St. Joseph, Missouri, mercantile owner Samuel Russell had a log cabin built on this lot circa 1864. He and Vigilante leader Paris Pfouts (Virginia City’s first mayor) operated a general merchandise store on Wallace Street, where Montana’s first Masons met. Samuel traveled to and from Missouri to supply his store and, despite being a part-time resident, served as President of Montana’s Fifth Territorial Legislative Council in 1868. Michigan natives Marion and Clara Baker purchased the lot and the one next door in 1885. They raised six children here while Marion worked for Alder Gulch Consolidated Mining Company and developed nearby gold claims. Marion ran unsuccessfully for the Montana House of Representatives in 1892 on the Populist ticket. Founded in 1891 to improve conditions for farmers and workers, the party advocated for silver-backed currency, a position popular with miners. The Bakers likely replaced the log cabin with this shotgun-plan home in the late 1880s and added a stone retaining wall, front porch with spindlework posts, and a rear addition in the early 1900s. Vernacular (builder-designed) cottages like this one replaced many of the town’s log cabins in the 1870s and 1880s.
]]>In 1865, on this site, the Montana Bowling Saloon offered “good exercise, choice Liquors and Cigars,” at fifty cents a roll. Circa 1873, contractor and lumber dealer William Thompson replaced that building with a Greek Revival storefront, whose ornamental cornice looked much like the one next door. Thompson’s partners J. M. Herndon and W. M. Donaldson operated a furniture store here as well as a lumberyard to the left of the building. Thompson and Donaldson left the partnership by 1888, but Herndon stayed on for over forty years. Like many furniture stores, the shop also sold “coffin trimmings” and caskets. For furniture-makers, making coffins—a deceased’s last piece of furniture—was a logical offshoot. Herndon closed the business, which had added undertaking services, circa 1917. The building then became home to the Virginia City Woman’s Club library until the Thompson-Hickman Library opened in 1922. After the library opened, B. T. Fayle purchased the property, where according to locals, he ran a bootleg saloon during Prohibition. In 1947, The Tavern Saloon opened here, continuing in operation until 1978.
]]>Architect Loren B. Olds, who arrived in Montana Territory in 1863, designed both the Madison County Courthouse and the original Beaverhead County Courthouse in Bannack (later the Meade Hotel) in 1875. Among the earliest architect-designed buildings in the territory, they both feature dramatic, gracefully curving interior staircases with beautiful newel posts and banisters. The staircases show an appreciation for woodwork that may have come from Olds’ original profession as a millwright. The Madison County Courthouse is the more ornate of the two. Its Italianate style details include paired brackets under the wide, overhanging eaves; tall, arched windows; and a cupola. Built for $35,000—a princely sum in 1875—the courthouse also features fanlight windows, a grand second-story balcony, and a round window centered in the gable end. William W. Morris, a Virginia City capitalist and Madison County treasurer, donated the lots for this important structure, which was dedicated on July 4, 1876. The oldest courthouse in the state still used for its original purpose, its vault continues to store some of Montana Territory’s earliest records.
]]>E. F. Johnson likely built this shotgun-plan log home by 1869. Like many of his neighbors he eagerly embraced the trappings of civilization. Circa 1875 he, or the next owner, William Thompson, covered the cabin’s logs with clapboard siding, probably attaching the kitchen addition at the same time. The home’s multi-pane windows reflect the difficulties of transporting even small panes of glass, carefully wrapped in sawdust, by wagon train from Salt Lake City. P. A. Largey, a freighter who arrived in Virginia City in 1865, purchased the residence in 1888, as an investment property. By then Largey had moved to Butte, where he owned Butte Hardware Company, the State Savings Bank of Butte, the Brush Electric and Power Company, and much real estate. He also owned multiple mines, lumber companies, and paper mills in Montana and Idaho. Largey’s estate sold the property in 1911 to Matilda Johnson, who lost it to the county for back taxes during the Great Depression. Sometime after 1990, owners enamored with the pioneer past removed the clapboard to expose the original logs.
]]>Ben Holladay’s Overland Stage opened here in 1864 with stages arriving and departing from this site for connections all over the West and the States. Bought out by Wells Fargo and Company in 1866, the office also housed the telegraph. Thirty years later, rail travel had eclipsed stage travel, so the telegraph office moved two doors east. In 1899, Simeon Buford, owner of the 1878 brick grocery store on the left and the matching 1886 grocery warehouse on the right, demolished the office building to expand his grocery business. His new connector building originally represented a modern store design compared to its older neighbors. Its classic “iron-front” façade featured fluted cast iron pilasters, a recessed entry, and floor to ceiling plate glass windows. The tall brick parapet above the windows visually tied the three buildings together. After Buford’s death in 1905, his sons carried on the business until 1926. In the 1950s, owner and preservationist Charles Bovey rehabilitated the building for use as a restaurant. He used historic photographs to return the façade back to its stage-coach era Greek Revival-style.
