Molson, WA

Scattered on the desolate plateaus of the Okanogan Highlands, a few miles south of the Canadian border, stand the quietly decomposing relics of pioneer homesteads. A handful of gold rush townsites persist as durable monuments from a bygone era of boom then bust mineral exploration that brought intrepid Chinese miners and later white settlers to this corner of the Old West.

Frontier towns like Bodie, Chesaw, and Molson briefly thrived during the late Victorian era when gold was discovered in the rivers and creeks between the Pasayten Wilderness and the Selkirk Mountains. Mineral fever brought an enthusiastic and short-lived prosperity to the rugged Okanogan, but like so many other small towns on the edge of nothing, once the veins tapped out or became too expensive to extract, the communities dried up.

Today what remains of these sites survive in quintessential ghost town form. From the agricultural hamlets of Tonasket and Oroville, lonely mountain roads climb several thousand feet into the Okanogan Highlands, transporting travelers into a time capsule of the Old West in slow decay. As the terrain levels out, old prospector cabins and abandoned mining equipment dot the landscape. On the cliff walls high above the old roadways, Native American petroglyphs quietly survey the landscape as they have for hundreds of years.

The townsite of Molson, named after the Canadian brewing magnates who were early investors in the region still showcases its sturdy, stonework school house standing proudly in addition to the wood-planked Molson State Bank, which has managed to keep its original safe securely inside all these years. Nearly a dozen other wooden buildings in various condition remain scattered among the grassy landscape surrounding this former frontier mecca that boasted a population of 300 in 1899.