Taft: The Wickedest City in America

Between nineteen oh six and nineteen ten, a railroad construction camp erupted in the Bitterroot Range near the Montana-Idaho border. At its peak, more than three thousand people lived here, mostly workers driving the Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railroad's Pacific Coast Extension through the mountains. A visiting reporter called it the wickedest city in America, citing a murder rate higher than Chicago's, plus saloons and gambling halls running around the clock.

The town was nameless until Secretary of War William Taft passed through and publicly called it a sewer of sin. In response, the residents promptly named their town after him. Then in August of nineteen ten, the Great Fire swept through and burned Taft to ash. It was never rebuilt. Exit five on Interstate Ninety still reads Taft, but there is almost nothing left to see.