Elkhorn - Montana's Most Iconic Ghost Town

foreign [Music] mountains of Central Montana about an hour south of Helena and tucked behind the small town of Boulder is one of the state's most visited ghost towns the town is so popular in fact that the population has actually begun to regrow up from zero about 30 years ago to about a dozen now it was one of the most Cosmopolitan civil and refined mining boom towns in the territory though it did have a fair share of excitement let's dive into the history of the ghost town of Elkhorn Montana [Music] silver was the draw that led hundreds of thousands to the northern Rockies of the United States in the 1800s the mountains were rich with it and the price of silver was skyrocketing as the U.S government was buying large quantities of silver per month to back up its currency and subsidizing the value of silver along the way a Swiss American named Peter Weiss was prospecting in the Elkhorn mountains and struck a rich vein in 1870. he staked his claim and went to work Peter however was aged and reclusive and didn't have the resources nor the strength to truly expand his claim and died two years later now Peter's death is something of a mystery he seems to have been poisoned by a prospecting partner of his a man named Simmons Peter died suddenly and without warning and when Witnesses went to spread the word they found that Simmons somehow already knew of his death and had already claimed all of Peter's valuables Peter was buried in a hasty grave dug by Simmons within the town limits after his death the claim was purchased by a Norwegian man named Anton Holter who immediately plotted a small town around his claim and named it Elkhorn after the mountain range that sheltered it come 1875 the mine was finally developed with Holter first calling it The halter mine and at the same time the town began to take shape the real boom came in 1878 when the Bland Allison Act was passed increasing the government's monthly demand for silver the Mind Dove hundreds of feet beneath the ground yielding thirty thousand dollars in silver per month in 1870s money today that's nearly nine hundred thousand dollars elkhorn's first school was built on Main Street before the decade was out and is one of the oldest buildings Still Standing on the site foreign the Elkhorn Hotel was built around the same time on the corner of South Street and Main pretty much the exact spot where I parked my rental car when visiting Elkhorn this was torn down around 1895 during the town's Heyday to make way for more modern buildings at the time Elkhorn was producing not only silver but also had a bustling gold lead and lumber industry what made Elkhorn unique among the mining towns however was just how many of the miners brought in their rather large families which created a whole domestic community and raised the standards for how the town behaved the town's export of silver gold Lumber and lead and the demand for fine Imports for the families and the miners led the Northern Pacific railroad to build the town its own Branch line as the railroad neared the town in 1889 the population swelled with railroad workers and their families in addition to the miners completing the railroad was no easy feat it took 22 miles of track to connect Elkhorn to the rest of the railroad and the track had to climb a four percent grade up to 6670 feet in elevation the highest on the entire Northern Pacific Railway when the railroad was completed the town's population nation of two and a half thousand peaked with the mine now nearing the one thousand foot depth Mark the silver quality being turned out began to decline and the Mining rights were sold to British interests that year a Darkness fell on the town of Elkhorn the town's Cemetery rests high in the Hills above the town and tells the story of the tragedy of 1889. diphtheria had been lingering among the town since 1884 but it spread to the children through the school in the spring of 1889 running rampant for the rest of the year schooling was temporarily suspended but it did little to slow the spread of the disease it was said that in one week seven people from the same family were buried first the six children and then their mother so many headstones in the town's Cemetery read off a child's name died 1889. another lesser-known tragedy is marked in the Elkhorn Cemetery this is the grave of Harry Walton aged eight he wasn't a victim of the diphtheria epidemic but of a mishap that struck Elkhorn while the town was already in mourning over the outbreak Harry and his older friend Alden Nelson were exploring the hills a mile to the south of Elkhorn when they found discarded explosives we'll never know exactly what happened but the explosives went off killing the two boys instantly Albin was 12 years old and he shares a grave with his friend Harry the 1880s in Elkhorn ended on a sad note and a decline in population both from diphtheria and the sale of the mine but the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 increased the federal demand for silver once more and resources were poured into Elkhorn the mine boomed once more but the population of Elkhorn had grown to be a warm tight-knit community of only about 600 residents down from the 2500 a few years prior for those who stayed the quality of life would significantly improve in town the town had its own Brass Band there was horse racing