Featured in this lot is this Pony and Virginia City Montana ephemera collection of receipts and invoices from the Isdell Mercantile Company and S.R. Buford & Company in Montana circa 1890-1895. This ephemera comes from during the first 5+ years of Montana's statehood! The Isdell Mercantile Company was created in 1869 by N. J. Isdell in the town of Pony, Montana. Once called the "metropolis of the Madison Valley" by the Madisonian, Pony was a boom town created by major quartz discoveries in 1875. The mercantile was incorporated in 1892. By 1900 the town had a schoolhouse, bank, newspaper, hotels, and several saloons. This growth, made possible by wealth from local mining operations, allowed the small store to prosper. The Isdell Mercantile provided hardware, mining supplies, and various dry goods to the community. The town, which once had a population over 1,000 in 1900, was completely abandoned by the 1940s. The mercantile went out of business when the quartz mining was halted in the Pony area. Simeon R. Buford a Virginia City, Montana merchant, stage line operator, and rancher, opened the region?s largest grocery store here in the Montana Territory in 1878. Buford?s was the supply point for most of southwestern Montana, including the infant ?Butte City.? In later years, Butte?s huge warehouses would, in turn, supply Buford?s own business. The ephemera includes advertisements, personal memos, invoices, and receipts from hundreds of stores, banks, law firms from Montana and across the United States. The documents are all in amazingly preserved condition exhibiting wear and age tanning from their antique age and use. Mounted in hardcover leather folios, respectively measuring 9.25" x 14.75"L x 4.5"D and 9.25"W x 14.75"L x 2.5"D. Combined weight 13lb, 12oz.

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