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Montana coffee history: from gold camps to a state of small roasters

The roasting story is young. The places it happens in are not.

The short version

Montana coffee history, as a roasting story, starts in 1981. That year a roaster began work in a farmhouse on US 93 south of Whitefish, and it is the earliest start date published by any roaster we list. Everything before that is the history of the towns: gold camps, railroad stops and copper mines that now hold the state's roasteries and cafes.

This post puts the two together, in date order. Every date comes from a Wikipedia article on the state or the town, from a roaster's own published history, or from the local press named at the bottom. Where we could not find a date, we left the event out.

1852 to 1897: the towns the roasters would later move into

Wikipedia's Montana article puts the first gold find at Gold Creek, near present-day Garrison, in 1852, with the rush starting in earnest in 1862. Montana Territory followed on May 26, 1864.

1864 was a busy year for future coffee towns. On July 14 a party known as the Four Georgians found gold in Last Chance Gulch, and Helena was formally established on October 30. In August, John Bozeman, Daniel Rouse and William Beall platted Bozeman as a stop on the Bozeman Trail. Butte began the same year as a mining camp on the Continental Divide. Today Fire Tower Coffee House and a Florence Coffee shop both have Last Chance Gulch addresses, and Florence roasts its coffee in Butte.

Philipsburg was platted in 1867 around an ore smelter designed by the mining engineer Philip Deidesheimer, who gave the town his name. Its roaster, Philipsburg Coffee Roasters, now works on West Broadway there.

The railroads came next. Billings was founded in 1882 and named for Northern Pacific Railway president Frederick H. Billings; it grew so fast it was called the Magic City. The Northern Pacific reached Bozeman in 1883, the year Bozeman incorporated, and reached Missoula the same year. Its transcontinental line was completed at Gold Creek on September 8, 1883. Paris Gibson platted Great Falls in 1883.

On November 8, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed Montana the 41st state. Ghost Town Coffee Roasters in Bozeman sells a blend called 1889, the statehood year. Helena, territorial capital since 1875, became the state capital that year, and Wikipedia's Helena article says about 50 millionaires lived there by 1888.

In 1897 the painter Charles Marion Russell moved from Cascade to Great Falls, where his log cabin studio is now part of the C. M. Russell Museum Complex. Morning Light Coffee Roasters, which roasts in Great Falls, sells a Charlie Russell Roast.

1981 to 1993: the first roasters

Montana Coffee Traders opened in 1981. Its founder, R.C. Beall, roasted on a single Sivetz air bed machine, according to a 2021 Daily Inter Lake story marking the company's 40th year. Whitefish itself dates to 1904, when the Great Northern rerouted its line to avoid Haskell Pass, and it incorporated in 1905. Its ski hill opened on December 14, 1947. The roaster says that since 1981 it has watched Whitefish change from a quiet mountain town into a resort town.

Morning Light Coffee Roasters started in Helena in 1988. In 1989 it opened a warehouse roasting plant and coffee house in Great Falls, and from 1990 it carried specialty coffee to towns across Montana. It calls itself one of the oldest roasters in the state.

Hunter Bay Coffee Roasters started in Missoula in 1991. In 1992 two more roasting dates land: Montana Coffee Traders opened its Kalispell cafe, and Rocky Mountain Roasting in Belgrade began drum roasting specialty coffee, per its own site. In 1993 Beall moved to Texas and started Texas Coffee Traders, the Daily Inter Lake reports, while the Whitefish company kept going without him.

So by the early 1990s the state had roasters in the Flathead, in Great Falls, in Missoula and in the Gallatin Valley.

1998 to 2007: roasters in more towns

Tim and Liz Weyer began Yellowstone Coffee Roasters in 1998, roasting in a log cabin outside Bozeman. In 2001 Galaxy Roasting in East Helena started roasting to supply The Bagel Company in Helena, as Galaxy's own history page tells it.

