Founded in 1846 as the fur trade transitioned from furs to buffalo robes, Fort Benton was both a trading post and a center for distribution of Indian annuities. In the early 1860s, Montana’s gold rush and the initiation of steamboat traffic made the town a freighting and transportation hub, the toughest town in the Northwest, and a military post. Hopeful miners and adventurers came up the Missouri River through the wonders of the White Cliffs area and disembarked on Fort Benton’s levee. Busted or flush, they returned in the fall headed for “the states,” as did most who served or preyed upon them. Millions of dollars of gold accompanied the lucky few aboard steamboats and mackinaws. When the placers played out, Fort Benton merchants found new markets north along the Whoop-Up Trail. The first trade goods included whiskey to the Indians; later, more respectable merchandise reached settlers and the Northwest Mounted Police. Entrepreneurs I. G. Baker, T. C. Power, W. S. Wetzel, and Charles and William Conrad developed the territory’s largest banking and mercantile operations. Wagons rolled in all directions from Fort Benton, the self-proclaimed “Chicago of the Plains.” The world’s innermost port flourished until railroads reached the region. In 1887, the steamboat trade’s glory days ended. The economy shifted toward the sheep and cattle industry, with area ranches shipping large herds to markets in Chicago. In the early 1900s, thousands of homesteaders flocked to the region, and Fort Benton prospered as the center of trade for the fertile "Golden Triangle."
]]>From the 1850s to 1887, Fort Benton was the trade center for this region of the American and Canadian West. Like others who chose to stay when the fur trade declined, I. G. Baker (the last American Fur Company factor at the fort) turned to new endeavors. Through the 1870s and 1880s, the I. G. Baker Company was Montana’s largest mercantile enterprise. But when the company began, in 1865-1866, Baker and his brother George had only a log store along the levee. Baker’s wife joined him here in 1867, and he began to construct this home—then a two-room adobe with a sod roof. In it, Montana Territory’s acting governor Thomas F. Meagher ate his last meal before his mysterious drowning in 1867. Sometime in the next decade, two rooms to the rear were added and metal replaced the sod roof. In 1876, a second remodeling added clapboard siding, a shingle roof, and the front portico. The front room on the left became as it appears today. The mercantile Conrad family also called this building home, and it once was used as officer’s quarters for the fort.
]]>Alexander Glover, a native of Scotland, came to ranch in the Deer Lodge Valley in 1865. The first to settle in the Warm Springs Creek drainage, he built this cabin of saddle- notched hewn logs. On April 12, 1868, Glover, at thirty, married twenty-year-old Mary James. Mary’s father, William M. James, had come with his family from Wales to the Deer Lodge Valley where he established one of the early ranches. The marriage of Alexander and Mary was the first at Warm Springs Creek. The Glovers’ son, Thomas, eldest of their seven children, was born on March 14, 1870, reputedly the first white child born at the Creek. The Glovers ranched and farmed until 1883 when Marcus Daly commissioned local rancher Morgan Evans to purchase lands for a townsite and smelter. The Glover family sold the ranch, Alexander eventually turned to mining, and the family cabin became headquarters for the Anaconda townsite surveying crew. The quaint little cabin remained on its original site near Elm Street for another thirty years. In 1916, annexation of the First Western Addition, which included most of the original Glover ranch, prompted removal of the cabin to Washoe Park about a mile away. Here in its new setting, the historic cabin long served as park headquarters. Today the Glover Cabin, unique to the area for its single-pen linear form, is Anaconda’s oldest surviving building and a tribute to the first settlers at Warm Springs Creek.
