Historic Plains jail renovations near completion

One of the most historic and often overlooked pieces of Plains’ history is getting a badly needed face lift.

The work being done to repair and refurbish the old, original Plains town jail, is nearing completion and in the nick of time according to those involved.

“We are basically re-grouting and shoring up the structure before it falls over,” said Plains Mayor Dan Rowan of the project to strengthen the stone walls of which the tiny structure is made.

The jail, which is approximately the size of an average house bedroom and features a single, iron bar “cage” for those unlucky enough to be sentenced to time in the rock building calls to mind a different era when being locked up was under harsh conditions.

The building sits on the site on which it was originally built back in 1904. It has become a tourist curiosity over the past several decades since it was replaced by new jails in Plains and Thompson Falls.

The Plains jail is directly across McGown Street from the town’s grocery store of the same name. During peak tourists months and even throughout the year, several people each day peer inside the iron-barred windows to get a glimpse of what prison life was like near the turn of the 20th Century.

With grout holding the structure in need of replacing, area resident Tony Ferlan has been charged with removing the old grout and replacing it with period-correct grout that will not only strengthen the ominous walls but preserve it’s original look for years to come.

“I’ve been working on this about a month,” Ferlan said. “There have been lots of days when I haven’t been able to get much done due to weather conditions, but the project is nearing completion”.

Ferlan said he expects to replace the last of the old grout by the end of April. He has been painstakingly digging out and removing the century old material that builders used to hold the many river rocks in place and keep prisoners securely incarcerated within its walls.

Once the old grout is removed, Ferlan uses a tool that resembles a large cake decorating squeeze bag to inject new grout into every exterior nook and cranny.

“There have been several days where I haven’t been able to do any re-grouting because its been too cold outside for the material to maintain the desired consistency,” said Ferlan, who works installing underground sprinkling systems most of the year.

The structure was built and opened in 1904 as part of a two-jail project that produced a similar jail for Thompson Falls. Construction of the two jails cost approximately $1,700 in those days and the jails were owned by the Sanders County Commissioners who paid for the initial work.

Several years after the jail was opened, it was purchased by its current owners, the Town of Plains.

One “claim to fame” with the old jail is that it once housed an intoxicated prisoner who claimed in a drunken stupor that he was the one who shot the then governor of Montana. That claim was later debunked and chalked up to too much alcohol.

There have been some over the years since the jail closed who have wondered about moving it to a site along Highway 200 in the middle of Plains as a means of attracting more tourists and visitors to stop and check it out. Doing that, Ferlan said, would be extremely expensive and impractical.

“There would be two ways to move this building,” he said. “One would be to take it apart rock by rock, number the rocks, then attempt to put them back together at a new site.

“The other would involve encasing the building in a big, specially built box, then picking it up and moving it. Both would be extremely difficult if not impossible and would be very costly to say the least”.

So, with its wall fortified for hopefully another century, the old jail will sit in its current location, a stark if not curious reminder of harsher days gone by”.