Taft is a populated place in Mineral County, Montana.
History
The boomtown was founded when the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ("The Milwaukee Road") built its Pacific Coast extension (1906–1909) and had to bore a tunnel through the mountains near its site. Tunnel #20 on the railroad, it is known as St. Paul Pass Tunnel or Taft Tunnel; its East Portal is southwest at approximately above sea level and heads southwest into Idaho.
In its earliest years, the town consisted mostly of men working for the railroad, mining, or forest industries. It was notorious for drinking, gambling, a murder rate higher than Chicago, and a reputed "five prostitutes for every man." One reporter described it as "the wickedest city in America." during "The Big Burn" - a giant forest wildfire fed by Palouser winds, and was not rebuilt. (see The Big Burn by Timothy Egan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2009.)
Today
Today, on Interstate 90, the site is noted by exit 5, marked "Taft." The area hosts a maintenance yard for the Montana Department of Transportation, access to the Route of the Hiawatha rail trail,