Wilkeson, Washington

We started out going through and stopping at Wilkeson. A little town that was founded around the 1880's. This was a railway and mining town. Minors working the mines and railway workers for the Union Pacific use to stay at the hotel while working in the area. The hotel consisted of being also a brothel, and restaurant.

Commemorating the Union Pacific Railroad.

The U.S. Marshal seemed to have a tough town to run.

Sign in front of the old hotel.



The bridge crossing the Carbonado River...notice the wooden construction of the ends compared to the steel frame of the center of the bridge!

Medora, North Dakota

Medora was founded in 1883 by French nobleman Marquis de Mores who named the city after his wife Medora von Hoffman. Marquis de Mores wanted to ship refrigerated meat to Chicago via the railroad. He built a meat packing plant for this purpose and a house named the Chateau de Mores, which is now a museum.

Today, Medora is a tourist town with visitors from all over. Some of the history of Medora carries names such as General George Armstong Custer and Teddy Rosevelt and his Rough Riders.












Cowboy in town.










Ummm...when did they change the name???











The town of Medora.










Medora Theater built on tracks











Buffalo Pepsi or Cowboy Coke???

Nevada City, Montana

Nevada City, sister city located 1.5 miles from Virginia City. This town is pretty much intact and is now a museum of buildings complete with train depot and steam locomotive. Also, great place to film movies such as "Return To Lonesome Dove".

Main Street.

Origianl building with train depot and passenger car across the street.

School bell and buildings

Livery Stable made famous in "Return To Lonesome Dove".

Rober's Roost, Montana

Our next stop is Rober's Roost. A small, out of the way place where the likes of Sheriff Henry Plummer and his band of Vigilantes always hid out. Back in the day, Rober's Roost was a saloon/hotel located in the remote out of the way area between Twin Bridges and Nevada City.












Rober's Roost today. (Careful of that outlaw there!!!)

Hand made chair next to front door.

Second Gallatin City

There are actually two Gallatin Cities...this is the second one. Not much remains of this city, but was still big enough to hold lots of memories from a once bustling trading post.










Map of the Second Gallatin City.












Pioneer Graves.










Eagles flying over the Gallatin Valley.

Gallatin City, Montana

Our first ghost town ever. Visiting family, we were taken to Gallatin City and the Headwaters of the Jefferson and Madison Rivers and where the longest river system in North America starts, the Missouri/Mississippi River. This was a famous stop for Lewis & Clark in their expedition to the Pacific North West and a popular area for fur traders and muontain men alike.

Head Waters View Point.


















Head Waters of the Madison and Jefferson Rivers.

















Gallatin City Hotel.

Monte Cristo

In the summer of 1889, Joe Pearsall and Frank Peabody discovered a rich vein of gold and silver ore at a site soon named Monte Cristo.
Between that time and 1907 the mines produced millions of dollars in ore. A town sprang up on the peninsula between Glacier Creek and 76 Creek at the head of the South Fork Sauk River and a standard gauge railway was built to connect the mines with their smelter at Everett.

Most of the miners lived high above the town on Wilmans and Foggy Peaks, from which aerial tramways carried the minerals down the steep mountain sides to the concentrator for processing and then to the railway. At the town site were all the support services required by an isolated industrial town: a store, five hotels, a school, a newspaper and residences, mostly situated along Dumas Street or the lower area below the railway yards.

Dumas Street, in its heyday, was a 35 – 40 foot boardwalk but is now just a pathway to a town that is surrounded by 7,000 foot mountains where at one time, only the railway was the only means of transporting ore from Monte Cristo. When mining died and was replaced by tourism, the Mountain Loop Highway to Barlow Pass and a small, four mile county road from Barlow Pass to Monte Cristo replaced the railway. The county road was severely damaged by flooding in 1980 and now is gated at the pass. It is now only accessible by hiking, biking and horseback as much of the road is severely washed away and the bridge across the river is completely gone.

Monte Cristo, as a town site, was recorded on March 2, 1893 and became a Government town site on March 4, 1893.

The Kyes family played a major part in the town. After arriving in 1902 from the Klondike gold rush, they had a major interest in business and mining. To this day, descendants of the Kyes family still maintain a cabin on their property at Monte Cristo. There is also a memorial by the U.S. Naval Academy to Commander James Ellsworth Kyes, commander of the U.S.S. Leary, which was lost in 1944. Behind the memorial, there is a white picket fence that squarely surrounds a lonely fir tree that James brought down from Addison’s peak and planted as a boy in the Monte Cristo hotel’s garden in the 1920’s




Now we jump to July 18, 2009.

Joe, a fellow ghost town hunter, and I made the four mile hike into Monte Cristo. We started off from Barlow Pass at 7am. On the way to Monte Cristo, we came across the spot were you could see that we were following the railway path. Joe saw the tracks where they came out of the ground, where the path had been washed away by the river, and commented on the 18 inches of ground that covered them.

When we arrived at the town site, we snapped our first pictures of two original signs of Monte Cristo. From there, it was on to pictures of the town itself including the railway turntable, relics from the mining companies including an ore bucket, some pulleys, scrap steel, old motors, and various other items. There were also cabins that you can rent to stay in for a weekend outing. We then went further into the town up Dumas Street, taking pictures of the old buildings and the signs of where buildings once stood. Then it was on to the United Companies Concentrator. There was not much left of the concentrator, just the foundation where the once, 3 level, multistory structure once was.

We sat for a moment and took a break where the Monte Cristo hotel once stood, next to Commander Kyes’ memorial. While we were sitting, since I had been here before on two other occasions, I couldn’t help but notice the vegetation seemed to be growing around, smothering the structures of the town, and taking back what was once hers. The actual changes that I witnessed are indescribable, unless you see it first hand for yourself.





Joe crossing crudely made bridge


Remains of United Companies Concentrator





A reminder of a mining community





Houses along Dumas Street













Gas powered railway car (circa 1920)