]]>For centuries, Plains people hunted and gathered resources on both sides of today’s U.S./Canadian border. However, the border grew in significance after 1869 as both governments sought to control and contain Indigenous populations. During the 1870s and 1880s, tensions mounted as Canadian Cree and Métis (people of mixed Indigenous and European descent) fled to the U.S. after armed uprisings—organized to maintain control over their homeland—failed. Conflict also spiked in 1876-77 when Nez Perce and Lakota families, pursued by the U.S. military, fled into Canada seeking safety. In response, the U.S. government built Fort Assinniboine beginning in 1879. Soldiers and local civilians, including Métis people, constructed one of the largest posts ever built in the U.S. With the fort completed, soldiers deported Cree and Métis people and monitored cross-border immigration and trade. Removal efforts culminated when the all-Black 10th Cavalry enforced the 1896 Cree Deportation Act, which enabled ethnic cleansing of “Canadian Cree Indians.” The soldiers destroyed Cree, Chippewa, and Métis encampments, herded more than six-hundred people (including people born in the U.S.) onto train cars, and shipped them across the border to Canada. Many quickly returned home. The same troops later fought in the Spanish-American War. Changing political priorities led to the fort’s closure in 1911. The state purchased the buildings, establishing the Northern Agricultural Research Center in 1913. Congress allocated most of the land for grazing and 9,000 acres for Beaver Creek Park. In 1916, after a successful campaign by landless Chippewa and Cree leaders, 56,000 acres became Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation.
]]>Immense herds of bison once roamed the great North American prairies. As many as 30 million of the great shaggy beasts moved seasonally in herds of 25 to 300, following the same patterns year after year. Bison, or buffalo, were the lifeblood of the native peoples who shared this vast domain. For at least 11,000 years, the grassy plains along the Milk River were seasonally home to native groups. Knowing the habits of these animals allowed communal hunting, and they gathered at this place where the rolling prairie suddenly gives way to steep river valley walls. The land features were well suited for use as a buffalo jump, one method of communal hunting. Hunters systematically drove hundreds of bison over the slope. Waiting hunters at the bottom dispatched injured animals and butchering began at once. Archaeology at Wahkpa Chu’gn reveals that native peoples used this site extensively for at least 2,000 years. Wahkpa Chu’gn, pronounced walk-paw-chew-gun, is the Assiniboine term for Milk River. Discovered in the 1950s, the site has been under the protection of Hill County since 1964. Although more buffalo jumps have been found in Montana than in any other plains area, most are very poorly preserved. The exceptional preservation of faunal layers at Wahkpa Chu’gn provides a unique and visually stunning chronology of use over time. The site is of national significance for its superb archaeological record and as the first buffalo jump to be interpreted for the public.
]]>The British Hudson’s Bay Company established a trading post on this site in 1846. It was the powerful company’s last post built within the boundaries of the United States and represents the British effort to stave off competition from American traders west of the Continental Divide. Fort Connah, just under construction, escaped scrutiny when the 1846 Oregon Treaty established U.S. ownership of land below the 49th parallel. Angus McDonald took charge of the post in 1847 naming it Fort Connen after a river valley in his native Scotland. The name evolved through Native American usage to Fort Connah. An important link between forts on either side of the Rocky Mountains, the main trade was in furs, but buffalo meat, pemmican, and buffalo skin saddle blankets as well as rawhide and hair cordage were other key trade items the company could not obtain west of the Divide. The Hudson’s Bay Company continued to defy the law and operated in the twilight of the fur trade era until encroaching settlement brought its closure in 1871. Angus McDonald’s son Duncan, who was born at the fort, served as its last factor. Angus later acquired the property and died here in 1889. He, his wife, and their descendants were prominent in the development of this region and are buried in the nearby cemetery. The sole surviving fort structure, built of channeled log in 1846, is Montana’s oldest standing building. The site is under the care of the Fort Connah Restoration Society.
]]>Wilson Butts followed the stampede to Last Chance Gulch in 1864, staked his claim here, and built a serviceable one-room cabin. The following spring his brother Jonas arrived with a wife and three young daughters. Jonas added a front room and porch onto the bachelor cabin and there the family lived until 1867. But the rowdy gold camp was no place to raise the girls. When music of a nearby dance hall filtered into the cabin, the Buttses fled the gulch. Stephen and Luella Fergus Gilpatrick then moved into the cabin and their first son was born soon thereafter. Although neighbors laughed when Luella planted two locust seedlings brought from Wisconsin, the trees thrived and grew to parent many others. From 1904, George Mitchell ran a wood, coal, and poultry business from the cabin. The Last Chance Restoration Association acquired the property in 1939 soon after Mitchell’s death. Restored and furnished with period pieces including items of the cabin’s early residents, the community treasure is Helena’s only unaltered remnant of the great gold rush.
