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Lewis and Clark 200  >>  Montana  >>  Anaconda  >>  Community Interest  >>  Recreation Areas  >>  Beartown

Beartown Anaconda, Montana Location:    Anaconda 59711 406-563-3357 This web page has had 2180 unique visitors. Buy Patrick Clark posters online. BigSkyMontana.us Description: Due to the location in Bear Gulch, Coloma, Garnet, Beartown, and Bearmouth are all interrelated. Of the four, Beartown is the only one to have disappeared. Gold was discovered in 1865, and became the trading center for 5,000 miners. By 1866 the town had yielded a cool million in gold and silver. What once was a storage vault for powder became the town a jail. Beartown was the home of ‘Beartown Roughs,’ creating the desire and need for more than one jail.. Prisoners were often taken to the nearby town of Deer Lodge. However, the prisoners often escaped before justice could reach them. Beartown had businesses as usual, consisting of a wash house, a drug store, a slaughter house, a brewery, a general store, a hotel, and forming the heart of town was Pelletier’s saloon (a two story structure). Pelletier’s housed Chicago Joe’s dance hall girls, for whom work was hard, and pay was good. The dance girls were generally for ‘rent,’ however, the decision was made they could be bought at the auction. Advertisements were run in the Missoula and Cedar Creek pioneer. Beartown sought to be the state capital at one time. People still journey to Beartown because there is a steep cliff, where, they say, a Chinaman buried a fortune in a five pound baking powder can. Its never been found. "