Holding it down in Silver Star

S ilver Star, Mont. lies along Highway 287 between Twin Bridges and Whitehall. It’s one of those blink and you might miss it kind of small towns, but if you’re paying any attention at all you’re bound to take note of the bright yellow store-slash-post office: Granny’s Country Store.

It’s mainly a stop for the historic mining community’s residents to drop in and grab their mail.

But it’s also an opportunity for those folks to catch up with store owner and contract postmaster Matt Mangiamele. As Mangiamele explained, he came to Silver Star 11 years ago, marrying into the community via his wife Renee who has owned the business for nearly two decades.

The post office and store building is over 100 years old – it’s been commercially run all that time, from a bar to a grocery store to its current use – a post office and online book store. As the population dwindled so did the need for groceries, but tourists and passersby can still come in to check out the outdoor-themed book selection and chat with Mangiamele.

Learning the history of the community from along the way from the “old timers” who used to reside there, Mangiamele is now a go-to for all things Silver Star.

Many of those early residents that had lived in Silver Star their whole lives, second and third generation residents, have passed away in recent years. Nowadays, only a handful of living Silver Star residents were born and raised in the community.

“So that history is disappearing,” said Mangiamele, recalling long gone residents whose roots go back to the inception of the town, named after a gold mining claim. It was a fairly busy place in the 1900s, complete with grocery stores, butcher shops, hotels, bars and the like. But as roads were paved and the world changed, residents started looking for work elsewhere.

“All these outlying towns pretty much dried up, and now they’re pretty much retirement communities,” said an opinionated Mangiamele, who has seen more people move to the area in the last two years than he’s seen in all his 11 years living in Silver Star. “They’re just flowing in, buying houses and properties to develop, and young Montana couples struggling to buy a home get outbid, to the point they have to leave. The biggest export of Montana is our young people.”

Will Silver Star ever see a resurgence of commerce? Mangiamele said he’s watched as the old Broadway Mine has had exploration work done by mining company Rio Tinto the past two summers, drilling holes and taking core samples in pursuit of copper.

Another defunct mine, Green Campbell, the state’s first patented mining claim, hasn’t been touched in years. It was patented in 1869, the same year the Silver Star Post Office opened its doors.

Those used to living in more populous areas may wonder, just what is it like living in Silver Star? Aside from the obligatory six-day work week for the post office, Mangiamele seems content in his little corner of the world.

“It’s really just a quiet little town, everybody minds their own business,” he said. “To an extent it’s a town of recluses, we’re sociable and we help out our neighbors, but for the most part, we just mind our own business and live our lives.”

The sad part, said Mangiamele, is the loss of the older residents who brought color to the community. One resident of note was Lloyd Harkins who lived just across the street from the post office.

Harkins, born in the Red Lodge area, lost his mother when he was a young boy, the youngest of 10 children. His father dropped him off in the orphanage in Twin Bridges. He made it out of the orphanage as a young teen, surviving hand to mouth, in the height of the depression, until he was old enough to mine.

Harkins had a fascination with the mining history of the state, going on solo trips with just a pickup truck and lowboy trailer to move massive mining equipment from Butte to Silver Star where his treasures remain to this day.

“Lloyd was a real treasure, a wonderful person,” said Mangiamele.

Before Mangiamele could get into any more history, a customer dropped in to check his mail. There was none, but the two took the opportunity to talk about the weather, SUVs sliding off the road from Butte, horn hunting, mule deer populations, moon phases and how they affect animals, and the arrogance of human beings.