Preserve Montana Trades Corps
The Preserve Montana Trades Corps is a pre-apprenticeship training program for young adults considering a future in the trades and that helps Montana’s rural towns achieve their goals for viability.
Now accepting applications for the 2026 training program.
Launched in 2024, the Preserve Montana Trades Corps offers a pre-apprenticeship training program in the traditional building trades. Corps members experience a diverse array of preservation trades skills and building rehabilitation projects in rural communities across Montana over a nine-week, hands-on training program led by Preserve Montana’s skilled restoration crew.
Our Goal for the Preserve Montana Trades Corps
Build a workforce of skilled preservation tradespeople to save endangered historic properties and revitalize communities across rural Montana.
Preserving the Trades
The Corps trains young adults in traditional building trades, preparing them for careers in preservation carpentry and construction while restoring rural historic properties that might otherwise go unrepaired. As skilled historic tradespeople are disappearing at an alarming rate—entries into historic trades dropped 49% in 2021—contractors in Montana and nationwide increasingly struggle to find qualified preservation crews.
Empowering Youth
The Corps is for people between the ages of 18 and 29 who are interested in careers in the preservation trades, with a focus on building Montana’s network of skilled craftspeople. Members begin with training at the Baxendale Schoolhouse Preservation Center in Helena, then gain hands-on experience working alongside Preserve Montana’s skilled tradespeople on preservation projects statewide, including window restoration, masonry repointing, wood roofing and siding repair, log and timber work, and the rehabilitation of historic porches and other building elements.
Building Up Montana's Rural Communities
Attracting skilled craftspeople to preserve historic properties in rural Montana has become increasingly difficult, while communities also seek to retain or bring back young people through meaningful employment. The Corps can help address both challenges. Preserve Montana has been a regional leader in rural preservation training since 2004, partnering with government agencies, nonprofits, and communities to train staff, volunteers, students, and tradespeople in traditional building trades while completing complex preservation projects.
Join the Trades Corps
The Trades Corps program runs for nine weeks in late spring and summer and is headquartered at our Baxendale Schoolhouse Preservation Center in Helena.
Three young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are welcomed into the program each year. Applicants must demonstrate an interest in building a career in the traditional building trades. Previous experience in carpentry and construction is not required.
Funders Make it Real
We are grateful to the following businesses, organizations and individuals for making the 2026 Preserve Montana Trades Corps a reality.
