Flagpole installation inGreat Falls, MT

Flagpoles in Great Falls

Montana's third-largest city, and a military and medical town first: Malmstrom Air Force Base is the biggest employer here and the Missouri runs through the middle of it over five hydroelectric dams. We cover Great Falls and the Cascade County area, including downtown and Central Avenue, the Central Business and Railroad historic districts, the Northside Residential district, Malmstrom Air Force Base, the Montana Air National Guard base beside Great Falls International Airport, Black Eagle and the river dams, the C.M. Russell Museum and Paris Gibson Square.

Wind here. Great Falls sits in an exposed, chinook-swept area, which works out to roughly 105 mph under the code your town uses. That figure decides how wide and how thick the pole has to be, so we check it against your address before we quote. The wind figure is the least useful number in Great Falls. The city publishes 107 mph, and the Rocky Mountain Front stands just to the west of it: the chinook that comes down off those mountains, the wind people here call the snow eater, arrives warm, dry and hard enough to take the snow off the ground on its way through, and no map counts it. So anything on open bench ground is sized for what is actually upwind of it, which is nothing. What the city does publish is the part that costs money underground, 42 inches to the bottom of the footing, a bigger hole and more concrete than the same pole needs almost anywhere else we work. Anything bought for Malmstrom, or by a contractor working there, brings a made-in-America question with it; our poles are made in the United States and that paperwork goes out with the order. Downtown, the Central Business and Railroad districts and the Northside Residential district behind them all carry historic designation, and the Great Falls and Cascade County commission that looks after them is advisory, so start that conversation early rather than late.

Most of the people who call us from Great Falls are base contractors and defence suppliers, hospital and clinic buildings, city and Cascade County facilities, schools, churches, veterans posts, grain operations out on the bench, and downtown commercial frontage.