MONTANA: Ghost Town, 1943

The handsomest ghost town of World War II—Mouat, a $15 million investment in chrome—sat on a shelf of Montana's Bear Tooth Mountains last week, all but deserted.

Shiny new fire engines parked unused.

A bowling alley's polished lanes were unscratched. No patient had slept in the sleek new 50-bed hospital, fitted with X-rays and incubators. A mess hall (capacity: 450) had finer equipment than any hotel in Montana, but nothing and nobody to serve. A dozen boys and girls shouted down empty corridors of a school-house built for 200. Lloyd Badgley's store had...

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