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.

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.

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.

Two museums so far!

Better that than the usual dusty junk-filled antique store, I suppose.

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.

“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.

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.

City Hall. Could’ve been a bank.

Interesting how they kept the hue of the stone, even when they worked in brick.

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.

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.

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.