Montana Still Has Working Soda Fountains From the 1930s — and Locals Have Never Stopped Going

Stevensville’s Valley Drug and Variety: A Century at the Counter

In Stevensville — the oldest continuously inhabited town in Montana, located in the Bitterroot Valley approximately 28 miles south of Missoula — Valley Drug and Variety has operated its soda fountain for more than 100 years. The business has functioned as a community anchor through two world wars, the Depression, and the nationwide decline of the drugstore fountain model that eliminated thousands of similar establishments between the 1950s and 1980s.

According to Montana Right Now, the Stevensville fountain continues to operate as a working soda counter, not a museum installation. Customers order from a functional menu rather than viewing the equipment behind glass.

Stevensville’s population hovers around 1,900 residents, according to U.S. Census estimates, making the fountain’s survival all the more notable. It has persisted not through tourist traffic alone but through consistent local patronage across generations of the same families.

The Virgelle Mercantile: A Restored Fountain on the Missouri River

The small community of Virgelle, located along the Upper Missouri River in Chouteau County, holds a different kind of soda fountain story. According to Visit Montana, a vintage fountain was restored to its original working condition in 1986 and operated inside the Virgelle Mercantile from 1986 through 1993.

Virgelle itself is one of Montana’s most remote communities — the nearest incorporated city of any size is Havre, roughly 45 miles to the northeast. The mercantile building dates to the homesteading era and has served as a general store, post office, and community gathering point for the sparse population of the Missouri Breaks region.

What Happened to American Soda Fountains — and Why Montana Kept Some

The American soda fountain reached its commercial peak in the early 20th century, when drugstores and variety shops across the country installed carbonation equipment as a standard fixture. At their height, an estimated 100,000 soda fountains operated across the United States, according to historical accounts from the American drugstore industry.

The decline came in phases. Television advertising in the 1950s shifted consumer spending toward packaged goods. The rise of fast food chains in the 1960s and 1970s offered a competing model of quick-service food at lower overhead. By the 1980s, most surviving fountains had closed as the drugstore chains that housed them converted to modern pharmacy-only formats.