and there were baseball games traveling shows and boxing matches if you can think of it Elkhorn had it if you walked up Main Street in 1893 you'd see every indication that Elkhorn was a thriving family-friendly community and that residents of the town could afford the occasional luxury at the first bends of the Southwest were female boarding houses which still partly stand today passing one of the town's three functional schools and two of the blacksmiths we'd first come to the Elkhorn Trading Company a popular equipment and general goods store next to that the two-lane bowling alley now long gone next came Hoffman's Barber Shop the only place in town that someone could take a bath during the entirety of the 1880s and of course this cabin is built on the site and is not the actual barber shop we can actually see exactly what this building looked like because in 1941 it was moved furniture and all to Nevada City Montana where it is still preserved today next to that was Ford's candy and confectionery shop no doubt popular among the children and then a jewelry shop popular among the ladies and finally Henry J Schreiner's General Store crossing over a small Alleyway we come to the Metropolitan Hotel a classy accommodation for visitors to Alcorn it was made up of two buildings one was the hotel's office and restaurants and the other building was the hotel rooms good number of door frames that have collapsed falling on their side but still maintain their shape [Music] behind me is the Metropolitan Hotel now there were many hotels in Elkhorn but this one was the last one standing it could sleep about 30 to 40 people at a time in its various rooms and there's a historical map over there a little information board that talks about all the different sites and it lists this as Still Standing which means this is unfortunately a very recent collapse up the road from the Metropolitan Hotel there's a collapsed building there with very little info on it but then there's another here and another there this would have been a saloon right here [Music] my right shoulder and the doctor's office over my left shoulder were also listed where it is still standing which means these are also very recent collapses I don't know how old that info board is it could be as old as the 90s so these could have collapsed anytime within the last maybe 20 some years [Music] foreign was slowly declining the feeling of community was growing directly across the street from the candy shop Jeweler and barber stood Gillian Hall Still Standing today this is the lower floor of the Gillian Hall one of the two more iconic buildings here in Elkhorn this first floor would have been a Saloon or a store but most likely a saloon and the second floor above us was a dance hall thank you did a lot of redecorating so that's the oldest style here [Music] to the newest and it's not particularly new it's just the most recent [Music] this likely would have been a trap door down to the cellar now interestingly you'll notice there's no stairwell on the inside of the building going upstairs it would have been a separate business possibly by the same owner but a completely different facility access to the second floor was in a Stairway on the outside so you can imagine if this was a saloon being in here late at night having your drink getting a meal with music playing and hear it muffled through the ceiling and the feet dancing on the floor I'm sure that would have been wonderful [Music] unfortunately there's no way for us to get up to the second floor the stairwell outside is completely gone but you can see the remains of where it once was Gillian Hall fulfilled the town's needs for a while until it was decided that a larger Hall would be needed as a general meeting Hall immediately next to Gillian Hall to the West Was a private dwelling which was bought out in 1893 and a new two-story town meeting building was built in its place this would be called fraternity Hall as the town's many lodges and fraternities would share the meeting Hall on the second floor inside these wooden walls no doubt local lumber groups like the Freemasons the Knights of pythius and the Odd Fellows all met in secrecy [Music] the forward portion of the Upper Floor was a maze of rooms closets and alcoves and both floors featured what looks like a small window for a ticketing agent out there a door to the deck the first floor had a stage used for concerts for theater and all other presentation purposes including the town's School graduation ceremonies there would have been a door here with a glass window above foreign there would have been doors on all of these door frames these were not open walkways and we would have had two large doors side by side in that opening interesting shelf up there you can see quite plainly the burn marks wherever they had a light on the ceiling fraternity Hall opened on July 4th 1893 with the Elkhorn brass band playing the ceremony fraternity Hall became the heart of the community and Gillian Hall next door fell vacant life was good in Elkhorn but later that same year the price of silver crashed with the repeal of the Silver Purchase Act and the mines began downsizing with the Elkhorn mine closing in 1900 by this time 8 million 902 000 ounces of silver eight thousand five hundred ounces of gold and 4 million pounds of lead had been mined other smaller mines were active and kept