History:

Rocky Mountain College indirectly traces its history to the 1878 founding of the Montana Collegiate Institute in Deer Lodge, Montana. Later renamed College of Montana, that institution closed in 1916, and in 1923 its assets were incorporated into Intermountain Union College, located in Helena. Intermountain Union, in turn, relocated to Billings after its campus buildings were destroyed by a series of earthquakes in October and November, 1935. Students and faculty finished the academic year in temporary quarters in Great Falls, after which the college merged with the Billings Polytechnic Institute to create today's Rocky Mountain College. The existence of a private, postsecondary institution in Billings dates from 1908, the year Billings Polytechnic was founded. On March 25, 2008, the Aviation Program lost one of its new 'glass cockpit' Piper Archer III aircraft in an accident.