Nevada City open-air museum
— a gold camp the Boveys would not let go.
Not only on a wall.
“Nevada City was a placer-gold camp on Alder Gulch in 1863, briefly one of the largest settlements in the Montana Territory, then mostly emptied within a decade. Beginning in the 1940s Charles and Sue Bovey moved more than a hundred historic buildings onto the site from across Montana to keep the country's vanishing wooden architecture standing. Today the open-air town runs as a living museum, the Music Hall still loud with player pianos and orchestrions, the boardwalks still loose underfoot.
Nevada City open-air museum, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Nevada City sits about a mile and a half west of Virginia City in Madison County, Montana, on Alder Gulch where placer gold was struck on May 26, 1863. At its peak the gulch carried roughly 10,000 miners, and Nevada City was the second-largest camp on the strike. The town faded as the surface gold ran out. Beginning in the late 1940s Charles and Sue Bovey acquired the site and began moving threatened historic buildings here from across Montana, creating one of the largest collections of original 19th-century wooden architecture in the American West. The Montana Heritage Commission now operates the property.
Nevada City is open seasonally, generally from late May through mid-September, with a smaller schedule around Labor Day. The site is walkable in an afternoon: more than 100 buildings, a Music Hall holding one of the largest collections of automated music machines in the United States, the working Alder Gulch Short Line steam train running the mile to Virginia City. Day-use admission supports the Montana Heritage Commission and the buildings' ongoing preservation. The Star Bakery and a few storefronts operate on summer hours; the Nevada City Hotel takes overnight guests in restored rooms.
The town runs on a seasonal cycle that matches the high-country light. June and early July bring the busiest weeks, with the train running daily and the Music Hall open through the afternoon. The Brewery Follies and Virginia City Players perform across the gulch in Virginia City through summer. By Labor Day the schedule thins, and most of the site shutters by late September when nighttime temperatures drop into the twenties at this elevation. Winter leaves the boardwalks and false-fronts to the snow and the occasional caretaker.