The town of Pony takes its name from a miner of small stature, a man known as Tecumseh "Pony" Smith, who prospected northeast from Alder Gulch in 1867 and staked a claim on the creek that would carry his nickname into the historical record. Smith found modest color and left, returning with a partner in 1868, but the small camp that arose around his work did not survive into the 1870s. The real story of Pony begins in 1874 and 1875, when prospectors working the Tobacco Root Mountains above the creek found the lode deposits that would make the district one of the more productive gold camps in Madison County. The Boss Tweed, the Strawberry, the Clipper, and a dozen other mines gave Pony a second life that outlasted its first by decades, and the stone mill that Henry Elling built in 1883 stood as the most visible monument to the ambitions that investors brought to this corner of southwestern Montana.

History

The lode mining era at Pony opened in 1874 when Jerome W. Bales and George A. Kendall found gold at the Ned mine and uncovered the Willow Creek vein a few weeks later. William Robson located the Keystone, and George Moreland found the Crevice and Strawberry lodes about two miles above the present town site, the latter lying in a patch of wild berries that gave it its name. The Strawberry's quartz deposit was considered the motherlode of the district's placer ground; at a depth of fourteen feet, Moreland uncovered a lead ten feet wide that contained free gold worth twenty to one hundred dollars a ton.

The Boss Tweed was located in 1875 by Albert Mason, Thomas Carmin, Alex Lefler, William Robson, and Albert Dinnock. The Clipper followed, staked by W.V. Ryan, Jesse Barker, and W.H. Metcalf. Together with the Belle and Eclipse properties, these claims formed the Boss Tweed group, which would eventually produce more than five million dollars in gold. The first quartz mill in the district, a five-stamp water-powered operation at the Crevice mine, was built during the winter of 1875-1876 by A.H. and James A. Mallory, using equipment that had originally been erected at Sterling. By the spring of 1877, five more mills were in operation with a combined total of fifty-six stamps, and over a thousand men had moved into the district to prospect, mine, and work the machinery.

The town of Pony was established in June 1876 at a location between Pony and North Willow Creeks. Sixteen months after its founding, it contained three stores, two blacksmith shops, three hotels, a post office, three saloons, two livery stables, and a population of 250 living in eighty houses. The growth was driven by the six quartz mills and a sawmill in the immediate vicinity. When new strikes were reported at Glendale, Philipsburg, and other locations in 1878, Pony emptied out almost overnight, the population dwindling to a few hundred as miners chased the next discovery.

The camp's second major chapter began in 1880, when Henry Elling and William W. Morris, two leading citizens of Virginia City, bought the Boss Tweed-Clipper mines. From those properties they would eventually recover five million dollars in gold. In 1882, Morris acquired the Strawberry, Willow Creek, and Ned mines. In 1883, Elling erected a stone twenty-stamp mill that became the most substantial structure in the district; when Morris bought a half interest in 1884, it became known as the Elling-Morris stone mill, running to capacity on ore from the Boss Tweed and Keystone mines and handling nothing that ran less than twenty-five dollars a ton.

The 1890s brought corporate capital to Pony. The Garnet Gold Mining Company, owned by St. Louis investors, developed a group of thirteen claims and erected a twenty-stamp mill in 1896. The Pony Gold Mining Company, held by ex-governor Samuel T. Hauser and Anton M. Holter of Helena, modernized the Boss Tweed and Clipper operations with compressors and air drills. Hauser persuaded the Northern Pacific Railway to build a sixteen-mile spur from Sappington on the Jefferson River to Pony, and the town received rail service in the spring of 1890. By 1895, the population had grown to about five hundred, with school enrollment of 108.

The most ambitious project of the era was also its most spectacular failure. The Indian Mining Company, which bought the Boss Tweed and Clipper properties in 1901, erected a one-hundred-stamp mill a quarter mile west of town above North Willow Creek, extending a railroad spur to the site and constructing a Pelton-wheel hydro-plant to power the machinery. The mill was never operated. The investment that was supposed to transform Pony into a major industrial mining center instead stood idle, and the town began its long decline. The district remained active through the 1930s, but the scale of operations shrank steadily. Total production for the Pony district and the neighboring Potosi, Mammoth, and Bismark districts combined was approximately $6.43 million, mainly in gold.

What Remains Today

Pony today is a partial ghost town with a small resident population of around one hundred people. The stone Elling-Morris mill, built in 1883, is the most prominent surviving structure from the mining era, its walls still standing in the valley above North Willow Creek. Mine shafts, tailings, and scattered equipment mark the locations of the major properties on the hillsides above town. Several historic buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries survive in the townsite, giving Pony a character that is more intact than most of Montana's ghost towns. The town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Pony Historic District.

Visiting

Pony is located in Madison County approximately thirty miles north of Ennis via Montana Highway 287 and secondary roads. The town is accessible by paved road and is open to visitors year-round, though the high-elevation mine sites above town are best reached in summer and early fall. The Elling-Morris mill is visible from the road. Twin Bridges, the Madison County seat, is the nearest larger service center, approximately twenty miles to the southwest. The Madison Valley is one of the most scenic corridors in southwestern Montana, and Pony makes a natural stop on a circuit that includes Nevada City, Virginia City, and the Tobacco Root Mountains.