some of the townsfolk employed but a devastating fire broke out in 1912 and swept much of the Main Street business district the jewelry shop candy shop and several other buildings were destroyed including the town's only church [Music] the town didn't have the strength to recover from this fire so the mines shut down for a few years and most of the remaining population cleared out at its height the Northern Pacific railroad had three trains a week coming into Elkhorn but as the town declined rail service was terminated around 1914. one resident said that when the train whistle was finally stilled the end of an era was at hand the tracks and most of the depot buildings were torn up in 1931 with the Northern Pacific leaving behind their 48 thousand gallon water tower this would have been demolished too but the town was actually using it as their primary water source as a result the tower would eventually become the oldest Northern Pacific water tower still standing in the region in the 2010s at a cost of thirty thousand dollars the tower was restored by preservationists and rail historians another railroad related site to the west of the Town further out of the canyon is this Mill site the railroad bed is still visible which would run along the upper portion of this Mill dump ore and it will be processed here it even looks like this wooden section widens for a switch so that a a locomotive coming up here could either go off that way or come into the mill to dump ore [Music] foreign [Music] the post office closed in 1924 and the town was not even counted on the 1930s census by then Elkhorn was all but abandoned the Elkhorn Cemetery doesn't only Mark the tragedies of 1899 but is also the resting place for the people who experience their happiest memories and spent most of their lives in this town Fred Bell was born in muscadab at Nova Scotia Canada in 1856 and moved to Elkhorn in 1886 in the town's early days he met a lady named Francis here and they wed in 1896 had kids they grew up here and even as the town declined Mr and Mrs Bell refused to leave Francis died in 1911 taking her place in the Elkhorn Cemetery Fred was one of the last full-time residents of Elkhorn and he died in 1938 in the home of his son in nearby Boulder his Services were held in fraternity Hall in Elkhorn before the procession carried him up the South Hills to the graveyard Fred is buried with Francis overlooking the once thriving town where they once made a family there is a stone in the graveyard for Peter Weiss the town's founder but this is not where his body is the body is actually likely buried beneath the floorboards of one of the homes along elkhorn's Main Street buried there by his partner Mr Simmons the mine is littered with tailing piles mixed with broken Timbers and bent metal [Music] the mail site has been dismantled but it's still an imposing View foreign [Music] towards the mine at the back corner of the town foreign good number of collapsed buildings up here so many buildings all collapsed [Music] Evans and Howe something St Louis foreign [Music] this building was once a private residence likely owned by one of the town's butchers as it's built on the back of the lot of land that once housed a meat shop it was built sometime before 1892. [Music] no I'm shaking my ass [Music] across Second Street and Alleyway behind the two main halls and behind the butcher's house as well is this interesting collapsed Log Cabin it was built before 1892 and is purported to have an inaccessible seller [Music] foreign [Music] as the years passed fraternity and Gillian Halls fell into disrepair as these photos from the 1960s show [Music] but somehow they remain standing against the harsh elements they were preserved as Montana's smallest state park in 1980 and are still protected the state has been working to restore these buildings and preserve them and they are open to visitors in 2001 the grandson of one of the early Elkhorn residents moved back into Elkhorn full time restoring his family's cabin and guarding the place from any ill-intentioned visitors in the time since other residents have also moved in some full-time some seasonally this dog who was happy to see us and welcomed us to his neighborhood hello I know hi yeah all right nice meeting you today Elkhorn has a population of about a dozen you'll notice many of the old buildings are lived in as private residences but signs hang on them so that you know what their early uses were [Music] Elkhorn is not a difficult ghost town to visit it's about a half hour drive along maintained roads from the nearby town of Boulder mostly following the old Northern Pacific railroad into Elkhorn if you do visit Alcorn please be respectful to the history of the site the remains that still stand and the current residents of the town a special thank you to my supporters on patreon especially Marlo Perez Kelly black Kaiser Wilhelm II Trent Gregor Zach Richards Donald Anderson Cody henricks Joan Haynes Sean Kimball Rob M Amos Mayhew Corey Andrews Nicholas masella zolt Wagner Colt tanik Sophie baber exotic exploring yaakov Martin Henson Stephen schwankert Rob Oliver chin Chen jahala and John miloski [Music]

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 686,669

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Id: J38tAc_Z5rw

Length: 22min 38sec (1358 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022