The Railroad Ghost Town of Taft

As you bike along this stretch of the NorPac Trail, there’s nothing to indicate that you’re passing through a 110-year-old ghost town named after William H. Taft, who stopped there during his 1907 presidential campaign and shamed the residents for their notorious debauchery. Whether proud of their reputation or just wanting to stick it to the candidate, the railroad builders who were living and working there—as well as the businessmen and women who fed and clothed and poured drinks and entertained them—decided to call the area, then known as "Saloon Town," Taft. [1]

The railroad builders—almost all men—were not actually building the Northern Pacific, whose former tracks now comprise the trail. About 1,000 feet (think three football fields) south of here they were building the Pacific extension of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. (It was more commonly known as the Milwaukee Road or the Route of the Hiawatha. Today it is the Route of the Olympian Trail, which you can connect to in Saltese.) Thousands of workers living in Taft were employed to clear the railroad’s path of trees, blast through mountains, bore tunnels and lay track. Many were immigrants, willing to do the hard work but unable to speak English and dependent on intermediaries to translate for them. The work was physically brutal, and at the end of the day, they did not return to clean, cozy homes. Taft lacked decent sanitation infrastructure and access to clean water; the streets were constantly muddy. [2]

Offerings that were available in Taft included booze at one of the town’s 27 saloons, betting at the local gambling tables, and hundreds of women that made a living through prostitution. All of this took place far beyond the reach of the nearest sheriff, in Missoula, though the town’s hedonism was no secret. [3]

The dark side of this carousing was the frequent murders that took place—fueled by alcohol, debts and jealousies, and heightened by language barriers and prejudice. It was not uncommon to die in Taft by murder or disease, or from dangerous work. Those who survived slowly emigrated from the town in 1909, as the railroad neared completion and opportunities for work disappeared. What was left burned down in 1910 when an epic fire swept through the Bitterroot Mountains. Today, Taft’s main street lies beneath Interstate 90. [4]

• [1] Kathleen Woodford, “The Missing Cemetery of Taft, Montana, the ‘Wickedest City in America,’” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2020, 62.
• [2] Woodford, “The Missing Cemetery," 62–63; Virginia Weisel Johnson, “Tough Taft: Boom Town,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Autumn 1982, 53–54.
• [3] Johnson, “Tough Taft," 52–54.
• [4] Woodford, “The Missing Cemetery,” 66–70; Johnson, “Tough Taft,” 57.