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]]>Pennsylvania brick mason Louis Reeder came to Helena in 1867 to practice his trade. Reeder invested in real estate and among his properties were these lots along the steep hillside of West Cutler Street. Between 1875 and 1884 Reeder constructed a series of apartments and bunkhouses offering single miners a comfortable alternative to log cabin accommodations. The simple masonry provided permanence and resistance to fire, a menace that plagued the early community. The complex included some thirty-five housing units in a collection of stone and brick buildings, including an existing log cabin Reeder ingeniously incorporated into the largest structure. The area was already known as Reeder’s Alley when Reeder died after a fall in 1884. The miners moved on, but over the years tenants remained mostly single and male. Twenty-three pensioners lived at Reeder’s Alley in 1961 when these buildings were rescued from demolition and rehabilitation begun. The narrow alleyway and closely spaced buildings nestled against the slope of Mount Helena today comprise the town’s most complete remaining block of the territorial period.
]]>Light timber framing with board-and-batten walls characterizes this early home original to the Nevada City townsite. Inside, the original, well-preserved, muslin-covered walls are a rare example of a frontier decorating technique. The cabin’s first occupants were Dr. Don Byam and his family, who came to Alder Gulch in 1863 after someone jumped their claim near Bannack. Elected judge of the miner’s court, Dr. Byam presided over the murder trial of George Ives, held on Nevada City’s main street in December 1863. Ives, convicted and hanged, was incarcerated during the trial in the small cabin behind the house. The trial was the catalyst for forming the Vigilantes. During the Civil War in Confederate-dominated Alder Gulch, Dr. Byam was a member of the anti-Confederate Union League of America. Clandestine meetings were held in the Byam attic. The Byams moved on and Samuel B. Wonderly next owned the house. He removed the original false front and added the gable as camp phase architecture gave way to the settlement period. Lawrence Fenner and his wife Amanda moved into the house in 1875. They remained in Nevada City long after almost everyone else had moved away. Fenner, a Union League activist and self-styled Vigilante like Dr. Byam, was a civil engineer and inventor. He obtained the US Mineral Patent on the Nevada City townsite in 1878 and was the first to dredge in the area using a method he invented. After Fenner died in 1915, Amanda stayed on and died here in 1930 at 84.
]]>Construction layers of this original homestead tell much of Nevada City’s “boom and bust” history. In 1864, miner Frank Finney and his bride, Mary, moved into a cabin on this property that had been constructed the previous year. The cabin forms the core of the present house. The newlyweds soon added the front room, decorating the log walls and ceilings with muslin stretched smooth to mimic plastered walls, then applying wallpaper over the muslin. Clapboard siding covered the rough exterior log walls in the front, and by the end of the 1860s, the house had a second story, some gingerbread trim, and a picket fence. A well provided water for laundry and a nearby spring supplied their drinking water. The Finneys used a fireplace until they could afford a woodstove, then they blocked the chimney. The couple’s four children, three of whom survived to adulthood, were born in the house. Another abandoned miner’s cabin to the north became the Finneys’ summer kitchen. A yearly coat of whitewash in the kitchen grew to be inches thick. The Finneys kept milk cows and Mary made butter and cheese, the best in the region. The Finney family lived here continuously from 1864 until the 1950s when daughter Cora Finney was Nevada City’s last resident. Unlike their neighbors who moved on, the Finneys stayed and adapted what their neighbors left to their own uses, helping to preserve a sampling of the local building traditions and structural forms of the original mining camp.
]]>The spectacular gold deposit discovered in Alder Gulch on May 26, 1863, led to the rapid growth of this colorful and legendary gold camp town. Thousands of fortune‑seekers rushed to the area, and by 1864 the Virginia City area boasted 30,000 residents. Rough characters attracted by the gold rush gave Virginia City an unsavory reputation, but these were tempered by pioneers and their families who settled here and helped to shape the new frontier. After the creation of the Territory of Montana, Virginia City became the territorial capital, 1865‑1875, and the Madison County seat. As the gold played out, Virginia City's population dwindled. False-fronted commercial structures, simple log cabins, and frame Victorian residences remained as testimony to the transitory gold rush. Among the first to recognize the historical and architectural significance of Virginia City were Charlie and Sue Bovey of Great Falls. They began to purchase and stabilize some of the fragile buildings in the early 1940s. The Boveys' personal efforts and those of their son, Ford, resulted in the town's designation as a National Historic Landmark and its remarkable preservation as one of the most intact gold rush era towns in the West.
