Preston B. Moss – Billings Businessman

[Note: The biographies of Mr Moss and his land developments are available; but not yet published.] 

Revised 20 June 2001c

 Preston Moss was a lumberyard owner and banker in Missouri before arriving in Billings in 1892, with his bride. He took over the First National Bank in December of that year, and during the panic of 1893 discovered that the previous bank managers had invested most of its assets in sheep. The price of sheep fell to 50 cents on the dollar, the bank’s assets dropped even faster. All bank obligations were liquidated, down to $150 in reserves. The bank didn’t even have a $5 bill.

He helped recover the assets, and soon became one of Billings leading citizens, and biggest investor. In 1894 he built his 25-room home at 914 Division Street (later re-addressed as 216 Division Street). Currently it is managed as a historical site. He and Col. Henry W. Rowley built the original Northern Hotel in 1903. After Rowley’s death in 1930 he and Mrs. Rowley managed it together. In 1940, when the hotel burned down on September 11^th, he was president of the Billings Investment Company, and immediately made plans to replace it. The structure cost $1,000,000 at the time, and even with wartime shortages, it was built in record time, and opened on July 7, 1942. Moss was 79 at the time.

Moss owned the Billings Gazette from 1908 to 1914. In 1914 he started the Billings Utility Company, and in 1937 he sold that business to the Billings Gas Company. It provided heat to businesses and residences from its North 29^th Street location. He is considered to be the father of the city’s first telephone system, which boasted the first automatic system in Montana.

The Huntley Irrigation System was built largely because of a team of business leaders, I. D. O’Donnell, M. A. Arnold and Mr. Moss. Moss also assisted in the start of the Billings Polytechnic Institute (Rocky Mountain College), and contributed to the formation of the YMCA. He planned a futuristic community, “Mossmain,” a short distance east of Laurel where the rail lines of NPR, Great Northern and Burlington merged, but the venture failed.

He was a political independent, and spent his free time with personal interests in the Masonry.