Most of Baker was built recently: 5% of its homes predate 1940 and the median home dates from 1980. Its Register listings are the Fallon County Jail and the Baker Hotel. Below: 1 old photo or paper, maps from 1910 on, and the census since 1920.
Founding year: the first Baker post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Baker’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Baker is more historic than 25% of U.S. towns. Its National Register listings hold the grade up; its age pulls it down.
C
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Baker’s overall grade.
Montana towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical Montana town has 12.7 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Baker’s 13.4 sits near the middle of its state (61% of Montana towns have fewer) while its 2 listings outnumber those of 60% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from D to C+. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±4.5 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Baker’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Peaked at 2,584 in 1970; 1,802 people lived here in 2020.
11 censuses, 1920–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Baker’s Wikipedia page.
Every building
Baker, building by building, 1910–1920
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1910Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Baker was built along the transcontinental rail line of the Milwaukee Road near where the railroad created a lake to supply water to its steam locomotives. The city was known as Lorraine for a brief time before being renamed in honor of Milwaukee Road engineer A.G. Baker. A successful Milwaukee Land Company campaign to attract homesteaders to the area allowed the city to grow and serve a large community of dryland farmers. Additional growth occurred following the 1912 discovery of oil and natural gas deposits nearby.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Questions about Baker’s history
What year was Baker founded?
The Baker post office opened in 1908, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Baker rank for history?
Baker is more historic than 25% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Baker?
Two places: the Fallon County Jail (listed 1998) and the Baker Hotel (2005).
How old are the homes in Baker?
5% of Baker’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±4.5 points), against a typical 13% for a Montana town; the median home was built in 1980.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (4), Wikidata (2), the National Register of Historic Places (2), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
Date?
2012
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2005
