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Taft

Photo of Taft in 1910

A view from 1939:

TAFT, (3,625 alt.), is a ghost camp of 3 or 4 unoccupied frame buildings. In 1908, when the Milwaukee Road was driving its St. Paul Pass Tunnel through the Bitterroot Mountains, it was a town of 2,000 inhabitants whose many saloons, gambling houses, dance halls, and flimsy buildings crowded the narrow valley. In the winter of 1909-10 the town was almost entirely destroyed by fire. When Idaho and Washington were dry and Montana wet, Taft was one of the supply points for bootleggers operating in the dry States, and was visited frequently by residents of such towns as Mullan, Wallace, and Kellogg, Idaho. But even that could not keep it alive. It saw its last real activity in 1916, when an electric power line was built across the Coeur d'Alene Mountains to connect the railroad substation at East Portal, 2 miles west with Thompson Falls.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.