Virginia City, Montana – an overview

Virginia City, Montana, is located in the southwestern corner of the state, between the Madison and Ruby Mountain ranges. The location of Montana’s second major gold strike, it was also the location of the territory’s second capital from 1865 – 1875. At it’s peak, the town boasted a population of perhaps 10,000 intrepid residents who flooded into nearby Alder Gulch with hopes of striking it rich and moving on.

By 1870, just five years after it’s founding, Virginia City was a thriving cradle of civilization in a territory that was still largely wild and inhospitable. Powerful American Indian tribes, including the Blackfeet and Crow, still defended territorial claims by force when settlers encroached too close to traditional homelands, and death was a very real possibility.

There were signs of decline as early as 1870. New gold strikes, like the one at Last Chance Gulch, gave rise to bigger towns, including Helena, which superseded Virginia City as Territorial Capital in 1875. Transportation, always a tricky undertaking in territorial Montana, was unabashed in bypassing Virginia City in favor of more accessible settlements. When the railroad finally crossed the state in the 1880s, Virginia City found itself more isolated than ever; the declining town was considered a poor investment prospect by railroad entrepreneurs who saw greater potential in thriving towns such as Dillon and Helena.

Decline struck Virginia City hard throughout the 1880s as population dwindled and placer mining played out. Through it all, however, an intrepid core group of dedicated residents continued to believe in their community, investing in homes, businesses, and belief in the potential for revival. From this period on, the voices within Virginia City who called for expansion of the tourism industry to the former territorial capital were heard in newspapers, circulars, letters, and actions.

Among the residents who chose to stay when many were abandoning the town was a woman named Sarah Bickford. A native of Tennessee, Bickford arrived in Virginia City in the early months of 1871 with a newly appointed Montana Associate Justice named John Luttrell Murphy. Sarah would remain in Montana for the rest of her life, and her contributions to Virginia City’s survival coincide with the harsh years of decline and depression that obliterated many other former mining communities throughout the west.

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Say Hello to Sarah

Outside of southwestern Montana, most people have never heard of Sarah Bickford. Even in the region where she lived for sixty years, hers is not a  “household name.” She never ran for public office, performed on a stage, enacted laws, or built monuments. She may not have changed the course of history, but she did, in her own unique way, make it. Our mission is to bring that history back to life and honor Sarah’s accomplishments – a tribute that is long overdue for this pioneer of Montana and female business ownership. This blog will follow the journey as we research, write, uncover, plan, learn and interpret the life story of an incredible woman named Sarah Blair Gammon Brown Bickford.

Research truly is a process, and it begins from a central inquiry. In our case, the starting point was a simple desire to learn more about a woman whose name is easily recognizable to a select group of specialists interested in Virginia City, Montana, but almost unknown to the rest of the population. We aim to change that.

I first encountered Sarah Bickford while conducting research for my master’s thesis, which focused on business and material culture in Virginia City.  Sarah’s name splashed through the pages of my research and her tenure as a business owner wove through the narrative I wrote. As I completed that project and began work on my Ph.D., Sarah’s story presented an intriguing topic of study. One of my first efforts as as doctoral student was to assist my mentor, part-time adviser, and friend Bill and the Montana Heritage Commission in applying for a Partnership in Scholarship Grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which we were fortunate enough to receive in late 2009.

We chose to title our grant project “Building Freedom in the Territorial West” because this is an apt description for just what Sarah, and other African Americans who spent their lives in Virginia City did. Most came from states that commonly served as staging areas for westward migration – Kansas, Missouri, and, as in Sarah’s case, Tennessee. In Virginia City, they often found a place that welcomed them as members of a community, and which provided opportunities to build lives based around freedom, business success, and personal fulfillment. Virginia City’s glory days faded as the nineteenth century closed, but the tenacious residents who chose to stay built a tight-knit and vibrant community that survived the hard times of war, depression, and drought. Sarah was an important member of that community, and her story is a vital part of the Virginia City story.

I fell in love with Virginia City the first time I set foot on one of it’s warped board sidewalks in the summer of 2007. The more I unravel it’s history, the more I am intrigued. I’m sure you will be too.

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