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]]>The Federal Reserve Bank of Montana identifies the Allen and Millard Bank, which opened here in 1864, as the first real bank in Montana Territory. While other businesses in the territory called themselves banks, most were actually express companies that exchanged gold for cash or offered storage space in their safes. Allen and Millard, in fact, had the power to write drafts on a New York bank. The building itself, beautifully maintained, is one of Virginia City’s oldest and best-preserved stone buildings. Although the original French doors and tall, narrow windows were replaced circa 1900, the front façade features the original ashlar stone, bracketed wooden cornice, and wooden window heads, allowing the building to retain its 1860s appearance. The bank operated as Hall and Bennett into the early 1900s and then became the Madison State Bank, which did business until 1930.
]]>Fort Missoula, established in 1877 to provide military control over western Montana’s Indian tribes and protect local settlers, was the only permanent military post west of the Continental Divide. There was little conflict, but the fort’s non-combative service was long and diverse. From 1888 to 1898, the black 25th Infantry Regiment was stationed at the fort. Twenty of the men explored potential military applications of the bicycle, riding 1,900 miles from Missoula to St. Louis in forty days. During the Spanish-American conflict in 1898, volunteers known as Grigsby’s Cowboys were garrisoned at the fort. Citizens protesting its closure in 1904 prompted U.S. Senator Joseph Dixon of Missoula to successfully lobby for the fort’s reconstruction. Eighteen Mission style buildings from this period (1904 to 1912) form the core of the present complex. The fort served as a technical training center during World War I, and between 1933 and 1941, it became the nation’s largest regional headquarters for the Civilian Conservation Corps. During World War II, it was the nation’s largest civilian detention camp interning Japanese Americans, Italian nationals taken from merchant and luxury ships in New York’s harbor, and World’s Fair employees. Italian internees affectionately dubbed the fort “Bella Vista.” After World War II, the fort served as a medium security army prison. Closed in 1948, the fort had a military service that long outlasted other early Montana forts. The army began to sell and lease portions of the property, but adaptability and strong community involvement has assured the buildings at Fort Missoula an active future. Most of the district’s buildings are now administered by the Northern Rockies Heritage Center.
]]>A nearby wind-swept ridge overlooking the Cree Crossing on the Milk River was the original resting place of this ancient weather-worn effigy. There the boulder sat as the leader of a herd of reclining buffalo envisioned in an outcrop of granite. Incised markings made in the distant past define its horns, eyes, backbone, and ribs. Since late prehistoric times, native peoples of the Northern Plains have revered the Sleeping Buffalo’s spiritual power. Oral traditions reveal that is was well known to the Cree, Chippewa, Sioux, Assiniboine, and Gros Ventre as well as the more distant Blackfeet, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne. Stories passed from generation to generation tell how the “herd” fooled more than one buffalo-hunting party. While each tribe has its own culture and beliefs, native peoples share a worldview intertwining the sacred and secular. A Chippewa-Cree elder explained, “These rocks are sacred, just like our old people.” In 1932, the Sleeping Buffalo was separated from its ridgetop companions. Relocated to the City Park in Malta, the Sleeping Buffalo was said to have been restless; stories are told of its changing position and nighttime bellowing. Moved to this site in 1967 from old Highway 2, the Sleeping Buffalo was later rejoined by the larger “Medicine Rock” in 1987, also collected near Cree Crossing. These timeless objects continue to figure prominently in traditional ceremonies. They provide a link to ancestral peoples of the high plains and the long ago time when, as one elder put it, “The power of the prairie was the buffalo.”
