White Sulphur Springs, Slice 4 of 31

White Sulphur Springs Post Office

Where is White Sulphur Springs?  Its on Highway 12 and Highway 89.    It is the county seat of Meagher county.  You can see the Big Belt Mountains from main street.  According to 2010 census there are 939 people who live there.

According MT Place Names From Alzada to Zortman
"White Sulphur Springs
White Sulphur Springs was originally called Brewers Springs, after James Scott Brewer, who laid claim to the thermal springs in 1866. In 1876, postmaster Henry Brainerd requested that postal officials change the name to White Sulphur Springs, for the white deposits found around the springs. Brewer sold the springs in 1877 to Dr. William Parberry, who laid out the townsite a year later, and in 1880 White Sulphur Springs won the Meagher County seat from Diamond City. Mining boomed in the nearby Castle Mountains during the 1880s, but tapered off in the 1890s, when the timber industry began to develop. According to Mountains of Gold, Hills of Grass, 3,000 residents lived in White Sulphur Springs during the peak of the timber industry."


It is also home to some folks you may have heard of: Ivan Doig the writer was born here.  He wrote "This House of Sky". Dirk Benedict, actor - is from here.  Emmanuel Taylor Gordon, singer associated with the Harlem Renaissance - He was born and raised in White Sulphur Springs.  As a youth he moved away but returned in 1959 and remained until his death in 1971. http://www.greatfallstribune.com/multimedia/125newsmakers1/gordon.html

White Sulphur Springs influenced another great writer - F Scott Fitzgerald http://www.wildriverreview.com/node/262 .  He spent a summer in the White Sulphur Springs area.  He came to visit the Castle Mountain Livestock Company that was owned by his college chum - Charles Donahoe's family.  This Donahoe Manor at White Sulphur Springs, MT. His masterpiece the "Great Gatsby" was influenced by his stay in Montana.

White Sulphur Springs is also the home to Susan (the lady who gave us directions and had the barn with writing on the roof).  Susan is the local rural mail carrier - she travels a 126 mile circuit each day delivering mail.  That doesn't count the miles to and from their ranch. 

The roof on Susan's barn intrigues me.  I want to learn more about her barn and the early barnstormers.