Darby: End of the Line in the Bitterroot

Darby is the southernmost town in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, and the end of the Northern Pacific rail line that served the valley. Officially established in eighteen eighty-nine, it went through a couple of names before becoming Darby, named for its postmaster James Darby. The town incorporated in nineteen seventeen with a blacksmith as its first mayor.

Thirteen years later, Darby made a quiet kind of history when it elected what is believed to be the first all-woman town council in Montana. The surrounding country is big-game hunting and fishing territory, backed by the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, one of the largest roadless areas in the lower forty-eight. False-front buildings from the gold-dust days still stand along the main street.