]]>Situated on a key gold rush trail, Deer Lodge grew into an important ranching and retail center during the 1860s. By 1869, the thriving village boasted grocery stores, harness and saddle shops, barber shops, photography galleries, blacksmiths, breweries, furniture and drug stores, a hospital, and even a bowling alley. An 1872 fire destroyed over twenty buildings in the commercial center. Today, only a few wooden false-front buildings, of the type that originally lined Main Street, still stand. Deer Lodge's economy received a boost with construction of the territorial prison in 1870, the opening of Montana's first college in 1878, and, particularly, the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883. The railroad made it easy to import large architectural elements, and soon flamboyant brick business blocks displaying pressed metal cornices, iron pilasters, decorative stone accents, and large plate glass windows lined Main Street. Deer Lodge boomed during the homesteading era, especially after 1908, when the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway made Deer Lodge a division point on its transcontinental line. Population increased by a third between 1910 and 1920. The downtown grew in kind with such important buildings as the Hotel Deer Lodge and the Larabie Brothers Bank. Despite an agricultural depression, new landmarks joined the streetscape in the 1920s, including the Beaux Arts Rialto Theater. Today the business district's architectural mosaic testifies to a long line of foresighted developers, committed to making Deer Lodge the "the prettiest and most healthful little city in the West."
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]]>Jesuit priests and lay brothers founded St. Mary’s Mission—the first mission in the Northwest—near this site in 1841. The Jesuits closed the mission in 1850, returning in 1866. For the next quarter century, they helped the Salish adapt from hunting to farming as the buffalo disappeared. The priests helped support and advocate for the Salish people and provided medical services and spiritual guidance to both Indians and whites. When the U.S. government forced the impoverished Salish to leave their beloved Bitterroot Valley for the Flathead Reservation in 1891, St. Mary’s closed. An influx of homesteaders prompted the creation of St. Mary’s Parish in 1910, and the old mission church reopened. In 1911, the Salish returned to St. Mary’s to celebrate their Bitterroot heritage, a tradition they still maintain. The historic district includes the 1866 church and pharmacy, designed by the multi-talented Father Anthony Ravalli. Ravalli, also the architect of Idaho’s famed Cataldo Mission, employed log building techniques, ingeniously adapting European ecclesiastical architecture to the remote frontier. Chief Victor’s log home and the Indian burial ground recall the Salish presence. Adjacent is St. Mary’s Cemetery and Father Ravalli’s final resting place. Two gnarled apple trees provide living evidence of the Jesuits’ agriculture. The new St. Mary’s, built in 1954 with donations from Montana and beyond, represents an unprecedented preservation effort to save the endangered mission church from deterioration through constant use. Today, St. Mary’s churches—old and new—define the historic complex as a place of significance to both Indian and white communities.
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]]>Fort Owen’s log and adobe walls witnessed dramatic changes as the Bitterroot Valley emerged from remote wilderness to settled agricultural community. The Jesuit fathers who had established St. Mary’s Mission nearby in 1841 closed their doors in 1850, and trader John Owen purchased the property. Owen operated and expanded St. Mary’s mills, cultivated the fields, enlarged the fort, and kept a well-stocked trade room, thereby transforming the mission compound into a vibrant trading post complex. A man of many talents, Owen also served as agent to the Flathead Nation from 1856 to 1862, and for a time the fort was agency headquarters. Owen and his Shoshone wife, Nancy, created a refined and comfortable haven in the vast timberland, extending gracious hospitality to Indians, traders, trappers, missionaries, settlers, and travelers. With the 1860s came gold-seekers and a fresh clientele, but the newly completed Mullan Road bypassed Fort Owen and trading dwindled. Upon Nancy’s death in 1868, Owen’s mental health deteriorated. In 1872, Fort Owen was sold at sheriff’s sale to Washington J. McCormick, who operated the fort’s mills until 1889. In 1937, the Fort Owen site was donated to the State of Montana, and the donors sponsored stabilization and partial reconstruction of its sole remaining building, the East Barracks. Archaeological investigations initiated in 1957 by the University of Montana continued through 1980, exposing the fort’s walls and foundations. Since 1971, the Stevensville Historical Society has been instrumental in interpretive reconstruction, continued stabilization, and maintenance of this noteworthy site.
