Montana-Dakota Utilities history

In 1926, Heskett bought 80 acres of land near Cabin Creek, in eastern Montana, and drilled for natural gas.

Following the stock market crash in 1929, conditions became even worse.

Also in 1940, the company acquired the gas franchise of Crookston, Minnesota, and completed a 117-mile pipeline from Fort Peck to Glendive, which added six communities to its customer base and connected the Bowdoin Field reserves to its growing pipeline system.

Then in the 1950s, oil reserves in eastern Montana were tapped. It acquired the Knife River Coal Mining Company—which switched from underground to surface mining—in the 1945 deal for Dakota Public Service.

In May 1951, Montana-Dakota acquired Billings Gas and the Rocky Mountain Gas Company.

On June 6, 1956, the company broke ground for the Lewis & Clark Station, a 44,000-kilowatt, lignite-fired unit on the Yellowstone River outside Sidney, Montana.

In 1962, it proposed a seasonal swap of electricity with the Bureau of Reclamation's Pick-Sloan dams but was turned down.

In January 1963 it joined the 20-member Mid-Continent Area Power Planners, an organization that worked to strengthen transmission ties in the upper Midwest.

In 1964, R.M. Heskett, then in his nineties, stepped down after 30 years at the head of the company.

1971: Company joins Minnesota's Otter Tail Power Company and South Dakota's Northwestern Public Service Company to construct a 400,000-kilowatt, lignite-powered generating station near Big Stone Lake in eastern South Dakota.

To supply these new customers, Montana-Dakota explored for gas in the five sedimentary basins of the Rocky Mountain High Plains Region, and in 1974 acquired gas from the Rapelje Lake Basin northwest of Billings.

In 1977, Montana-Dakota and four regional partners announced that they would build a 410,000-kilowatt, lignite-powered generating station at Beulah, North Dakota.

He retired several older plants and in 1985 acquired further shares of the Big Stone and Coyote generating stations.

In 1991, Prairielands signed a 17-year capacity agreement with the Northern Border Pipeline system.

In 1993 the company acquired three aggregate operations in California and Oregon and the assets of an aggregate and construction materials company in Alaska.

Reserves reached 22 million barrels in 1994, and production passed three million barrels.

In 1995 it gained a 50 percent ownership in Hawaiian Cement, one of the largest construction suppliers in Hawaii, then acquired the remaining 50 percent two years later.

A significant purchase, the Willow Springs gas field in east Texas was completed in 1998.