National Boston Montana Mines Corporation -1933 dated Montana Mining Bond

Various Denominations Bond printed by Goes. Helena, Montana. An estimated $5,000,000 was spent by the Boston-Montana Development Company in building the Elkhorn mine project. It was discovered almost as soon as the mill went into production that the veins of ore were not developed enough to supply sufficient ore to keep the mill operating at even half its capacity. This made it impossible for the company to meet it’s financial obligations. In 1923, the final blow in the series of misfortunes experienced by the company occurred in June when a Montana Power Company dam on Pattengail Creek broke, flooding the lower Wise River valley and washing out 12 miles of the Montana Southern Railroad’s tracks and several of the line’s bridges across the Big Hole River. The line was repaired by 1930 but by then the Great Depression had begun and metal prices had declined to a point where it was not possible for the company to resume production (Sassman 1941; Evans 1946; Geach 1972; Wirtz and Lovell 1976).

The company was reorganized on May 17, 1933 as the National Boston-Montana Mines Corporation. In 1944, it became the Boston Mines Company but it was still unable to revive the operation and by the end of the 1940s most of the company’s deeded properties were acquired by Beaverhead County in lieu of taxes. As head of the National Boston-Montana Mines Corporation, William Allen continued for the next two decades to try and revive the Elkhorn mines. Although he lost his personal fortune in the enterprise, he continued to believe that the mines were a potential bonanza until his death in 1953 at his home in Wise River. (Sassman 1941; Evans 1946; Geach 1972; Wirtz and Lovell 1976; Patterson 1989). Read more at https://www.montanapictures.net/coolidge-montana-ghost-town-montanapictures-net/