape
Phillips County is divided almost exactly in half between public and private land — approximately 1.6 million acres of each. This extraordinary scale of federal and state landholding shapes the county’s economy, its politics, and its rental market in ways that are unique even among Montana’s public-land-heavy counties. The Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge occupies the county’s southern tier along the Missouri River. The BLM manages extensive grazing lands. The Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge, a premier birdwatching destination, lies just east of Malta. The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument abuts the county’s southwestern edge. And the American Prairie (formerly American Prairie Reserve) has been purchasing private ranches in Phillips County to add to its vision of a contiguous nature reserve spanning millions of acres around the CMR — a project that has generated fierce opposition from the local ranching community and that affects land values, community dynamics, and the long-term economic trajectory of the county.
For landlords, the public lands landscape has several practical implications. Federal land management jobs (BLM, FWS) provide stable employment and create demand for rental housing from federal employees and seasonal workers. Grazing permits on federal land are critical to the economic viability of many ranching operations, and changes in grazing policy can affect ranch incomes and, by extension, the agricultural tenant base. American Prairie’s land acquisitions have reduced the number of active ranches in some areas, which reduces the rural population and the demand for ranch worker housing. And the recreational use of public lands — hunting, fishing, wildlife viewing, boating on the Missouri — creates a modest but real seasonal demand for visitor housing that landlords with furnished properties can potentially serve.
The Little Rockies and Zortman-Landusky
The Little Rocky Mountains, an isolated mountain range rising from the plains in southwestern Phillips County, have a mining history that adds a distinctive chapter to the county’s story. Gold was discovered in the Little Rockies in the 1880s, and the mining communities of Zortman and Landusky grew up to serve the operations. Pike Landusky himself — the mountain man and prospector for whom the town was named — was killed in a saloon fight by Kid Curry in 1894, adding another chapter to the outlaw lore that permeates Phillips County history. Modern gold mining at Zortman-Landusky operated as a large-scale open-pit cyanide heap-leach operation until 1996, when the mine was closed and the site entered a long-term reclamation process that continues today. The mine left acid mine drainage issues that the state of Montana continues to manage.
Zortman and Landusky today are tiny communities with minimal rental inventory, but the mining history affects property considerations in the Little Rockies area. Properties near the mine site may have environmental concerns related to acid drainage and reclamation activities. Landlords considering properties in the Little Rockies should conduct thorough environmental due diligence.
Phillips County landlord-tenant matters are governed by the Montana Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1977, MCA Title 70, Chapter 24, and the Montana Tenants’ Security Deposits Act, MCA Title 70, Chapter 25. Nonpayment notice: 3-day pay or vacate. Minor lease violation: 14-day cure or quit. Major lease violation: 3-day cure or quit. No-cause termination (month-to-month): 30-day written notice. Security deposit: no cap; 10-day return if no deductions, 30-day itemized return if deductions; must be held in separate bank account; bank name and address provided to tenant; 24-hour written cleaning notice required before deducting cleaning charges (MCA § 70-25-201(3)). Landlord entry: 24 hours’ advance written notice (MCA § 70-24-312). No rent control. No local ordinances beyond state law. Properties on Fort Belknap Reservation trust land are subject to tribal/federal law, not Montana state law — consult an attorney familiar with tribal jurisdiction. Federal lead paint disclosure required for pre-1978 properties. FED action filed at Phillips County Justice Court in Malta. Consult a licensed Montana attorney before taking legal action. Last updated: April 2026.
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