JULY 2023 Ghost Towns and History of Montana Newsletter From The Big Timber Pioneer July 19, 1917 TOUGHEST TOWN IN THE WORLD Accessed via: montananewspapers.org Among the "ghost" towns of the Treasure state, in whose balmy days flourished the romance of hard and fast living there is probably none which will live longer in the memories of the pioneers of northern Montana than McCarthyville, which is acclaimed by Montanans who sojourned there, to have been "the toughest town in the world." McCarthyville was a city for a period of only 18 months. For the most part a railway construction camp at the time when the Great Northern Railway company was building its line into the mountains of Northern Montana, its population, always Arabic in disposition, wandered away, following the rails that Jim Hill was then laying toward Puget Sound. The garish, false-fronted frame dance halls, saloons and stores were wrecked for the lumber and the sturdier log buildings succumbed to the elements. Today, this "wild and woolly" camp is represented only by a quartet of untenable cabins squatted on the little prairie far below the Great Northern grade. The town was started by Eugene McCarthy and a partner whose name was Will Hardy. Mr. McCarthy is one of the pioneer characters of Kalispell. In an interview given by him a few years ago, McCarthy told, in brief, the story of the establishment of the town. In the course of his story, he said: “We really started the town in September platting it into lots and filing the Photo Courtesy of Northwest Montana Historical Society
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