]]>George Gohn, a butcher by trade, came to Alder Gulch with the first rush in June of 1863. A member of the vigilance committee and later elected to several county offices, Gohn ran a local meat market. The Gohn family lived in the house next door prior to 1867 until the completion of this fine one-and-one-half-story stone residence in 1892. Originally incorporated into the wooden house (which was moved eight feet west in 1990), the “pleasant and convenient” home boasted excellent stonework, “artistic painting,” and a very handsome interior finished in oak and maple. Most of the original features remain, including windows, doors, and porch brackets, reinforcing the frontier refinement of this well-cared for home.
]]>Dredge mining in the late 1890s brought new life to Virginia City and a dire need for modern office and meeting space. In 1896, town citizens voted to issue bonds to build a multipurpose City Hall with space for the city, law offices, and social clubs. Butte architect C. S. Germain designed the building, and contractor Floyd Closser completed construction. Most of the town attended the dedication and grand ball held on February 22, 1897. Originally, the building was red brick with a central, square tower capped by a pyramidal roof above the central door. Pairs of tall brick-arched windows flanked the tower on each story. Inside, the first-floor auditorium had a stage on the south wall and a balcony across the north wall. An ornate golden oak staircase led upstairs to various lodge rooms, six law offices, and a kitchen and dining hall. The city sold the building to the upstairs tenant, the Elks Lodge No. 390, in 1948. The Elks remodeled the façade in the 1950s. In 2019 it was still home to the Elks Club and often used for civic and social gatherings.
]]>Virginia City’s alleys, just like its main streets, hold many fine examples of territorial-era buildings. This barn, built for surgeon Dr. Ira Smith in 1874, represents a classic Montana horse barn. Virginia City’s earliest barns were built from hand-hewn logs, notched together at the corners. Dr. Smith’s barn, however, was built with milled wood from a local sawmill. It still has sturdy timber framing and rafters, but the milled board-and-batten siding made it a relatively modern barn for the time. Although Dr. Smith had an office on Wallace Street (McGovern Store), his horse and carriage were vital to making house calls to patients in the county. In August 1884, Dr. Smith went to visit a patient, but his carriage overturned en route, killing him instantly. His brothers in the Nevada Masonic Lodge raised funds for his gravestone, which still stands in the Virginia City cemetery. The barn’s subsequent owners added sheds on both sides of the barn by 1904. Dry goods shop owner Hanna McGovern bought the barn in 1914, and it remained in the McGovern family until 1954.
]]>In the mid-1860s stores, hotels, and businesses lined both sides of Jackson Street near Idaho. The road was bustling with pedestrians and noisy teams of horses and wagons traveling on the toll road that led South to Summit. The Tootle, Leach & Co. mercantile occupied this site in 1863. Tootle, Leach & Co. had stores across the West that sold a wide variety of items from women’s dresses to toys and farm implements. In the fall of 1864, the store moved to the imposing new Masonic Temple storefront on Wallace Street. Many businesses followed suit by 1870. Traffic died down considerably, and Jackson Street above Idaho became residential. The original store on the site was either torn down and rebuilt or remodeled into a house by 1878. Widow Mary Hargrave held part interest in the building in the late 1880s and James and Mary Vanderbeck bought the house in 1898. The Vanderbecks had six children, were active in community affairs, operated a grocery store on Wallace St., and ran a brickyard just outside town until the early 1930s.
]]>Henry Gilbert and Christian Richter brought German-style lager beer to thirsty Virginia City miners in 1864 and began bottling it in this stone and brick building in 1875. For much of the nineteenth century, American brewers made a heavier, English-style ale, which was faster and easier to produce. In contrast, lager beer, a light and crisp beer common in Germany, demanded special yeast and precise storage conditions to brew. Richter knew this trickier “lagering” process and perfected it using fresh water from Daylight Creek, imported yeast, and barley from Gilbert’s farm in Madison County. Gilbert bought out Richter in 1872, and expanded the brewery with the introduction of bottling. Stores and saloons now had the option to order smaller quantities of bottled beer in cases, or the traditional, large wooden kegs. Empty bottles were returned to the brewery, sanitized, and used again and again. Gilbert’s lager claimed gold medals at the 1893 and 1904 World’s Fairs. The brewery struggled to sell soda during Prohibition, and closed in 1922. Charles and Sue Bovey renovated the building into a pottery studio in 1946.
