Sun-faded prairie ...

Speaking of prairie ghost towns, here's a photo of one of my favorites -- the little hamlet of Ingomar, on the long-abandoned Milwaukee Road mainline across the state. This evocative photo was taken back in the early 1990s by a man named Dave Matthews, who lived in Bozeman back then. It's been many years since I heard from Dave ... he moved back east ages ago, to photograph things that could only be less worthwhile.

Lonesome ghosts ...

There are certainly lots of ghost towns here in Montana ... old mining camps up in the mountains, and homestead villages out in the prairies. I'm a particular fan of the prairie ghosts, partly because they don't get as much attention, and partly because their settings can be exceptionally evocative. And for me, the old towns don't even need buildings in order to be interesting.

Here's a photo I took when I visited the site of Coburg, Montana a couple of years ago. All that's really left is a few feet of concrete sidewalk, marking the long-vanished site of a building that once housed the general store and post office. And up on the hill, a little ways away, there's an old building foundation ... maybe it was where the schoolhouse used to stand. And that's it.

Gallup City ...

As someone with an incurable case of wanderlust, I've long maintained that a good map is the greatest recreational reading there is. Topo maps are especially fascinating for someone enamored of a place as vast as Montana, in part because they reveal so many obscure place names that few of us have ever heard of.

I was looking through a list of old Montana topos recently, for example, and came across one titled "Gallup City" ... a name I didn't recognize at all, though it sounded it at least had the potential to be a fairly big deal. So I downloaded the map and took a look, and there it was, far off the beaten track between Conrad and Choteau. The map was from 1938, and just showed a small maze of random dirt roads and a few buildings ... pretty obviously an old oilfield camp.

And from the looks of things there's absolutely nothing left of Gallup City today ... but now I still want to drive up there and check the place out sometime.

Highway 212 ...

Most people driving east from Montana out to South Dakota will just get on Interstate 90 and stay there ... but a few knowledgeable folks will venture off the freeway and strike out on US 212 instead, which is actually the shorter route. I really like the US 212 drive -- it's a lovely mix of mountains and plains, forest and prairie. And there are some interesting old towns along the way, too.

One of those little towns is called Hammond, down in the southwest corner of Carter County. There was never an awful lot at Hammond, and today the place is just a post office, a one-room school, and a handful of abandoned buildings. Here's a photo I took last year of one of them ... a long-closed gas station. It's definitely the coolest thing in Hammond, and I think it's the coolest gas station in Montana.

Sonnette Hall ...

Here's a photo I took last summer of the old community hall in a place called Sonnette, down in Powder River County. It's one of the prettiest settings for a building you're ever going to find.

Radersburg ...

For me, nearly all of Montana's communities are fun to explore ... but my favorites are the small, old towns, the ones that had a memorable past but today are almost ghosts, barely hanging on. They're the most evocative places you'll ever see.

Without a doubt, the little village of Radersburg fits that description perfectly. It was a boomtown back in the 1860s, but has slumbered in obscurity for well over a century, home to a few dozen people who prefer life far off the beaten track. (But the town also has a surprising claim to fame: the actress Myrna Loy was born there!)

Here's a photo I took about five years ago, of an old cabin on Radersburg's main street:

Rocky Valley Lutheran ...

A couple of years ago, I posted a photo of one of my favorite abandoned buildings in the state -- the old Rocky Valley Lutheran Church in the ghost town of Dooley, up in Sheridan County. I took that shot way back in the early 1990s, and I've wondered for years if the old church still survived.

I finally managed to get back up to Dooley last July ... and the church was still there, remarkably little-changed from a couple of decades before. Here's the photo I took in 2010.

Ghosts ...

I've said this before, I think ... but I just can't understand why Montana's ghost town fans seem to limit their explorations to the old mining camps up in the mountains. To me, the fading farm villages out in the prairies are much more intriguing and evocative places.

Here's a shot of one of my favorites ... the little town of Ingomar out in Rosebud County. It's not quite a ghost town yet, but it's almost there.

Grain elevators ...

There's no doubt at all that the grain elevator is the manmade feature most associated with Montana's agricultural landscape. They're extraordinarily evocative things, standing tall and brave and often alone against a mostly-horizontal horizon. Mostly, the elevators were tied to the railroads and the small towns that grew up along their lines ... and as the towns faded away, sometimes the elevator was all that was left.

This is a photo I took last fall of the elevator in Ross Fork, a town that -- like many -- probably never amounted to much. The post office there closed 40 years ago, and today it's basically just a farmyard, with the old railway depot turned into a storage shed. But the elevator is still there, easily the grandest site for a good long ways.

