Life in the near dessert

An on-line journal

Eastern Montana is a small town with a long street

When she entered the world, the century was a month old and shiny as a new penny. When she left, the century and the millennium had come to an end. And in the 100 years that she was alive the world saw more change than in the 900 years that had come before.

As obituaries go, hers was OK, but it failed to convey what a remarkable woman she was. She was raised in a place called Aldrich, a coal mining town that once nestled one mountain away from the Paradise Valley near Livingston. If you went to Aldrich today, you might see some ruins, tailing piles or isolated, overgrown stacks of bricks -- and if you were observant, you might realize there was once a town there.

What little I know of the place comes from a model I once saw in the Park County Museum in Livingston, a brief glance at a book about Aldrich I discovered in the back room at my work and from the stories my grandmother told.

According to my grandmother, the easiest way over the mountain to Aldrich was in a huge bucket hung from a cable designed to carry coal. She told me what it was like to ride in the bucket. I have a vivid picture in my mind of her suspended there with other children -- she was a beautiful child. A colorized photograph of her shows long, auburn locks hanging down the side of her head.

Unlike most towns that die, this one ended suddenly -- and she was present when the end came. The coal company offered the workers an ultimatum. Either they took a cut in pay, or the mine was to be closed. According to grandmother, the workers gathered in her father's house to discuss the offer. The house, like the rest of the town, sat on a hill, and the road beside the house sloped upward so that when she sat on the edge of the road she could easily see through the window. Grandmother described sitting there that night, looking into the window as the men voted to shut the mine down.

At the museum, when I looked at the model of Aldrich, I studied each house carefully until I found the one that most resembled what my grandmother described. I gazed at it, wondering if that was how the house my grandmother lived in had really looked.

My grandmother married young -- a man as remarkable as herself. They raised three children of their own, and two nephews and a niece -- the children of her husband's brother who died young. They eventually settled in the middle of the Shield's Valley.

The railroad needed a place to water its steam locomotives, and it chose a spot on my grandfather's land. A town grew up around them to service the train, and the railroad named it after her family -- Chadbourne.

My grandfather and grandmother ranched with great energy, faced many difficulties and many sad times. One of their sons went off to the war and never returned. Two of their grandchildren died tragic deaths. One of their sons was crippled by polio but survived to live a productive life. Many times they teetered on the brink of financial disaster, but in the end they prospered. When they were ready to retire, and the ranch was finally sold, it went for a small fortune -- enough so they lived comfortably at the end of their lives.

One of the cousins my grandparents raised took me once to a piece of land downstream from the ranch. He pointed westward far across the river. There were hills, and hills beyond those. "Everything you see," he said to me, "at one time belonged to the ranch."

Now that grandmother has died, there is one less thing in the world that carries the Chadbourne name. The family had no male heirs who survived. The town of Chadbourne, unlike Aldrich, died a lingering death -- I believe that I witnessed the end myself. By the time that I came along, all that remained was the Chadbourne town hall, which was used by the ranching community of the Shield's Valley. Now even that has been hauled off, put to use by one of the neighboring ranchers. The railroad tracks themselves have been pulled up. The only structure that remains is an elevator, standing beside where the tracks once lay, looking incongruous and unused as it falls apart piece by piece. There is a sign beside the elevator, probably unreadable now, that says "Chadbourne."

My uncle lives in a ranchet near the site. He and his wife, one of his cousins and his wife are all that remain who carry the family name. Once they are gone, the family name will die except on a few very old maps. Then all that will remain will be my own memories of them, and the memories of my brothers and the few who knew the Chadbournes. They lived long lives, they succeed against unbelievable odds and in the end they came to nothing.

That is the way of the Montana landscape. You can live in it, survive in it, even make your mark on it, but in the end, it will outlive you. And with time, very little will remain to show those who come after that you were once there.