Virginia City, and its close neighbor, Nevada City, are former gold mining towns out of the old west.

These historic places are located about 200 miles southeast of Mineral County, near Ennis and are ghost towns frozen in time. Many of the businesses and homes hold their original contents and have been remarkably well preserved.

Gold was discovered in the area in 1863 and within weeks they were boomtowns. At its height, nearly 10,000 people lived there, pulling $90,000,000 worth of gold out of the area. By 1937, the gold had pretty much dried up, leaving behind another treasure-remnants of a bygone era.

The town’s history is as rich as the minerals pulled out of the ground. Virginia City was the territorial capital in 1865, until 1875 when it was moved to Helena. It was the scene for the infamous Montana Vigilantes in 1863 and 1864. When criminal activity was high, road agents had been responsible for up to 100 deaths as the result of robbery and murder along the trails and roads in the area.

The vigilantes stepped in and hanged 15 men, including the sheriff of Bannack and the alleged leader of the road agent gang, Henry Plummer. With murder and mayhem of the areas past, it’s no wonder it’s also infamous for ghostly encounters by visitors and the locals. Virtually every building has a story of a spirit inhabiting it.

Charles Bovey is the man who preserved the area. He came from a wealthy family, his father was the president of General Mills. He came to Montana to learn the milling trade and never left. Bovey fell in love with the unique history and charm of the area and began purchasing buildings and property in the late 1940’s. Saving many of the structures from demolition and decay. In 1961, Virginia City was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Bovey also purchased buildings and antiques for Virginia City and Nevada City as he traveled around the Northwest. Creating one of the most extensive collections depicting the old west.

I’m a Montana native and grew up wondering through the dusty buildings and hiking on the trails of mine tailings in this area. I usually get over there at least once a year, and on every visit I learn something new. My last visit a couple of weeks ago was no exception.

I accompanied Montana PBS producer, Gus Chambers on his latest escapade. He was gathering information and footage for his new documentary. We managed to get the “keys to the city”, thanks to Marge Antolik, who works for the local Chamber of Commerce. She let us in the back door to many of the buildings, which is a real treat to someone like me, who loves rooting around in all things old and historical.

We wandered through the livery stable, and the mercantile. Shot some footage in the old saloon in Nevada City, and visited with the manager of the Virginia City Players playhouse. We even shot some scenes in an old Victorian house at dusk. Rumors say that the spirit of a little girl lives in that house. Something I really didn’t need to hear as I was standing alone in a dark room, waiting for Chambers to wrap up a scene. I kept expecting to feel a tug on my pant leg, and see a little girl standing there with a ball, wanting to play.

The one place that really caught my attention was the old newspaper building for the Montana Post. Especially since I’m now a reporter. The Montana Post was the first newspaper in the Montana Territory.

The back of the building had an old printing press. With hundreds of lead letters and images in all shapes and sizes, filling file cabinets that lined the dusty walls. It’s hard to imagine working on a newspaper, painstakingly laying out each letter to create a story. The Post measured 21 x 31 inches (six columns wide) and was printed on a Washington pattern hand press.

To create a page, individual letters were assembled into words and lines of text, and the whole assembly was bound together to make up a page image called a forme. The forme was then mounted on a printing press.

The little historical tidbit that really grabbed my attention was that Samuel Clemens, or as he is more famously known, Mark Twain, started his career as a reporter. He worked for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise located in Nevada in 1862. He then moved to Carbon City, Nevada and continued his reporting career.

It’s rumored that while Bovey was traveling through Nevada, he purchased some old printing materials. Including a forme that is believed to have been layed out by Mark Twain. This forme is in the collection at the Montana Post.

However, because of the extent of the collection found in Virginia City, not everything has been cataloged. Nor, has everything been thoroughly researched and so this is not a proven fact. But, it’s still fun to image that a little piece of American literary history can be found in this funky old town tucked away in the hills of Montana.