Aldridge, Montana
Near Gardiner, Montana
Two miles north of Yellowstone's north gate, a handful of stone foundations and tailings piles are almost all that remain of Aldridge, Montana, a coal town that blazed to life and vanished within a single generation. Major Horr discovered coal veins here in eighteen seventy-two, and by the eighteen eighties the mine was producing fifty tons of coal and iron ore daily, shipped to Anaconda Copper's smelters in Butte, Great Falls, and Helena. At its peak, Aldridge held a population of eight hundred people.
It went by different names over the years: Horr, then Electric, then Aldridge, the name it kept when it incorporated in nineteen oh six. The end came quickly. The Montana Coal and Coke Company defaulted on its bonds around nineteen ten, the courts ordered repayment of over one hundred thousand dollars, and the mines closed.
Aldridge didn't survive its debts. The Yellowstone wilderness reclaimed the site almost immediately.
