blackfoot-valley

grandiose expectations that it would one day rival not only that great mid- western city but, as was said even more wildly, New York. New Chicago soon became the site of a number of solid businesses, homes, a school, church, and lodge with several ranches around it. Boosters even attempted to take the county seat from Deer Lodge. While they clearly had much more in mind than the gold diggings, when those played out the town quickly wilted. The demise of New Chicago, and for that matter the stage road itself, was sealed in the early 1880s when the Northern Pacific bypassed its minor creek and built along the main river, the Clark Fork, ensuring that Drummond would be- come the chief town in this section of the Deer Lodge Valley. There is virtual- ly nothing visible left of New Chicago, unless an archeologist someday decides to dig there. Those looking for a ghost town in the area kept in a state of preserva- tion must go outside of Powell County to Garnet, now a state historic site between Drummond and Missoula, and as earlier noted, accesible via a side road from either Montana Route 200 or Interstate 90. The Montana gold rush that touched the southern part of present day Powell County only briefly and lightly came to full fruition in the rich strikes of Alder Gulch, well south of Butte and a dozen miles west of Ennis in the state’s southwestern corner. After the placer discovery there in 1863, the gulch, with “Muskelyne Tunnel / Mine, Marysville, Montana” 1893 By: Carlton Watkins 102