]]>Like the Picture Gallery, the Elling Store, and several others, this 1946 building and its neighbor to the left are a faithful reconstruction of the originals. The Elephant Auction House occupied these storefronts from summer 1863 until October 1864. By November 1866, William (Judge) Douglas had painted the storefront a deep azure blue and opened the Blue Front Novelty Store. Douglas leased stalls to various small businesses that offered everything from books and magazines to stationery, toys, produce, footwear, and cigarettes. The sword-wielding man painted on the façade advertised the store’s Turkish tobacco products. William Buttermore bought the store in 1879. He ran it with few changes until his death in 1911. At the time, it was one of Virginia City’s longest-lived businesses. Despite its status as a beloved institution in town, the Blue Front was torn down, most likely in winter 1919. A nationwide coal miners’ strike and ensuing coal shortage hit Virginia City hard, forcing freezing residents to tear down and salvage numerous abandoned buildings for firewood. After reconstruction, the building served as a penny arcade for nearly 40 years.
]]>Fire swept through this block in 1915 destroying all the wood-frame buildings between Stonewall Hall on the west and the F. R. Merk building on the east. Originally this site was home to a small, wood-frame, false-front building. Hellman & Co. clothing store located here in 1865-66, Poznansky and Rosenstein Dry Goods store in early 1867, and Schiller’s Clothing Emporium in 1867. Eastern European immigrants Poznansky, Rosenstein, and Schiller all belonged to a close-knit Jewish community that moved on as Virginia City’s economy slowed in the late 1860s. The building likely sat vacant for much of the 1880s and 1890s, but a saloon occupied the site by 1904. After the 1915 fire, Elbridge Smith built this modest, cream-colored brick commercial building and opened an electric appliance shop. Smith was an electrical engineer in the mining industry and owned a ten-stamp mill in Williams Gulch. In the 1930s, Charles Goldsmith ran a jewelry store here, and the Miner’s Café opened in the late 1950s. The building has been home to the Virginia City Café since the early 1970s.
]]>Carpenter Julius Kohls purchased this property in 1882, where he built a one-room log cabin and a combination wood shed and outhouse. In contrast to most of the town’s 1860s-era gold-rush log buildings, Kohls’ cabin does not have hand-notched logs interlaced at the corners. Instead, he nailed the logs to vertical two-by-four-inch pieces of milled lumber. Hand notching and joining the corners together (like Lincoln Logs) creates a tighter, more stable structure, whereas nailing the logs takes less time and labor. The porch and rear addition were likely added in the early 1900s, when dredge mining renewed the economy, bringing jobs and men to the area. Kohls made wagons, wheels, and cabinets, and was a lumber dealer who lived within sight of this cabin in a then-modern wood-frame house on the north side of Wallace Street. This cabin was one of Kohls’ many rental properties; he likely leased it to unmarried men or women. Preservationist Charles Bovey purchased the cabin in the early 1950s and rented it to sheepherder “Little Joe” Shanizie until the early 1970s.
]]>The Elling, Knight & Buford hardware store, located in the Masonic Temple, built this warehouse in July 1901. Although seemingly mundane, such storage buildings were essential to keeping Virginia City residents supplied with consumer goods. Even after the arrival of a branch rail line to Alder in 1901 (ten miles from Virginia City), merchants hauled in vast quantities of merchandise only a few times a year. They displayed as much stock in their shops as possible and stored the rest elsewhere. When inventory ran low at the Elling, Knight & Buford store, clerks walked up Van Buren Street to the warehouse to bring back new stock. The hardware store closed in the early 1930s, and the Virginia City School District bought this building in 1935. Harvey Romey rallied town residents to remodel it into a gym without a bond issue. In 1970, the Virginia City School closed, and the school board gifted the gym to the Vigilance Club for community use. The town of Virginia City took ownership in 1988, and the building continues to serve the community for recreation and events.
