In 1887, Sadie Donally immigrated to the United States from Canada, eventually settling in Montana. She married Laughlin McDonald in 1893, with whom she had daughters Alice and Lauchie. Tragedy struck the family when Laughlin died in a mining accident. Sadie married miner and homesteader August Swanson in 1899, and by 1904 they had completed this two-story log farmhouse. August harvested the logs locally, squared the sides, and tied the corners together with square notches. Not long after moving in, Sadie gave birth to daughter Edna, in the living room, completing the Swanson family. In 1910, August described the house on his final homestead application as “one of the best residences in this part of the country.” The hub of the family’s daily life, the home buzzed with activity as the girls progressed through school. All three girls eventually married and left the farm. Edna and her husband Clyde Smith returned with their twin sons, and by 1940 August had moved into the small cabin. Clyde added the one-story, hipped roof addition in the 1940s.The Smiths operated the farm until 1987.
]]>Swedish immigrant August Swanson built this one-room cabin on the family homestead in 1921. Unlike his hand-hewn log house, he built the cabin with milled lumber. He sided it with horizontal boards and battens, perhaps to mimic the pattern of log walls. The simple gabled porch entry roof, added later, gave the cabin its charming appearance. August constructed the cabin during a period of transition, after he had abandoned mining and began supplementing his farm income by hauling timber and working on the Northern Pacific railroad. Simple pleasures, like a game of cards with family or a homemade beer, offered August respite from his long workdays. While working on the railroad, he injured his eye, resulting in partial blindness. By 1940, August retired from the railroad and moved into the cabin, making room in the farmhouse for daughter Edna’s family. His wife Sadie spent extended periods away from the farm, staying with their other daughters while receiving medical care. August’s health also declined through the 1940s. When August and Sadie died in 1948, friends memorialized them as “the last of the Quartz district’s pioneers.”
]]>Two transcontinental railroads, the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road, passed through this stretch of the Clark Fork Valley, making it ripe for agricultural development. The railroads touted “free land” offered by the Homestead Act to attract customers. Like others in the valley, August and Sadie Swanson turned to farming when mining in nearby Quartz played out. The farm started modestly, with a two-acre garden, fruit orchard, berry patch, and chickens. An expansion that included a haying operation, dairy cows, and draft horses necessitated construction of the barn. The barn’s rough-milled vertical board siding and hand-hewn log posts and roof trusses suggest it was built soon after the nearby farmhouse. Like many Montana families, the Swansons relied on outside work to earn a living. Sadie, and later Edna, raised children and used the farm’s bounty for food and extra income, while August and Clyde worked off the farm. Thus, the family prospered despite less than ideal soil conditions. The Swanson farm stands as one of the few examples of an enduring Mineral County homestead.
]]>The 1855 Hell Gate Treaty and the 1862 completion of the Mullan Road opened the Clark Fork Valley to Euro-American settlement. The discovery of gold at Cedar Creek in 1869 further attracted fortune seekers to the Clark Fork Valley, including Swedish immigrant August Swanson. By 1896, Swanson owned productive claims he worked in the Quartz Creek mining district near Tarkio. He married the recently widowed Sadie Donally McDonald in 1899, who brought daughters Lauchie and Alice into the family. In 1904, the Swansons claimed this 160-acre homestead. They built a log house and subsistence farmed, raising vegetables, fruit, cows, and chickens. August and Sadie welcomed daughter Edna into the fold in 1905. The Swansons continued improving the homestead, adding an orchard, root cellar, barn, cabin, and spring-fed cistern. In 1910, the family took refuge in the cistern’s access tunnel when “The Big Burn,” a colossal wildfire event, threatened the homestead. The Swansons received full title to the land in 1913. Their daughters eventually married and left the farm but maintained close ties with their parents. Edna, and husband Clyde Smith, moved to the homestead in 1938 to help August and Sadie as they aged. After August and Sadie died in 1948, Edna and Clyde raised a family, pursued outside work, and operated the farm until 1987. Nearly unchanged from its formative days, the Swanson Homestead is a lasting testament to the role mining and logging, and later railroad construction and homesteading, played in the settlement of this stretch of Montana’s Clark Fork Valley.
]]>Travelers along the Mullan Road and prospectors lured by the 1869 discovery of gold on Cedar Creek opened the way for settlement of this area. After the placer gold played out and other mining camps became ghost towns, the town of Superior continued to grow. In 1891, the community organized a school district and elementary classes were held in a small log cabin. By 1892, there were ninety school-age children in the vicinity. Into the 1900s, several rural schools accommodated local children but none offered a high school curriculum. Older students had to leave home to advance beyond the primary grades. Mineral County was organized in 1914 and a year later bonds for the construction of a high school passed. A secondary curriculum was offered for the first time that fall with classes held in the Methodist Church basement; students from all over the county attended. The new high school, constructed by local builder Charles Augustine at a cost of $10,000, was dedicated on January 28, 1916. Additions in 1925 and 1947 eased overcrowding and the school remained in use until June 1995. It is today one of Montana’s few examples of Colonial Revival style school architecture. Along with the Mineral County courthouse, this impressive landmark with its three-stage bell tower, flanking dormers, and strict classical symmetry has always drawn visitors to the center of town. Despites its closure, the Superior School maintains a strong visual presence at the heart of the community where, for eighty years, it served the county and its children.
]]>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.
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