Zortman

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A view from 1939:

ZORTMAN, (4,000 alt., 70 pop.), is not quite a ghost town, but has the forlorn, time-bleached appearance common to abandoned camps. Many cabins, built by hopeful prospectors in the 1890's, stand win-dowless and lonely among the trees.

Pete Zortman, who came to the Little Rockies in the 1880's, discovered a mine he named the Alabama, which is said to have produced $600,000. In the early 1890's Charles Whitcomb discovered what became the Ruby Gulch mine, 2 miles north of Zortman, credited with $3,500,000. What was asserted to be the world's second largest cyanide mill was erected here, and for several years wagonloads of gold bricks were freighted out of town to Malta and Dodson.

It is said that there was a saloon entrance every 40 feet along the street and a badman on every corner. One of its legendary characters was Joe Mallette, a freighter whose skill earned him the most difficult jobs in a difficult trade. He rigged a boom on the uphill side of his wagon, and perched on it to steady his loads on the primitive mountain trails. Once the slant became too great for his weight to offset and his load of bottled stuff turned over, tossing him down the slope in a cascade of glass and foaming beer. On another occasion when he was attempting to haul a large boiler over the alkali flats to the Ruby Gulch mine, his wagon sank to its axles. Mallette rigged a rolling hitch and rolled the boiler, a few feet at a time, across three miles of mud.

Shortly after 1900, when all the easily accessible ore had been removed, Zortman's mill burned down and in 1929 a fire destroyed four buildings on the main street, virtually wiping out the town.

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.