2003 produced three more roasters, two of them in the Bitterroot. Florence Coffee Company began as one coffee stand in Florence in the Bitterroot, run by Rachel, one of its four founders, with Dave Stewart of Vista Clara Coffee as their mentor and first supplier. Colter Coffee Roasting was established in Kalispell. Zaxan Coffee Roasters started in Hamilton, and it now runs a cafe inside the Bitterroot Health Daly Hospital.

Joel and Peggy Gargaro opened Rock Creek Coffee Roasters in Billings in 2004 after moving from California. Ghost Town Coffee Roasters followed in Bozeman in 2006, with wholesale as the center of the business from day one. Revel Coffee's founder, Gary Theisen, started roasting at home in Billings in 2007, according to Simply Local Billings.

2010 to 2017: food trucks, garages and a Quonset hut

Matt McQuilkin and Jim Chapman started Black Coffee Roasting Company in Missoula in the summer of 2010, and Fresh Cup reports that it moved into a 5,000 square foot Quonset hut on the Northside in 2014.

In 2012 Big Creek Coffee Roasters, which began in a rebuilt garage, opened its first storefront in a downtown Hamilton corner building with oak floors from 1904. In 2013 two things happened in two towns: Nord Johnson took over Fire Tower Coffee House in Helena, where the beans are roasted in house, and Treeline opened in Bozeman as Little Red Wagon Coffee Roasters, a food truck. It took the Treeline name in 2016.

Mazevo Coffee began in January 2016 in a Billings garage. Its first espresso bar opened in early January 2017 on First Avenue North, in a space that had been a cupcake shop. The owners had grown up together in Glendive.

2018 to 2026: awards, new owners and a roastery in Butte

  • 2018: Revel's Ethiopia Kayon Mountain won a Good Food Award (Simply Local Billings).
  • 2020: International Coffee Traders in Bozeman changed hands and became Beacon Coffee Roasters, per Beacon's own history page.
  • 2021: Montana Coffee Traders marked 40 years with a coffee called the '81 blend. In Miles City, Chad and BeKa Phipps bought Kafe Utza from its original owner that fall.
  • 2022: Food and Wine named Gary Theisen of Revel the best roaster in Montana (Simply Local Billings). Treeline's owners were named SBA Small Business Persons of the Year.
  • 2023: Florence Coffee Company began roasting all of its coffee in Butte. KXLF reported that its beans had been roasted in Washington State before that. Mazevo opened a cafe in Laurel in September, and Treeline became WBENC certified as a women's business enterprise.
  • 2024: Scott and Julie Fink and Frank and Bryanna Zavala bought Philipsburg Coffee Roasters in the fall.
  • 2026: Treeline's Tropical Sunset was a Good Food Awards finalist. In March, RamsHead in the Shields Valley paused shipping while its team traveled to Atlanta to help with refugee aid work.

The Florence move is the one to notice. A company that grew from one stand in the Bitterroot to 23 shops brought its roasting home to Montana, to a city whose ore once earned it the name the Richest Hill on Earth.

What the history says about buying local

The Roast Local directory counted 57 independent roasters in Montana in September 2026. Most of the dates above belong to a family or two co-founders who started small: a single Sivetz roaster south of Whitefish, a rebuilt garage, a food truck in Bozeman, a garage in Billings. They are still roasting because people nearby kept buying. That is the plain case for choosing a Montana bag, and we make it at length on our support local page.

You can read each roaster's own story on its page: Montana Coffee Traders, Morning Light, Hunter Bay, Yellowstone, Florence, Rock Creek, Ghost Town, Revel, Black Coffee, Big Creek, Fire Tower, Treeline, Mazevo and Philipsburg. For the map by town, see Montana coffee.

Last Best Coffee Club sends a 12 oz bag from a different independent Montana roaster in each box, roasted to order and shipped in the roaster's own bag. Start with your first bag free; you pay $7.99 shipping on that first box, then $16.99 a bag.

Sources

By Joe McRose, Last Best Coffee Club. Updated September 2026. State and town history from Wikipedia, read 2026-09-27; roaster dates from our roaster profiles and the press named in the Sources section, read 2026-09-27; roaster count from the Roast Local directory, pulled September 2026.