This fine Neo-classical style building represents Pony’s most affluent period, when area mines produced significant wealth. In 1902, the population soared to a record 1,000. School trustees secured financing and selected prominent Butte architect H. M. Patterson to design the town’s new school. Pony contractors McDonald and Bradshaw undertook the construction with the help of many area craftsmen. Built of locally made brick at a cost of $10,138, the building features a central pavilion, arched windows, and decorative pressed metal. The “pride of the community” welcomed its first students in 1903.
]]>Two coarse rubble stone walls, wooden walls extending above and beyond the stone walls at the rear, and a wooden roof housed this twenty-stamp gold mill built in 1883. Henry Elling (1848-1900) and William W. Morris (1840-1904) were the mill’s original owners. Each of the mill’s twenty stamps probably weighed between 500 and 750 pounds. Lifted in sequence by a camshaft, the giant stamps crushed gold-bearing quartz into fine sand. The quartz came from Pony-area mines, including the Boss Tweed, the Keystone, and the Clipper. Once crushed, the ore was placed on one of the mill’s four Frue vanners. New technology in 1884, Frue vanners combined a shaking rubber belt with water jets to wash away “gangue” (worthless rock) while leaving the heavier gold-containing particles. The gold-containing particles were then shipped approximately sixty miles north to a smelter at Wickes, where giant roasting furnaces finished the process of isolating the gold. Once the largest operating concentrator in Pony, the mill ran periodically from 1884 until approximately 1926. Today only the east and west walls remain.
]]>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.
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