Ghost Towns of Western Montana – Part 1

Sun, wind and the ravages of both time and man have taken their toll on these weathered and worn buildings. Exploring their remains you cannot help but wonder what stories they have to tell. It is easy to sense the memories and imagine the personal stories of miners, cattlemen, outlaws, lawmen and dance hall women.

Everyone was an immigrant here, a traveler from some far off place in the world drawn to these wilds by the promise of gold, silver or some other form of currency. It was a rough way of life in these remote mountains and for a brief time it flourished in the rush for fortune.

Elkhorn ghost town south of Helena

My work progressed while photographing on an assignment to illustrate a travel guide article about ghost towns in western Montana. www.visitmt.com The historic mining communities of Elkhorn and Granite were my first two stops.

The false fronts of Elkhorn, www.ghosttown.montana.com, just south of what is now Montana’s capital, Helena, once promoted fourteen saloons among its seventy-five or so buildings. Elkhorn’s treasures yielded over $14 million in gold, silver and lead to its hard living people.

You can’t help but wonder how noisy these streets may have been on Saturday nights during Elkhorn’s heyday. Did the sounds of fiddles and accordions carry their dance tunes far down the dusty rutted road toward the Boulder River? Somehow I don’t think it was always the quiet and serene place that it was this day.

Standing outside the ornate false front of the lonely Fraternity Hall ones imagination can still hear the laughter and song emanating from its wooden planked walls, glassless windows and squeaky door frames.  This day had storm clouds brewing, lowering themselves onto the surrounding mountaintops. A brisk wind made me turn my collar up thinking of the ghosts that once pasted this way.

Granite mining relics

Earthen scars along the hillsides of the Flint Creek Range near Philipsburg, Montana, www.philipsburgmt.com, reveal the remains of Granite where more than $250,000.00 a month worth of silver was gouged out of the earth.

The backsides of many of the buildings were dug into the mountainsides themselves. Today their fronts are slowly dissolving into the past.  Heavy snows, the freezing temperatures of long winters and then the scorching sunny summer days twist and dehydrate the huge framework beams that were hone from the forest below.

Granite was once populated by more than 3,000 miners

Who were the people that roamed these hillsides? How many languages were spoken here? Was this a cultural melting pot?

Just a little more than one hundred years ago Granite was a bustling community with dozens of buildings including a three story Miners Union Hall and a district hospital.

Today the ambiance surrounding these gnarled, windswept, buildings gives one a sensory impression of our western American Heritage. A second notion feeds a tingling sensation, that of ghostly encounters that seem to peer out from behind the abandoned grey doorways and head frames.

Walking around, I kicked up a few home-made nails and spikes, pounded square, rusted, bent, and probably forged locally. I photographed several more buildings before resting on the milled beams of the Miners Union Hall for some lunch taking in the fine landscape views of Flint Creek Valley below.

My imagination strained to listen for the sound of horse drawn wagons pulling their heavy supply loads up into this steep terrain. But the roadways continued their silence, only the creaking of sagging ceiling beams and a few Clark’s nutcracker birds spoke for the hundreds of people that once came this way.

Part two of my ghost town discoveries will cover Nevada City, Virginia City, www.virginiacity.com, and Bannack, www.bannack.org, where the biggest and richest gold strikes in Montana took place.

For more information about these and other ghost towns in Montana view these websites:
www.visitmt.com
www.philipsburgmt.com
www.virginiacity.com
www.bannack.org
www.ghosttown.montana.com

Photographs used in this post are copyrighted by Wayne Scherr, Range of Vision Photography, 2009, All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in any manner is prohibited without the written permission of Wayne Scherr, Range of Vision Photography. An image catalog can be viewed at http://www.rangeofvisionphotos.com . You can contact me through this blog or through email at: wayne@rangeofvisionphotos.com