Great Ghosts
Once, there was gold in the Montana hills; now they're haunted by the past.
by PAUL GERALD
squeaky door swings in the autumn breeze. A tumbleweed blows down the street. The floor creaks under your feet. You look around at an abandoned, hundred-year-old hotel and think, "What must it have been like?"
It was wild and rollicking, difficult and dangerous, exciting and enterprising. But the Old West is gone -- if the Old West as we think we know it ever existed at all. The only things left, aside from myths and memories and artifacts, are buildings. Scattered throughout the West, they are gathered in entire ghost towns -- 41 of them in Montana alone -- and to walk among them is to realize how close we actually are to this part of our past.
A few miles outside Missoula, you walk a wooded path and come out at an overlook of the ghost town of Garnet. The number of buildings surprises you, and then you walk among them and find that most of them are homes -- a couple still occupied. Garnet, home to 1,500 people in the 1860s, was relatively sedate: It did have a dozen saloons, but married women outnumbered "sportin' gals," and community dances were held every Saturday night in a building that still stands.
Garnet was a town until the 1950s, and some of the nearly 20 buildings still standing -- including hotels, stores, and a jail -- belong to descendants of the original miners. You can even spend time among the ghosts of Garnet: In the winter, a ski/snowmobile road leads 8 miles to the town, where two 1930s homes, wood stoves and all, can be rented out.
Garnet, even in the summer, is a good ways out there, surrounded by 10 wildlife areas and dozens of high peaks. Most of Montana's ghost towns -- such as the former capital Bannack, one of the best-preserved -- are miles off current main roads, barely kept standing by dedicated volunteers. Somehow they seem the most authentic, the most left behind.
More centrally located, with a paved state highway leading to them, and much more full of activity, are the towns of Nevada City and Virginia City. A historical sign says Nevada City was a place "where men were men and women were scarce. A stack of whites cost twenty, the sky was the limit, and everyone went heeled. ... It's plumb peaceful now."
Montana, which has reluctantly become a tourist haven, nonetheless thrives on this sort of thing. One roadside historical sign, marking the building formerly known as "Robbers Roost," is filled with mythical, musical language: "The main floor was a shrine to Bacchus and Lady Luck. The second floor was dedicated to Terpischore (the Greek muse of dancing), and bullet holes in the logs attest to the fervor of ardent swains for fickle sirens. Occasionally a gent succumbed."
Nevada City is only part ghost town; most of its 90 or so buildings spent their former lives somewhere else in Montana. In the early 1940s a man named Charles Bovey realized the treasures of Montana's past were being lost, so he started buying them up and moving them to Nevada City. Thanks to him, and to a Nevada City founder's children who lived in town until 1951, you can now walk among historic homes and stables and dry-good stores, one with original 1914 merchandise. There's also a railroad museum and a collection of old fire equipment.
But if you're ever in the area, the main reason you should stop in Nevada City is to go into the Music Hall -- originally a 1912 recreation hall in Yellowstone National Park -- to see Charles Covey's collection of old-timey entertainment devices. Remember the picture-show machines, where you crank a handle and make the show run? There are eight of them for you to put your nickels into, right in between player pianos, a horn machine, old organs, fortune-teller machines, you name it. Bring a handful of coins and plan on spending some time.
Just up the road from Nevada City is the granddaddy of Montana ghost towns, Virginia City. It was the Territorial Capitol during the Civil War, the main commerce center in an area with 10,000 residents and $30,000,000 in gold; now it's the capital of mythical-West tourism, not really a "ghost town" in the pure sense at all. All summer long, you can catch "The Follies" at the brewery, a show by the Virginia City Players at the Opera House, or a gunfight in the street. You can spend a night in an 1870 hotel, pan for gold in Alder Creek, stop in a dozen shops, or walk up to a real-live Boot Hill.
Or you can just walk among the buildings, listen to the wind, and wonder what it must have been like.
The Internet clearinghouse for information on ghost towns is www.ghosttowns.com. The Virginia City homepage is newpsych.org/virginia.
