Taft, Montana: A Town Born to Die
Published: First Quarter 2021 in The Milwaukee Railroader
In 1907, Pat Callahan stepped off the train at the Northern Pacific railroad depot in Taft, Montana; a depot made of nothing more than an old boxcar with its wheels removed. Six rough men were loitering nearby and cast him a menacing glare. Squaring his hat, he approached the group when a large man by the name of Liverpool Jake, stepped in his path. Liverpool Jake was well-known for the beatings he inflicted on other men. If, during their encounter, men didn’t get out of Jake’s way he would simply knock them down. Callahan, with his six- foot, 240 -pound frame, did not step aside. Instead he took a quick punch to Liverpool’s jaw and threw him into the street, leaving the defeated giant with a broken jaw in a puddle of mud. Callahan wiped his fist with a cloth, a fist once declared to be the “largest in Missoula County.” The other men quickly dispersed and the cantankerous town quickly learned that a new deputy had arrived.
At the time of Callahan’s arrival, the railroad camp of Taft had grown rapidly. Crews for the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railway had been working tirelessly throughout the Northwest on a new Pacific Coast Extension. The culmination of the Extension centered on a 1.77-mile tunnel bored through the Bitterroot Mountains that separated Montana and Idaho. It was called the St. Paul, or “Taft” Tunnel. The project would eventually make railroad history and create the last Wild West town in the United States.
In the fall of 2019, a group of archeologists and volunteers stood on a small bench overlooking Interstate 90. Nearby was an off ramp leading to a large vacant lot, its designation was Exit 5, Taft. Nothing remains of the town of Taft which once sported over 40 businesses and served nearly 8,000 railroad workers. The archeologist’s mission was to locate a long-forgotten cemetery for a town that disappeared over 100 years ago.
Railroads in Montana
The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, or in 1907 simply “The St. Paul”, started late in the game of westward expansion. It was the final company to lay main line track in Montana, preceded by The Union Pacific, The Northern Pacific and The Great Northern owned by “Empire Builder”, James Hill. Hill had extended to Puget Sound in 1893 with lines which ran through northern Montana. Hill, along with his associates, including the powerful banker J.P. Morgan, had also acquired the Northern Pacific. Along with other tracks, the Northern Pacific line ran through the southern part of the state. The Hill-Morgan team then purchased another company with business in Montana, the Burlington Line.
By 1901 the Hill-Morgan group joined with Edward Harriman of Union Pacific, and solidified a railroad monopoly called the Northern Securities Company. The company didn’t last long, as President Theodore Roosevelt said it violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and it was ordered to disband in 1904 by the United States Supreme Court. This opened the door for the Milwaukee Road to step in and build to the coast in an effort to stay competitive with the other lines.
Albert J. Earling was president of the St. Paul Railroad and his brother, Herman Earling, became the superintendent of the Pacific Extension. Work on it started in 1906 and encompassed a 1,385-mile westward extension from Glenham, South Dakota. Its tracks closely followed the old Mullan military road built in 1859-1860 between Fort Benton, Nebraska Territory (now Montana) and Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory. The Milwaukee Road proved to be an expensive line to build with beginning costs estimated at $60 million. Unlike the Northern Pacific or the Great Northern there were no land grants or loans given by the government. Instead, short-term bonds were issued to help finance the project. It was a gamble the company was willing to make. Silver mining had boosted railroad trade during the latter part of the 1890’s and copper companies in Butte were rapidly rising in the world market. Companies needed railroads to import heavy machinery as well as export their precious metals. Ranching and farming were also at a fevered pitch and railroads offered access to national and international markets. In 1904, Montana was the number one wool-growing state, shipping over 37 million pounds of wool. This was the era of the homestead boom with cheap land coupled with new dry farming techniques. The Milwaukee Road took the lead in promotional campaigns to lure farmers to the West from throughout the United States and Europe.
The Pacific Extension
The Pacific Extension route through western Montana was estimated to be 150 miles shorter than the Northern Pacific-Burlington route and 80 miles shorter than the Great Northern-Burlington lines and boasted better grades. With thousands of men working on the rail line, labor costs made up a large portion of the company’s construction budget. Managing an efficient workforce was the best way to keep costs low. One way to control expenses was to import laborers from the Southwest or to use immigrants. Labor contractors from Spokane and Seattle provided able-bodied men at a specified price per head. The bulk of the immigrants were Hungarians, Montenegrins, Swedes, Austrians, Serbians, as well as Italians, Irish, Japanese and Chinese.
As work progressed into Montana from South Dakota, surveyors and land agents had first set the path west from the Dakotas to the Yellowstone Valley near Fallon, Montana. They were followed by cheap labor crews that cleared right-of-way with pick and shovel. Next were graders, track layers and gandy dancers who spiked the rails down and tamped the ties. Additionally, there were hard-rock men, muckers, and engineers. Work moved southwest from Harlowton to Butte and from there to Deer Lodge following the Clark Fork River. Unemployed steel workers came from Chicago and St. Louis. Carpenters were Scandinavians from Minneapolis or Seattle. Pile-drivers were French-Canadians who also worked as lumberjacks, cutting ties for the railroad or the tunnels. “Coyote men” handled the explosives and were considered a “special lot” due to the dangerous nature of their work.
At the peak of construction nearly 10,000 men worked on the railroad with camps dotting the grades from South Dakota to Seattle. “No money, effort or labor has been spared in building the line,” said Albert Earling. Work at the camps came with a high turnover rate. One tunnel contractor commented that it was not unusual for 60-75 men to quit their jobs as soon as they had a little pocket money. “Their tendency is to not get too rich at one time. As soon as they have $40 or more coming to them, they are happy and want to come to town to celebrate their fortune.”
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