Mill Iron ...

Here's a photo of a town you've probably never heard of ... and one that really doesn't exist anymore. Mill Iron, Montana was in far northeastern Carter County, out in the middle of some surprisingly lovely countryside. The post office there was established back in 1916 at the height of the eastern Montana homestead boom, the site named in honor of a large Texas cattle ranch.

Mill Iron probably never had much more than a post office, store, and school, and this old roadhouse was about the last of the place. I imagine it closed about the time the post office was discontinued in 1990. When I went through there about four years ago, most of the equipment for a little cafe was still inside ... waiting for the revival that will never come.

Experiment ...

I take thousands of photos that I don't think turn out quite right, of course, and you generally won't see those here. The shot below is one that's in my "not quite" category ... but the old building is cool enough that I thought I'd post it anyway. I still need to go back and reshoot this someday, though.

This is the bank building in Buffalo, Montana, illuminated by my car's headlights. Buffalo is a very cool little place, an almost-ghost town with an evocative setting and several great old buildings. It'll be near the top of my destination list when the weather starts to warm up again.

Danvers ...

I was wandering around up in the Judith Basin country last weekend, and I took this photo of the old St. Wenceslas Catholic Church in Danvers. Danvers is an evocative but dying little town on the old Milwaukee Road line between Lewistown and Denton ... just a couple of grain elevators, a handful of houses, and the church. There was a really handsome old schoolhouse there, too ... at least until earlier this year, when some evil, heartless person tore it down.

It's been a long time since St. Wenceslas has seen more than occasional use, and now I hear that the local diocese (true to form) wants to tear it down, too ... this despite strong local sentiment to save it. I'm betting the diocese gets its way, and that the next time I visit Danvers there will be one less landmark on the prairie. Breaks my heart.

Savoy ...

Last spring I got to spend a little time poking around at the old ghost town of Savoy, in eastern Blaine County. This is a shot of the abandoned schoolhouse up there.

Savoy was one of a long series of towns platted by a subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway, after the GN built its line across Montana ... and like many of those towns, it was given a name borrowed from a map of Europe. No one's quite sure why the GN did that, but it sure made the railroad's timetables more evocative. It didn't do quite as much for the towns themselves, though ...

The Drumlummon ...

Today's photo is an historic image of one of Montana's most legendary mines ... the Drumlummon, located at the great old ghost town of Marysville, in the mountains north of Helena. Discovered by a prospector named Tommy Cruse in 1876 and named for his hometown in Ireland, the mine produced silver and an estimated $50,000,000 worth of gold, most of it back in the 1880s.

Everything in this scene is long gone now, of course, but today a Canadian mining firm is spending millions in an attempt to reopen the mine. Apparently, there's a lot of valuable ore still down there.

Ghost train ...

I photographed this abandoned railroad car years ago in the long-deserted village of Comertown, way out in Sheridan County. Just a stone's throw from both North Dakota and Saskatchewan, Comertown was once a booming homestead community on the Soo Line Railroad's old Whitetail branch ... it was as far west as that railway ever got. The tracks still run past the edge of town, but the people have all disappeared.

Prairie ghost ...

When people think of Montana ghost towns, it's always the legendary mining camps of the Rockies that come to mind. But eastern Montana has them, too, and the prairie towns have stories that are every bit as fascinating and poignant as those up in the mountains.

I shot this photo last month at a place called Bowdoin, which is up in Phillips County a little east of Malta. Bodowin was founded in the late 1910s by the Great Northern Railway, which for some reason decided that it needed to build a huge new roundhouse and repair facility at that particular spot. They spent vast amounts of money there, and a town developed nearby to house the workers ... and then a few years later the railroad shut everything down. All that's left is a grain elevator, a single collapsing house, and a sea of foundations out at the old railroad yards.

Maudlow school ...

My favorite part of Gallatin County is the remote Sixteen Mile Canyon area, an hour or so north of Bozeman. The landscape is beautiful and little-visited, and there's lots of history: the abandoned Milwaukee Road railway line, old cabins and ranches, and the nearly-abandoned townsite of Maudlow.

This is a shot I took back in 2007 of the long-disused schoolhouse in Maudlow, one of the county's more iconic historic sites.

Ghost church ...

Let's head to the far northeastern corner of the state this morning. When I visited the Sheridan County ghost town of Dooley back in the 90s, this long-abandoned Lutheran church was the only building left. I was always happy with this photo, and have wondered for years if the church was still there. Guess I need to go back someday ...