VIRGINIA CITY - WHERE HISTORY LIVES! (PART 1)

when the gold was discovered in Virginia City in 1863 there were just a few prospectors passing through they discovered gold in alder Gulch one evening as they're camped along the creek just looking for a little bit of tobacco money when they made that discovery I think they were astounded they went back as the story goes to banning to cash in some of their gold and collect supplies you know when people begin to spend gold dust others began to watch and so they began to watch to see where these guys went and when they rode off the next morning there were about 200 people following them in their wake and others followed the trampled ground people flocked here in droves to see what they'd heard about earliest miners that came here could just simply pick up a gold pan full of dirt off the surface and pan it and do fairly well but the better gold was down around 16 feet it had overburden over a great deal of work to get down there when you're doing it all by hand but yet there were millions of dollars worth of gold come out here at Alder Gulch then very very quickly a whole town sprang up and pretty soon there was no wood to be had because everyone was building cabins and building sluice boxes and the industry was just incredible Virginia said he grew up first and then Alder Gulch expanded with Nevada City and miners rumored in the neighborhood of 30 thousand people there were no sawmills in the beginning and so people used what they could they would build these little cabins and then they would put tall false fronts in front of them and they did that because this was a remote very scary place to live and they used false fronts to make people think that they were living in a real town four sets of my great great grandparents came to Virginia City in the early days between 1863 and 1865 with young families in tow virginia city became a city a thriving metropolis of the day virginia city was this major hub for the first years that there was a population in montana that was the first commercial center the first banks were established here it was the first transportation hub the stagecoach is left from here for Korean Utah and for Salt Lake City so it was really quite a lively place there were social clubs there was a library established very early it was the first newspaper that was printed in Montana was printed just down the street here Gould drew people to the west people with adventuresome spirits people of great strength and determination but there were probably plenty of opportunists that came along at the same time those opportunists had a reputation for robbing people of their gold and their valuables and they're developed according to reputation a period of lawlessness in the gulch a new community develops no government really in place people kind of trying to take care of issues themselves and the vigilantes were formed that started what culminated in the hanging of 21 men for the crime of highway robbery murder and rape out on on the trail this is reenacted by the living history folks in a very wonderful dramatic way and it is one of those stories that is a legend that will never die I hope but the vigilante era was one little blip and there were other things that happened here that were just as important I guess I think Virginia City is the magnetic core of Southwest Montana and perhaps all of Montana's really what brought people here people came from all corners of the world there was a huge Jewish population here and there's a very large Chinese district down at the end of town Virginia City became the territorial capital and Virginia City enjoyed a heyday until about 1875 but then unfortunately when the Northern Pacific began to Scout its route along Annagh virginia city was left out population dwindled then and it's been pretty small ever since what was left here was the memory of that very very vibrant time that just simply wasn't what it was in the beginning anymore people began to move out of the area and get established in other activities and entrenched themselves in life here in southwest Montana mining was down in the 1920s but in the 1930s there was a big resurgence here and it was practically a boomtown people that were out of work came and did some of the old claims using 1860s message and could make a pretty good living doing that also there was a mining company called the Humphries Gold Corporation the dredge between Virginia and Nevada City was a huge machine that left the ground in the configuration it is today between Virginia and Nevada City the dredging operations began which really kept Virginia City a viable place and then when gold was declared a non-essential industry during World War two that operation stopped my family and I moved here to Virginia City in about the fall of 1936 I was just a baby when we moved here this was available so we moved in and this is where I grew up this was my mom's and dad's bedroom right there there must be home 2 3 4 5 must be six layers of time right there when I was a little kid and we were going through the dumps and everything up up all result and I had found in in perfect condition a Chinese vase it was said about this high didn't have a chip or anything on it I came home with that and mom put it up here probably the only really nice thing that she had you know Virginia City was dying out at that point in time there wasn't any jobs the mining was almost nil there were very few businesses to keep them going I think the population had dropped down to around 75 and so it was a practically a ghost town and Charlie Bobby first came on in 1944 his family were one of the owners of what became General Mills so he was a wealthy young man and fascinated by history and he was absolutely astounded to find so many original buildings from the 1860s still intact a lot of people had started tearing the buildings down for firewood it was a very difficult time he found the buildings were for sale rather cheaply and so he decided to purchase the buildings and start restoration up one day he was over in Nevada City walking around and he saw someone beginning to burn a historic cabin and so Charlie said well how about if I buy from you this property in Nevada City many of the buildings had been destroyed so it will really provided a perfect venue for Charlie to recreate a town and he began rescuing buildings that were endangered across the state and today lining the streets of Nevada City you see buildings from Fort Benton from Yellowstone Park from the different mining camps that were abandoned and buildings that had had truly been an endangered some of them had even been knocked down and he resurrected all of the wood and built him back again Charlie Bovie was very particular about how that whole project came and developed and so much so that it saved a lot of attention as a Hollywood off Hollywood I should say back lot throughout much of the 70s hosting a lot of very popular movies for the time and so Nevada City is a recreation but Virginia City which is just down the road has a totally different purpose Virginia City is a living town and the buildings that you see in Virginia City are original to the sites that you see them on Virginia City has more 1860s buildings preserved than any other town in the West really Charlie Bovie he has to be credited with saving so many of these examples of architecture which otherwise would have been you know either hit by the wrecking ball or met demise some other way Charlie boy we had the idea of kind of letting people have a trip back in time so he decided to furnish the