Virginia City, Montana, United States
Montana’s oldest settlements are its gold rush era towns
which date from the 1860s, most notably those in Alder Gulch in Madison
County. While back in that era there
were numerous mining camps that had as many as 10,000 people in total, most
were abandoned as people moved on to prospect the next most promising lodes.
The two main towns that remain today are Nevada City and Virginia City, the
former revived as a tourist attraction and living history museum after having
become a ghost town, and the latter the county seat and small community.
I passed through the sights of Alder Gulch twice before but
didn’t stop to see what there was. The
first was in 1988 on my whirlwind western tour with my mother. It was very
early in the morning as we left Ennis and nothing would have been open. The second time was on my 2001 trip around
Montana, but I also don’t recall stopping then, or if I did it was very
briefly.
The two towns capitalize nowadays on tourism, and Virginia
City is one of the few tourist towns in the state allowed to capitalize on the business
by levying a local sales tax.
And quite touristy it is, with all the requisite
tee shirt and ice cream shops and other places selling tourist tack. On the
other hand, though, many of the buildings along the main drag (Wallace Street)
have been restored and their interiors have a museum like quality of the era. My main stop was the Bale of Hay Saloon, said
to be the oldest saloon in the entire state, with a real Wild West atmosphere.
Nevada City is rather different. What had become a ghost town was fixed up and
is now all wood fronted buildings with wooden boardwalk along the main road. Behind it there’s a “living history museum”
which does charge admission. Hmmm, these
things can be a bit hokey, but I figured I ought to pay the admission price and
go since I was there. It actually has a real museum quality about it, many of
the buildings dating from the late 1800s but from different locations around
the state, so what you’re seeing isn’t original to the site but seems authentic
enough.
Like many of the mining towns of the Gold Rush in the West, Virginia
City is at a rather high elevation in the foothills of the Tobacco Root
Mountains.
Heading east you cross a pass and stunning views over the Madison
Valley to the Madison Range and Spanish Peaks open up. Back in 1988 my mother
and I spent a night in Ennis at the bottom of the pass, and I recall being mesmerized
by the dry western landscape and some of the highest mountains I had seen to
date in my life.
One of Montana’s many hot springs is located a short
distance north near Norris, which isn’t much of town even my Montana standards.
Norris Hot Springs has a reputation as one of the smaller and more rustic ones
around the state. It has only one pool,
which I didn’t find to be all that hot compared to the ones at White Sulphur
Springs, but the bucolic setting and weekend evening live Bluegrass makes it
pleasant. I couldn’t resist having my first bison burger since I’ve been in
Montana for dinner, of course accompanied by some local IPAs.
2025-05-22