It has the look of a boom town that faded, and never quite matched its early successes.
Yesterday we read the news. There must have a Times newspaper as well.
In fact, there still is a Times Newspaper. The Times-Clarion, the local rag. Can’t find any internet presence, though.
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It’s the satellite dish that always brings you up short.
Such decay, and also a piece of metal that listens to an object in space.
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The big hotel:
Recently spiffed?
Wikipedia explains the look of the town:
The Graves Hotel is a historic hotel located at 106 South Central Avenue in Harlowton, Montana. A. C. Graves, a leading figure in Harlowton's early development, had the hotel built in 1909; it was one of the first businesses to be built after a fire destroyed much of downtown Harlowton in 1907. The hotel was the first sandstone building in Harlowton, though the stone eventually became a common building material.
True, as we’ll see.
A well-preserved bank, although . . .
It looks as if it has an annoying sidekick who trails along and asks a lot of irritating questions.
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Two museums so far!
Better that than the usual dusty junk-filled antique store, I suppose.
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Again, you suspect two owners . . .
. . . one of whom ain’t going to do a damned thing about his side, because it’s fine and he ain’t got the scratch.
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“Well, I’ll show him. Edna, had me the catalog for the Bay Window company, they say they can have one out on the next train.”
The one on the left has a more attractive storefront, since it’s the original. The REMEDIES building looks a bit overloaded.
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Modern for a while; a sign of the outside world’s trends and fashions coming to down.
Appears to be gutted and waiting to fall down.
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City Hall. Could’ve been a bank.
Interesting how they kept the hue of the stone, even when they worked in brick.
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Ah, now there’s a sign. What does it say?
OASIS
Not the word you associate with Montana, but people got the idea. It was cool inside, and there were liquids.
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As I said: it had a boom, and then the money moved on. Left all the nice little buildings, showing us what they liked a hundred years ago.
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There’s a sign. STOCKMAN’S.
I suppose you were a Stockman’s drinker, or an Oasis drinker.
More to come: next week has a remarkable, if disheartening, artifact.
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