]]>In the mid-1860s, the east end of Idaho Street, where this cabin once stood, was “suburban,” a place that families could settle away from the dust and noise of downtown. At first, most lived in small cabins like this one, but by the mid-1880s, grander upper-class homes and the new public school transformed the neighborhood. By 1888, widow Delilah Raymond owned this cabin. She and her grown children, Sarah, Hillhouse, and Winthrop followed a wagon train from Missouri to Virginia City in 1865. Upon arriving, daughter Sarah wrote in her journal, “It is the shabbiest town I ever saw, not a really good house in it.” The family paid eight dollars a month for a two-room, dirt-roof cabin at Wallace and Hamilton. Despite their initial dissatisfaction, they stayed and prospered. Hillhouse bred race horses near Sheridan, and Winthrop became successful in banking and real estate. Sarah was one of the town’s first public school teachers. She published her journal, “Days on the Road,” in 1902. In 1980, owners moved the cabin to this location to house visiting actors.
]]>A fire swept through this block in January 1888 destroying Phil Conrey’s barbershop on this site. Neighbors to the left, Merkle’s Jewelry Store, Gohn’s Meat Market, and Jacob Dick’s Paint Store also burned down. Gohn rebuilt his decorative tin-front meat market right away, but the other lots remained vacant for many years. By 1913, the massive stone wall of Rank’s Drug Store (the original Masonic Temple) next door was sagging without a sister building to shore it up. In response, Virginia City Grand Lodge No. 1 built this classic example of an early twentieth-century brick commercial building for just over $4,600. Decorative caps on each side of the corbeled (stepped) parapet above the tall glass storefront windows embellish the otherwise modest facade. Merchant Jacob Albright moved his clothing shop from Stonewall Hall across the street and remained in business here until his death in 1933. Various other stores occupied the building over the next thirty years until Rod Marshall opened a candy store in 1971. Since then, the shop has become a beloved stop for kids of all ages.
]]>Carpenter Ray McClurg built this reproduction storefront building in 1948 to house the Virginia City Trading Company, the tourism company owned by preservationists Charles and Sue Bovey. In the early 1950s, Charles acquired and restored many dilapidated Virginia City buildings and moved in or built new buildings to recreate long lost pioneer businesses. Bovey and McClurg referenced historic maps and photographs to make this building resemble the original 1864 Gurney & Co. boot and shoe store that once stood on the site. In the late 1860s, Gurney & Co., a national chain, eventually moved up the street to a more desirable location. The building sat vacant before serving as a dwelling from the 1870s through the early 1900s. It disappeared from the site after 1922. When the new building opened in the late 1940s it housed Sue Bovey’s collection of vintage clothing. Charles then used it throughout the 1950s and 1960s as his office and archive. The building has been a seasonal gift shop since 1977.
]]>The Frisch/Ferguson cabin escaped collapse twice and survives as an excellent example of a one-room log dwelling meant to provide short term, basic shelter for prospectors. The cabin’s early history is unknown, but by 1874, miner Fred Frisch and his wife Amelia were residents. Fred died in April 1878, leaving Amelia to care for two young children. In December of that year, Amelia married Fred’s mining partner, Abram Thurgood. They left town to settle in the Ruby Valley where Abram worked various mining claims. For nearly eighty years the Frisch/Thurgood family maintained the cabin as a rental property. Abram Thurgood became a successful miner and saloon owner and was elected Madison County Assessor in 1898. By 1901, he and Amelia lived nearby on the southwest corner of Jackson and Cover streets. Widowed prospector Sim Ferguson was the last renter in the 1940s. Preservationist Charles Bovey rebuilt the cabin in the 1950s, but with no tenant in residence it fell into disrepair by the 1980s. The Montana Heritage Commission rescued the cabin once again in 2005, preserving it as a permanent exhibit.
]]>The livestock trade was big business in emerging gold towns across the West. In the 1860s when livestock was essential to transportation, owners of liveries (stables) and corrals stood to profit far more than any gold digger. James Gray and Justus Cooke ran the Elephant Auction House here from summer 1863 to fall 1864. A long, sloped porch roof once extended from this building far into Wallace Street, providing shade for the auctioneer and attracting many passers-by. This corner was already the busiest in town, and at auction time pandemonium ensued as crowds of buyers and spectators blocked the street with horses and wagons. After several traffic jams and accidents, city officials outlawed the sale of livestock on Virginia City’s main streets. After the auction house moved, the porch was dismantled, and for the next forty years the building held various stores and offices. It was demolished with its neighbor before 1922, but Charles Bovey reconstructed it in 1948 to house antique fire department equipment. A gift shop has occupied the building since the late 1990s.