]]>Offering an eclectic architectural mix, Old Town tells the story of Billings’ growth. The Northern Pacific founded the community as a railroad hub in 1882, and by the end of 1883, some 400 canvas tents and crude buildings lined the streets. The 1882 McAdow building reflects this frontier phase, when merchants quickly assembled false-front buildings to mimic the architecture of more established communities. Frequent fires convinced developers to invest in masonry structures, including the circa 1893 Yukon Bar, one of Billings’ earliest brick buildings. The ornate L&L and Covington buildings (both constructed circa 1895) reflect the community’s stylistic aspirations. Built on the edge of “China Alley,” they also represent Billings’ small yet significant Chinese community, members of which owned both business blocks. Later the Covington block became one of two African American-owned buildings in Old Town, evidence of another of the city’s under-recognized populations. By 1900, the railroad had made Billings a prosperous, and permanent, trading center. The city’s commercial prominence expanded during the homesteading boom, and impressive structures, like the architect-designed Parmly Billings Memorial Library, constructed in 1901, announced the its new status. Large warehouses, built by both local investors and national chains, recall Billings’ importance as a wholesale distribution center. Cars began to transform this railroad district with the construction of the Sunset Garage in 1917. They also redirected development away from the railroad. Nevertheless, the district still saw several important projects after World War I, including the 1937 architect-designed Art Deco Service Candy Company and the 1939 Streamline Moderne style Community Gas and Oil Building.
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]]>Thirty-nine corrugated metal structures mark the site of the Smith Mine, a ghostly reminder of a once vibrant mining district. The Montana Coal and Iron Company (MCI) began developing the Smith Mine in earnest after the arrival of the Montana, Wyoming and Southern Railroad, producing 8,000 tons of high-grade coal in 1907. MCI electrified its operation by 1915, completely mechanizing it by 1929. Throughout the 1930s, the company continued to invest in new equipment, building a new crushing plant, elevator, cleaning plant, coal sheds and scales, electrical substation, and other above-ground structures to support the underground operation. By 1943, miners working three shifts a day, six days a week produced almost 500,000 tons of coal annually, “to meet coal needs for a nation at war.” Investments in safety lagged behind other improvements, however, and in the 1940s many Smith miners still used open-flame carbide headlamps (as opposed to safer electric lamps). The highly gaseous mine also lacked good ventilation or rock-dusting equipment to control coal dust. On February 27, 1943, this proved a deadly combination, when a methane gas explosion in Smith Mine #3 killed seventy-four miners (and later, one rescuer) in the worst coal mining disaster in Montana history. Only three of the men working that day survived. Although MCI closed the Number 3 adit after the explosion, it continued to work its other mines, raking in record profits through 1945. Declining demand, lower quality coal, competition from diesel and natural gas, and bad management led to the operation’s closure in 1953.
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]]>About 1866, a prospector of very small stature, Tecumseh "Pony" Smith, left his nickname attached to the creek where he found gold. In 1875, a settlement bearing his name grew to serve local miners. Pony's early population reflected the whims of gold miners, growing larger when a miner struck pay dirt and dwindling when someone found a bigger lode somewhere else. By the 1880s, mines like the Boss Tweed and Clipper were yielding fortunes in gold ore. Soon after, the Union Pacific Railroad extended its tracks to the town, and by 1895 Pony had a school, a public hall, two hotels, and numerous businesses. As the mines began to play out at the turn of the century, cyanide processing sparked new interest in the area. Pony prospered, acquiring telephone service, electricity, and a more urban appearance. Masons and carpenters produced splendid Queen Anne style residences and fine buildings of locally made materials, such as the Pony School and the Morris State Bank. Mining again waned after 1910, and Pony's economy shifted to serve the surrounding agricultural community. Today, log and frame structures of the 1870s and substantial buildings of the early twentieth century remain to chronicle Pony's evolution and tenacity, a town as small but sturdy as its namesake.
]]>Prospectors discovered gold in Alder Gulch, Idaho Territory, on May 26, 1863. Within weeks, the countryside was teeming with thousands of prospectors, but the easily extracted placer gold soon played out. B. F. Christenot, acting independently or perhaps as agent to Philadelphia backers, began acquiring claims in the Summit Mining District in 1864. Christenot later concealed a substantial amount of gold on his person and traveled to Philadelphia where he convinced investors to back construction of a mill. The transition from placer to lode mining, an expensive undertaking that required heavy financial backing, is well documented here at Union City. Machinery, transported in fifty-two ox-drawn wagons over the Bozeman Trail, arrived in October 1866. Thompson and Griffith of Virginia City constructed the mill, which operated by spring 1867. In June, journalist A. K. McClure arrived from the east to assume its management. Most milling of this period was accomplished by stamping, but the Union City operation employed a process using Chilean rollers for crushing the quartz. Although the mill was reported to be the most efficient in the territory, the ore was soon exhausted and the mill closed down in spring 1868. Sixty thousand dollars was said to have been extracted from the company’s nearby Oro Cache lode, but the equipment alone cost $80,000; the operation was a financial disaster. At peak production the Christenot Mill employed up to forty workers, and the site, representing all aspects of gold milling technology from processing to management, fills a significant chapter in the history of mining in Montana.
