Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps - A Pictorial Guide

Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps by writer-photographer William W. Whitfield is the result of more than a dozen years of research and field work. Whitfield literally covers the Montana ghost town story in detail, offering photographs and textual commentary from an on-the-ground perspective by someone totally enthralled with the adventure of visiting these remnants of the Treasure State's early era of gold diggings and mining.His book is broken down into ten chapters featuring specific geographic regions. They include the Garnet Range, Gold Creek Camps, Pintler Scenic Route, the Big Hole Basin, the Deer Lodge area, Clark Fork Country, the Great (Continental) Divide, Missouri Headwaters, the Big Belt District and Montana Territory.Whitfield emphasizes in the introduction to his work that he believes Montana's ghost towns are a resource in considerable peril. On visiting the places featured in our book, we found that some of the buildings portrayed in earlier accounts had simply disappeared, he said. A few have been torn down in the short time it took to assemble our book and time, neglect and weather continue to take their toll on the more remote locations. Those that are protected by state or federal agencies have fared somewhat better than the many other desolate and long forgotten town sites. Whitfield believes that his photographs document the best of what remains of Montana's ghost towns and gold camps.
I consider the photos in my book a testimonial to the spirit and sense of historical importance most of us embrace as part of our wonderful past, Whitfield said. It is my hope that long after these sites have returned to nature that the pictures in my book will serve as a vital documentation required for us to keep the essence of those bygone days of discovery alive for all who might wish to revisit Montana's rich heritage of ghost towns and gold camps, whether in person or in the same spirit that inspired me to do the book. Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps contains 240 pages, over 450 photographs, issued in softcover format.