The story
Coolidge was Montana's last major silver play: promoter William Allen built the Elkhorn Mine's huge mill, a company town with electricity and phones, and even the Montana Southern — the state's last new railroad — in the 1910s-20s, naming the town for his friend Calvin Coolidge.
Timing killed it. Silver prices sagged, a 1927 dam failure wrecked the railroad, and the 1929 crash ended financing; the mill barely ran. The Forest Service now watches over the sagging mill and log town deep in the Pioneer Mountains — a boom that skipped straight to bust, preserved by remoteness.
What remains today
The enormous collapsing mill, log houses and commercial buildings along the old rail grade, in grizzly-country forest.
Society Pro
What the federal record holds within five miles of Coolidge
Within five miles the record maps 76 mine shafts, adits and prospect pits, 38 named mineral sites, 7 lost places and 0 cemeteries. Pro puts them on the map with the 1879–1919 survey underneath and a swipe to today.
Questions from the field
- Why is Coolidge called Montana's last boomtown?
- It was the state's final large silver venture — new town, new mill, new railroad, all built in the 1910s-20s and dead by the early 1930s without ever paying off.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Coolidge — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Coolidge's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1797321
- — Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF — Coolidge townsite
- — Montana Southern Railway records