Silver City

Silver City: A Beginning History of the First Settlement in Lewis & Clark County, Montana Territory

North of present day Helena, Montana, lies the Silver City Cemetery, all that remains of a small community that sprang up in the 1860s where a wagon road crossed the stream known as Silver Creek. The stories of those buried there illustrate events of distinctive form and pattern—the fabric of history.  They tell what happened in the now nearly empty expanse between Silver Creek and the Hilger Valley to the east.

Here is where Lewis & Clark County began, in a neighborhood with Silver City anchoring its identity. In this fresh look at that beginning, people come to life, stories unfold and old tales are dispelled.  Based on research that led to the listing of the Silver City Cemetery on the National Register of Historic Places, author Paul Putz draws on newly accessible and untapped sources to weave this new history together, linking it to established accounts and bringing us up to the present era.

Produced with the support of the Lewis & Clark County Historical Society

By Paul M. Putz. Softcover, 150 pages. Pub. Date: Nov. 2020