Story from the Great Falls History Museum By Megan Sanford, Archives Administrator
There are few who have not heard of Charles and Sue Bovey in Montana. They were a true power couple; Charles from a wheat milling family in Minneapolis who came to Great Falls to farm, and Sue, the daughter of the rich and affluent Ford banking family. They married in 1933 and began a journey together that would mark Montana forever.
Charles had a particular interest in old vehicles. Soon that interest included carriages and railroad cars. It was a passion that changed over time to a desire to preserve the frontier culture of the West.
The Montana Cowboy’s Association asked him to display his vehicles at the state fair where his collection reached a larger audience and caught the attention of the Sullivan family in Fort Benton. They gave him the Joseph Sullivan Saddlery they owned at Fort Benton in 1940. Soon the collection included buildings from Elkhorn, Augusta and Boulder. To protect
and share these places, Charles put together Old Town at the Great Falls Fairgrounds in 1941. Old Town was a one-sided street front inside one of the buildings that you could step into and relive the frontier era. Charles and Sue traveled around the state, purchasing pieces to fill the little street. They also staged old timers as the owners and patrons of the businesses.
With their collection on full display, more people who wanted to help preserve the early history of Montana joined their efforts and in 1944 the Historic Landmark Society of Montana was born and showed the need for preserving endangered sites across the state.
The Boveys had gone east to see Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village and decided that they could do the same in Montana. And so, in 1946, they purchased the run-down buildings of Wallace Street in Virginia City which had been all but abandoned by 1875. The Boveys knew its history and thought it was a perfect place for their preservation efforts. On Wallace Street, they fixed up the Well’s Fargo office, a blacksmith shop, livery stable, saloon and an assay office. They leased the buildings to the Landmark Society to manage.
Their efforts were recognized on a state level in 1952 when both Charles and Sue were given honorary degrees from the Montana State University Missoula (University of Montana now). In 1959, the fairgrounds in Great Falls wanted more room for the state fair so the Bovey’s moved Old Town near Virginia City to create Nevada City. Nevada City, seeded with Old Town, grew quickly with a hotel, a dry goods store, drug store, stagecoach station, music hall, and railroad station as well as Charles’ Railroad car collection. In 1964, the Alder Gulch Short line was put in to connect Virigina City and Nevada City together for tourists. Though Virginia City and Nevada City are the most tangible parts of their work, the Boveys did so much more and their contributions have saved so much of Montana that otherwise would now be gone.