]]>John Henderson’s painting business occupied this humble log building beginning in 1864. In addition to painting buildings, Henderson also offered decorative painting and sign writing. In Virginia City’s boom days, when new buildings on Wallace Street emerged and changed owners often, Henderson’s artistic hand was in high demand. He designed and hand-painted a wide variety of signs from large dry goods store and political campaign signs to small hand-lettered signs on office doors. He even labeled and decorated Virginia City’s first hook and ladder fire wagon in 1865. Henderson was an active member of the Virginia City Masonic Lodge No. 1, ran for alderman in 1865, and county treasurer in 1867. Virginia City’s building boom faded by the late 1860s, and like so many other early territorial entrepreneurs, Henderson moved to Helena in 1868. Nevertheless, the name Henderson’s Paint Shop stayed with the building for years after. Henderson’s shop remained a practical rental property owned by several successful Virginia City residents, including blacksmith George Thexton, businessman James Vanderbeck, Montana’s sixth governor Sam Stewart, and builder/butcher George Vickers.
]]>Madison County was one of the original nine counties created by the first territorial legislature in 1865. This building, constructed in 1866, served as the county courthouse during Virginia City’s stint as territorial capital (1865-1875). When the present courthouse on Wallace Street replaced it in 1876, three Catholic Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, came to Virginia City at the request of Father Francis Kelleher. The sisters opened St. Mary’s Hospital for miners in the old courthouse. The hospital briefly prospered and the three sisters worked tirelessly caring for patients, cooking, sterilizing instruments, and doing endless hospital laundry. Placer gold was soon exhausted and St. Mary’s closed for lack of patients in 1879. In 1949, Charles Bovey remodeled the interior as a hotel, but the exterior, with its clapboard siding and tall false front, is little changed from the 1870s.
]]>The cozy placement of the Corbett and Daems houses has long been a mystery in Virginia City. The log Corbett house was likely built in summer 1863, and the Daems house by early 1864. No records exist explaining why these two middle-class homes sit so close together but remained separate homes with separate owners (with no adjoining door) for over 140 years. Although Virginia City was formally platted (divided into lots) by July 1863, miners and merchants weren’t worried about city planning. Within eight months of the first gold strike, more than five hundred buildings sprang up, without regard to lot lines or setbacks. With land in high demand, many of Virginia City’s early residences abutted others as a space-saving measure. Early owners of this home included an actress, county surveyor John Corbett, and watchmaker Norris Butler and his family. By 1952, preservationist Charles Bovey owned both houses, which remained in use for paint storage for more than fifty years. In 2007, the Montana Heritage Commission introduced an interior door during restoration, finally connecting the two houses.
]]>Virginia City grew up almost overnight after William Fairweather found color in Alder Creek. Miners rushed to the rich diggings, leaving Bannack, Montana’s first major gold camp, practically a ghost town. Among the Bannack merchants to follow their customers to Virginia City was J. E. McClurg, who opened a mercantile here with partner James Ptorney. The false-front Greek Revival style building later accommodated other tenants, including Meyer and Koerner’s Ten Pin Alley Saloon (circa 1873-75). A popular nineteenth-century male sport, bowling was not the respectable pastime it later became. Bowling was originally played with nine pins; entrepreneurs added the final pin to circumvent laws banning the game, and ten pin bowling was born. In 1899, Wells Fargo & Co., originally located a few doors east, moved to this location. In the turbulent 1860s and 1870s, the famous stage company provided an essential link to the outside world, but by 1899 rail travel had almost displaced the stagecoach. The last stage departed in 1910 and the building was abandoned until restoration in 1945 by Charles Bovey.
]]>During the wild 1860s, Virginia City had no red-light district and “sporting women” intermingled with the general population. By the 1870s, there were few customers to support such activities and the women moved on. After dredging crews began to work Alder Gulch in the 1890s, prostitutes returned to town. Women worked out of three houses labeled “female boarding” on historic maps. Two were on Idaho Street. The third was here at the Green Front, where Mattie “Dutch Mat" Lee was madam in the later 1890s. Mattie was the mistress of Fairweather Inn owner Frank McKeen, who purchased the two adjoining log cabins for her and set her up in business. On the fringe of Virginia City’s Chinatown, this building faced the Chinese temple, which stood between the two trees across the street. Prostitutes across the West and here in Virginia City relied upon Chinese businesses for inexpensive meals, herbal remedies, and opium. Recent archaeology at the Green Front proved this relationship. Fragments of Chinese crockery, dinnerware, and the lid of an opium can were among the artifacts discovered in excavations along the building’s foundation.
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