Nevada City sits one and a half miles west of Virginia City on the floor of Alder Gulch, and the two towns share a history so intertwined that it is difficult to write about one without writing about the other. Both were born in the summer of 1863, when the discovery of gold in Alder Gulch triggered one of the largest rushes in the history of the American West. Both served as centers of commerce and government for the thousands of miners who flooded into the gulch. Both were considered, along with Bannack, as candidates for the territorial capital. And both declined as the gold played out in the late 1860s, their populations drifting away to the next discovery. The difference between them today is the story of one man's obsession with preservation. Virginia City survived as a functioning community and became a National Historic Landmark. Nevada City was rescued from near-total obliteration by Charles Bovey, a former state senator who spent two decades assembling an outdoor museum from the wreckage of Montana's gold rush era, and the result is one of the most unusual historic sites in the American West.

History

Nevada City was occupied by residents as early as June 6, 1863, within days of the Alder Gulch gold discovery. Miners settled the length of the gulch and established homes and businesses with the speed that characterized every major Montana rush, and Nevada City emerged as one of two commercial centers in what became known as one of the richest gold strikes in the Rocky Mountain West. On December 19, 1863, a miners' court trial took place in Nevada City for the murder of Nicholas Tbalt, a Dutchman. George Ives was convicted, and in less than an hour he was hanged in the middle of town while nearly two thousand residents watched. The Ives trial was the event that galvanized the formation of the Montana Vigilantes, who would go on to hang Henry Plummer and his road agents at Bannack and Gallows Gulch in January 1864.

Nevada City was incorporated as a city on February 9, 1865, and during the selection of the territorial capital it was considered alongside Bannack and Virginia City for that distinction. The most commonly listed occupation of Nevada City's working class was "placer miner," and the camp's fortunes were entirely tied to the gold in the gulch. By 1869, the population had fallen to about one hundred people. In April 1872, the city contained one miners' store, one brewery, a blacksmith shop, a butcher shop, a livery stable, and a Masonic Hall. By 1880, only fifty residents remained.

In 1896, the Conrey Placer Mining Company was organized to dredge the gulch for the gold that hand mining had left behind. The dredges operated for the next twenty-four years, processing the gravel of Alder Gulch on an industrial scale and destroying many of Nevada City's remaining buildings in the process. When the dredging ended in 1922, approximately two and a half billion dollars' worth of gold in today's market had been extracted from the gulch, and the wooden barges that had carried the dredging equipment were left to slowly be reclaimed by nature. Other original Nevada City buildings were destroyed when the highway was built through the area.

The rescue of Nevada City began in the 1950s, when Charles Bovey, a former state senator with a passion for Montana history, began buying land and property in the town with the intention of redeveloping it as an outdoor museum. Over the next twenty years, Bovey reconstructed Nevada City, moving nearly one hundred historic buildings from other sites across Montana and adding them to the fifteen original gold-rush era buildings that remained on the town site. Forrest "Scotty" Zion of Zion Construction and Housemoving in Great Falls was a close friend of the Boveys and moved the buildings from their original locations. With few existing historic photographs to guide him, Bovey assembled buildings to represent an earlier era: saloons, a school, a blacksmith shop, a barbershop, a post office, and cabins. He relocated seven buildings associated with Chinese communities from around Madison County to create a Chinatown section of the museum. The Music Hall building came from Yellowstone National Park, and Bovey filled it with a collection of organs and coin-operated music players from Brooklyn, New York. The Nevada City Hotel was created by joining a building from Salisbury, Montana, to a structure from Yellowstone.

The result was something that had no precise precedent in American historic preservation: a town assembled from the scattered remnants of an era, arranged on a site that had genuine historical significance, and opened to the public as a living record of the gold rush years. The approach was criticized by some preservationists as more theatrical than historical, but the buildings Bovey saved would otherwise have been lost entirely, and the collection he assembled represents an irreplaceable record of nineteenth-century Montana material culture.

What Remains Today

Nevada City today is owned by the State of Montana and managed by the Montana Heritage Commission. The town consists of an open-air museum that includes 108 buildings, fourteen of which are original to the town site. The Nevada City Music Hall houses North America's largest collection of automated music machines, including organs and coin-operated players collected by Bovey from across the country. The Nevada City Hotel and Cabins, the Star Bakery, and the Nevada City Hotel Coffee Shop operate seasonally. The town is linked by a narrow-gauge railroad to the Virginia City Historic District, one and a half miles to the east.

Visiting

Nevada City is located on Montana Highway 287 approximately twenty-seven miles southeast of Twin Bridges and one and a half miles west of Virginia City. The museum is open during the summer season, with some businesses operating year-round. Admission is charged for the Music Hall and some other attractions. Virginia City, immediately to the east, is a National Historic Landmark with its own collection of preserved buildings, shops, and restaurants. The two towns together make one of the most complete gold-rush era experiences available anywhere in the American West. Ennis, approximately thirty miles to the south, is the nearest larger service center.