Elkhorn

A state park made of two buildings, in a town of twelve people

Elkhorn lies in the valley of Elkhorn Creek on the south side of the Elkhorn Mountains in Jefferson County, Montana, at the end of 11 miles of gravel north of the Boulder road. In 1870 a Swiss immigrant named Peter Wys, prospecting for gold, found silver galena ore here instead. He died in 1872, before anything much came of it, and the Helena entrepreneur Anton M. Holter took over the claim, built a simple five-stamp mill in 1875 and organised the Elkhorn Mining Company. Other mines followed, and the Elkhorn Mine alone would yield some $14 million.

The camp stumbled in 1882, when the ore changed character at the 300-foot level and the mine shut for a year, then came back with a new chloridizing mill. In 1888, with the shaft at 800 feet, the owners decided it was played out and sold to an English syndicate for half a million dollars; the English added stamps and by 1899 had taken out another 6.5 million ounces of silver. A Northern Pacific spur reached town in 1889, and at its peak Elkhorn held more than 2,500 people, with three passenger trains a week.

It was an unusual mining town, full of married European immigrants and their children rather than single men, with candy stores and a two-lane bowling alley. Disease hit those families hard. A diphtheria epidemic at the end of the 1880s killed many of the town's children; one mother and all five of her children died within a week. In 1893 the Fraternity Hall Association built the town's social centre, a two-storey hall where the Masons, Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias shared the upstairs lodge room and the town gathered below for dances, graduations, theatre troupes, prize fights and Cornish Glee Club concerts. Once, during a dance, two men quarrelled over the band's choice of music and the square dancer shot the waltzer dead. The diplomat Spruille Braden was born in Elkhorn in 1894.

The Silver Panic of 1893 hurt, and by 1897 the mines had begun to play out. The post office closed in 1924, and in 1931 the railroad pulled up its tracks for scrap. The town never quite emptied; a dozen people were counted at the 2020 census.

Fraternity Hall, with its false front, neo-classical balcony and wooden ornament imitating stone, is one of Montana's most photographed buildings. It and its neighbour Gilliam Hall are the only two buildings owned by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, which makes Elkhorn State Park the smallest state park in Montana. Both halls are open to walk into. The rest of the town is private, and interpretive signs line its streets.