buildings he got authentic items and furnished them as they would have been as stores and houses and other things he'd really started collecting new old stock merchandise and things like the 300 pairs of shoes there have never been out of the box exactly as they were about a hundred and two years ago all of a sudden we found people coming to see the artifact see the old history the role that the automobile played is really important in terms of cultural tourism because people who normally wouldn't get to what we might consider seve as geographically isolated areas can now go and enjoyed going so it became a deliciously exciting opportunity to get to see these buildings in the flesh there was a godsend to so many of our families and as a matter of fact we started working for a Bobi restoration and one of our jobs was to walk the streets in old fashion dresses everybody from innocent Sheridan and trim bridges the boys particularly in the girls would work in the city so it got to be a very very fun time to and with a lot of good memories Charlie Bovie he started opening some businesses you could experience what it was like to be in a old days bar stay in the fair weather end with an old-fashioned sort of room the opera house for you to attend an old-fashioned play the players did authentic melodrama as it would have been done in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundred's the moment the players have always been one of the most popular things about the Virginia City Nevada City experience when Charlie Vova died there was a gap in care for the city and all of the things that had been what we call the boovie collection Bobby's son Ford inherited Virginia and Nevada C but Ford didn't have the interest or the money that his parents had had there were people just pounding for daily trying to get to buy some of these artifacts but Ford didn't want it to be sold off to various people while he asked me to go up to the legislature and see if we could get the state of Montana to buy Virginia and Nevada see my dad Lowell Gilman wrote a letter and personally delivered it to all of the legislature in Helena to make sure that Virginia City's legacy and heritage was maintained when the legislature started its process people came dressed in period garb and costumes old western costumes prospectors ladies with hoop skirts and they kind of stayed in character of hundred years ago by the beginning of the legislature we already had a bill introduced by carl's and we kept up with all kinds of rallies and lo and behold it was purchased with the state purchase state of Montana and its people acquired roughly 250 buildings between Virginia and Nevada City we possess some of the largest and more intact examples of Western mining culture and the pioneer movement in this country one of the big challenges is that we have over a million artifacts literally a million artifacts that are here that part of them are Ridge '''l to the site part of them bovi brought here but many of them aren't inventoried many of them haven't been moved since 1951 and so on and they're far too valuable to just sit here and gather dust the virginia nevada cities are one of the more premier cultural resources in the nation but we've inherited an enormous backlog of preservation needs along with that so the the work of my team is never-ending the Kramer building is one of the oldest buildings in Virginia City these were a classic storefront styled residence store in the front living quarters in the back but it's also held the position of an anchor point within the street here so there's been a thrust of all these buildings working their way and pushing downhill for the past 140 years so what we're doing now is trying to install some upgrades to the foundation system and the second phase of the project is conserving all of the cultural material within that's wallcoverings newspapers finishes all of the different things they tried over the years to keep this building stable in addition to rendering the cosmetics that they wanted in here it's very interesting to see it go from my home to a historic site that the Bowie's had put a nice collection into and now to a preservation estate which i think is good what's different about folks like Evelyn and others that live here and this extends far beyond just the efforts that the state of Montana is trying to exact here this is a very much a preservation minded community and everybody here is very much intent on preserving and keeping Virginia City what it is another project we'll work on the Gilbert brewery that has definitely been acknowledged one of the rare fewer examples of rural breweries left in the United States this one of course features all kinds of innovative pioneer technologies a very inventive and creative use of implementing natural water features to create a cooler mechanism where we're in right now with flowing water chambers of standing water to aid in the cooling process and a nice room over our heads from the late 19th century all of which I would have to list among the most critically endangered and valued resources that we have the problem is the front of the building is sitting on real bad soils and it frost jacks every winter it goes up and down up down and slowly moving away and down the creek so just get started doing this structural stuff in the process we're happy to have ongoing businesses and the legacy of something like the brewery Follies adding to the charm and character of this building the two go hand-in-hand quite well - of course brew and culture and comedy this is it nice our audience they're coming here to have fun it's good they're gonna have a good time they're gonna laugh a lot is this is the comedy club in the area this is the nightclub show this is a great place to work it's a small intimate setting it's an historic building it's a brewery I like beer most of the people who work for me like beer so we we take a lot of pride in being in Montana's first brewery having the preservation work done around us has been incredible the stone wall was caving in the growth was taking over and and you could even see the building was like kind of bulging out where the wood was and come back this this spring and and they're out there working and the stones getting put together again did they have such pride in this building it means a lot to us good night there is an interesting mix of state-owned properties and private ownership and that mix provides a vitality to this town and a livelihood for the people who live here you hundreds of thousands of tourists come here for the history but the two towns now offer a lot of modern-day amenities nice little shops plus hotels and some good restaurants between the two towns is the old adult shortline railroad we are fortunate to have a 1910 Baldwin steam locomotive fully restored and running there was no train line here in Virginia City originally Charlie Bovie put the line in when you ride this track you can see everything from shafts to hide rollicking to the dredging to even areas that were originally gold pan by hand and that gives people an opportunity to see those areas that are not accessible by Road and Nevada City when visitors come to our site they see the finest examples of what a town in early mark

Channel: House of Hoofyfoot

Views: 164,498

Rating: 4.9007583 out of 5

Keywords: Town of Virginia City Montana, Ghost Town (Periodical Subject), Historic Preservation (Industry), Montana (US State), Cultural Heritage, Jeffrey MacDonald, Preservation

Id: Bv854IgTVxo

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 08 2014