Fairfield History
Fairfield began as a station for the Milwaukee Railroad and is between Great Falls and Choteau, near Freezeout Lake, Fairfield serves as a trading center for the farmers of Greenfield Bench. Irrigation now assures crops, but in earlier days a dry summer made the grass scarce and the name "Freeze-out Bench" was applied to the area. "Greenfield Bench" and Fairfield are now descriptive of the hay and grain fields surrounding the town.
Even though the federal government had opened this area of Montana to homesteading in 1862, not until 1909 did settlers really come into the Fairfield area when Congress liberalized this act allowing the settler 320 acres of free land instead of 160. It became apparent, however, that the small homesteads, 160 or 320 acres, made little sense in the vast and dry landscape of Montana. After the Bureau of Reclamation conducted a survey that showed a dam could be built in the Sun River Canyon and water for irrigation in Fairfield area would be feasible many more settlers called the Fairfield Bench home. Gibson Dam was completed in 1929.
