NOTICE: Access to this site may be via narrow dirt or gravel roads with few turnarounds.

Taft was riotously proud of its well-earned reputation as “one of the wildest towns of the west.” Known far and wide as “the wickedest city in America,” Taft went from a few ramshackle houses to a booming town of railroad laborers, prostitutes, and bootleggers. Migrant workers from all over the world made up much of the population, which fluctuated between 3,000 and 10,000 while laborers blasted a tunnel for the Milwaukee Railroad route through the Bitterroot Mountains. The tunnel needed to be 8,750 feet long and had permanent labor camps at both sides of St. Paul’s Pass. Taft was the camp on the Montana side.

The town was not without its amenities. It boasted 27 saloons in addition to countless bootlegging stills. Laborers came from Montenegro, Bulgaria, Italy, Scotland, Canada, Scandinavia, Ireland, England, and beyond. In its earliest days, 22 of the 23 female residents were prostitutes; the other was the minister’s wife. At its height, Taft supported as many as 500 prostitutes. The local hospital needed seven doctors because at least one murder occurred weekly, and each spring several bodies appeared during the thaw. Spring also brought typhoid fever outbreaks and flies. Brawls and lawlessness prevailed. A graveyard on the scraggly hillside received regular internments; the residents were so transient that 72 plots went unmarked.

An early Forest Service employee recalled how the town earned its name. President Taft was touring the West and heard about the “rip-roaring construction camp” on the new transcontinental line. The President ordered a stop and addressed the crowd which gathered to meet him. Taft “told them their lawlessness had made this place notorious. . . . It was a disgrace to the country, a dirty smudge on these fair United States. He demanded they do something about it. They did. As the train departed they gave three rousing cheers, and named the place in his honor.”

The city was practically destroyed in the Big Burn of 1910 (which consumed about 3 million acres across the northern Rockies), but the completion of the tunnel in 1909 had already caused an exodus from Taft. By 1960, the state stepped in to auction the few remaining businesses to make way for Interstate 90. Now nothing remains of the tawdry town except its legendary reputation.

Something does remain, however, of the work the camp laborers completed: the Route of the Hiawatha biking trail runs along the rail bed of the Milwaukee line, through the long tunnel that caused Taft’s heyday. Check out the Next Exit History “Route of the Hiawatha” backpack for more information.

Credits and Sources:

Axline, Jon, and Glenda Clay Bradshaw. Montana’s Historical Highway Markers.Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2008.

Hahn, Margie E. Montana’s Mineral County in Retrospect.Stevensville, MT: Stoneydale Press Publishing Company, 1997.

Mineral County Historical Society. Mineral County History.Superior, MT: Mineral County Historical Society, 2004.

Olson, David. “Fords Come Into the National Forests.” In Early Days in the Forest Service3. Missoula, MT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 1962.

“Saltese History.” The Saltese Tribune.Undated, clipping provided by the Mineral County Historical Society, Superior, MT.

Historic photographs of “Laborers at Taft” and “Laborers Standing Near Rail Line” courtesy of Mineral County Historical Museum, Superior, MT.

Contemporary photographs of the East Portal Entrance and Hiawatha Logo courtesy of Historical Research Associates, Inc.