]]>Rough-sawn lumber and the use of recycled materials testify to the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and industry of the Gildersleeve family, whose members mined gold and barite here beginning in 1924. The Gildersleeves built these board-and-batten (vertical board) structures—including a cookhouse/main house, bunkhouse, small house/office, blacksmith shop, and “dry” (where the family cleaned up and changed clothes after work)—in 1930-31 with lumber they cut on site using a portable steam-powered sawmill. They constructed a unique, gravity-feed system to bring running water from Snowshoe Creek to the cabins and steam engine. A large compressor (since removed from the site), powered by a 1929 car motor, supplied air pressure for pneumatic tools used in the tunnel. Small miners like the Gildersleeves, who arrived after an area’s initial rush was over, patiently reworked diggings hastily mined by earlier gold seekers. The Gildersleeves built their house on a nineteenth-century tailings pile and seasonally mined this property using the same methods employed in the 1800s. Although the area once produced 2 to 3 million dollars in gold, the Gildersleeves rarely found more than seven or eight ounces a season. Remains of their operation include a horizontal tunnel that runs over 300 feet into the mountain, an ore car, a washing plant, and other equipment. Supplementing their mining income by taking jobs during the winter, Gildersleeve descendants continue to work the claim, preserving through use this remarkable operation. It is one of the best remaining examples of Depression-era subsistence mining in western Montana.
]]>The architectural character of this pleasant district was initially shaped by copper king Marcus Daly. Between 1890 and 1905, Daly's Anaconda Copper Mining Company constructed substantial high style residences for its managers and modest houses in various vernacular forms for its workers. Fashionable homes were also built by local businessmen who owed their success in part to Daly's encouragement of entrepreneurial enterprise. Construction of the Catholic and Christian churches, which Daly helped finance, added to the district's early diversity. The Romanesque style Ravalli County courthouse symbolizes Daly's considerable political influence in Hamilton's designation as county seat. Daly's death in 1900 and slowdown of the ACM mill precipitated a local recession. Renewed interest in Hamilton came with the start of the "Big Ditch" project in 1905 as investors and speculators promoted their schemes in the Bitterroot Valley. Craftsman and Colonial Revival style residences began to mingle with the older homes. Decline of the apple industry after 1916 triggered another local economic slowdown, but construction of the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in 1927 once again spurred Hamilton's residential growth. Picturesque Revival and Cape Cod style cottages filled in open spaces while a high school and hospital reflect the 1930s economic upswing. The 1946 Moderne style medical arts building completes the district's broad spectrum of architectural styles. Along the tree-lined boulevards, elegant 1890s residences with smaller homes built upon their once-spacious grounds well reflect Hamilton's changing fortunes and bestow a timeless appearance upon the district's neighborhoods.
]]>Riverside served as the summer residence of Margaret Daly, widow of copper magnate Marcus Daly, from its completion in 1910 until her death here in 1941. Daly himself had begun buying Bitterroot Valley land in 1887, eventually owning 28,000 acres. After Daly’s death in 1900, Mrs. Daly had Riverside constructed and managed local family properties and the family syndicate that oversaw Daly interests. This home is a unique Montana example of early-twentieth-century revival styles that successful capitalists used to display their wealth. Because the Panic of 1893 destroyed many mining-based fortunes here, and out-of-state investors financed later mining ventures, grand homes were a thing of Montana’s past by the time Mrs. Daly constructed Riverside. Missoula architect A. J. Gibson designed this house in the Georgian Revival style. Although comparatively restrained for mansions of this period, the house’s outstanding features include its monumental, classical portico, symmetrical façade, hipped roof, and balustrated roof deck. Today, the appearance of the interior decoration and professionally landscaped grounds is virtually unchanged from that of 1910.
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