Mortimer H. Lott

Toll Bridges and Town Lots:

Mortimer H. Lott and the Making of Twin Bridges

A Merchant Among the Miners

Montana's gold camps of the 1860s are usually remembered through their outlaws and the men who hanged them. Mortimer Hewlett Lott belongs to a quieter category: the people who sold goods to the miners, built the crossings the miners needed, and stayed after the placers thinned. Lott lived ninety-two years, reached the northern Rockies before Congress organized Montana Territory, and died in 1920 as the founder of Twin Bridges, a town where the Beaverhead, Ruby, and Big Hole rivers meet in Madison County. His life touched the vigilance committee, the Madison County courts, the state orphanage, and the Society of Montana Pioneers. It also illustrates a problem every historian of the period faces: much of what is known about men like Lott comes from their own reminiscences, their families' papers, and tributes composed in old age.

From Lottsville to the Big Hole

Lott was born on December 25, 1827, at Lottsville, Warren County, Pennsylvania, the son of Hewlett and Maria (Ditmars) Lott (Society of Montana Pioneers; Bowen). A biographical compendium issued in the early twentieth century says his father, a Long Island native, moved to Pennsylvania in 1814 with his own father and helped found the town that carries the family name. Mortimer attended public school and then Fredonia Academy in New York, leaving in 1852, and worked the family farm until 1857 (Bowen).

That spring he started for Minnesota but changed his plans at West Union, Iowa, bought two horses and a wagon, and went on with his brother John to Marshall County, Kansas, where the two took up a ranch. In 1860 Mortimer went to Denver and worked placer ground at California Gulch, Colorado. After a prospecting tour of New Mexico he returned to the gulch in July 1861 (Bowen). In 1862 he turned north. The Society of Montana Pioneers register of 1899 records his route, by way of the Platte, the Green River, South Pass, Fort Bridger, and Salt Lake City, and an arrival in the Big Hole Basin on July 16, 1862 (Society of Montana Pioneers).

Bowen's account adds that he prospected from Fort Lemhi on the Salmon River, found gold on a branch of the Big Hole, and then worked claims at Bannack until July 1863. His richest claim, on Jimmy's Bar, is said to have yielded $1,400 from his sluice box in a single day (Bowen). That figure rests on one source, and it is the subject's own recollection. A later state record says Lott "reportedly" sluiced the first gold in Montana in 1862 ("Change Squaw Creek"). That claim is disputed: Noyes reports that Lott believed his July 16 sluice boxes were first, while Granville Stuart claimed his party began in May, two months earlier, and the Lott family papers include a newspaper clipping whose title asks who set Montana's first sluice box ("M.J. Lott Papers").

A Store, a Safe, and the Vigilance Committee

Leaving Bannack in July 1863, Mortimer and John, trading as Lott Brothers, opened a general store in Nevada City in Alder Gulch (Bowen; "M.J. Lott Papers"). The National Cowboy Museum places the store in Virginia City instead ("Mortimer Hewlett Lott"). The firm owned the only safe in town, which made the store a depository for gold dust. Road agents were then threatening life and property throughout the district, and Bowen reports that Lott slept in the building to guard it.

The store also became a place where frontier justice was organized. According to the sketch of John Lott in the same compendium, the oath of the vigilance committee was drawn up in the Lott Brothers store and signed there by the twenty-four men who captured the outlaw George Ives. Ives was held in the store for two nights and a day. When men from Virginia City demanded that he be taken there, Mortimer climbed a pile of lumber outside the store and moved that the prisoner be kept in Nevada City; the motion carried. W. F. Sanders prosecuted, Judge Byam presided, and Ives was convicted and hanged (Bowen).

Whether Mortimer himself belonged to the committee is less certain than later summaries suggest. The National Cowboy Museum and the Montana Geographic Names Advisor both call him a member, and the latter says he was one of six men who formed it ("Mortimer Hewlett Lott"; "Change Squaw Creek"). Neither cites a roster, and the committee was secret. Bowen places Mortimer at the Ives proceedings and credits John with the offices of captain and treasurer, but does not call Mortimer a member. What the evidence supports is that Mortimer was present, that his store was used, and that he took part in at least one public decision.

Two Bridges and a Town

In the spring of 1865 Mortimer moved to the site of Twin Bridges, built the first house there, and acquired a large tract along the Beaverhead and Big Hole rivers. The store building was carried over from Nevada City and used for many years. The brothers held a tract described as three miles square, including the future townsite, and gave away lots to draw settlers (Bowen); Miller's Illustrated History (1894) gives the tract as two miles square. The family papers confirm the move in 1865 ("M.J. Lott Papers"). In 1867, according to Bowen, they built bridges over the Beaverhead and the Big Hole, a third over the Beaverhead at Point of Rocks about fifteen miles upstream, and a network of roads. The town took its name from the first two bridges, which were toll bridges and remained in use for about twenty years (Bowen; Sparks). The National Cowboy Museum adds that the brothers received a charter for a bridge and ferry company ("Mortimer Hewlett Lott").

The founding chronology varies. Bowen has Lott arriving in 1865 and building the bridges in 1867, while a University of Montana account says the brothers reached the site in 1864 and settled it in 1867 (Sparks). Bowen and the family papers give 1890 for the platting of the town, while Miller's Illustrated History (1894) gives 1889.

The Lotts gave land for public purposes. Bowen and the family papers say they donated forty-five acres for the county fair grounds and race track and one hundred acres for the State Orphan Home, but Miller's Illustrated History (1894) reverses the attribution, crediting 100 acres to inducing a normal school and only 22 acres to the orphan asylum. Sparks reports that the home opened at Twin Bridges in 1894, after a petition by Judge Lott, J. M. Paige, and Pat Carney, and operated until 1975. Of roughly 5,900 children who passed through it, only about five percent were orphans (Sparks). The family papers also hold donor lists, petitions, and announcements from the Montana State Normal University at Twin Bridges, and material from the campaign to locate the state normal school there ("M.J. Lott Papers"). The papers also include daybooks, a ledger, and a letterpress copybook from the family's mercantile business in the 1870s and 1880s.

Judge, Mason, and Pioneer

Lott was a Republican and, according to Bowen, served for years as probate judge of Madison County. He belonged to Westgate Lodge No. 27 of the Masons, was its past master, and was a member of Virginia City Chapter No. 1, Royal Arch Masons. Later summaries add that he was a justice of the peace, a county commissioner, a member of the Twin Bridges school board, the town's first mayor, and president of the Society of Montana Pioneers ("Mortimer Hewlett Lott"). The Society's own register lists him as a real estate dealer residing at Twin Bridges (Society of Montana Pioneers). The Society, founded at Helena in 1884, limited membership at first to residents of the territory on or before May 26, 1864, and published the register in 1899 with sketches of more than 1,800 pioneers.

On May 20, 1880, at Twin Bridges, he married Melvina Carson, a Pennsylvania-born schoolteacher raised in Iowa who had come to the town to teach (Bowen; "M.J. Lott Papers"). They had two children, a daughter, Marie, and a son, Mortimer J., who later served in the Montana legislature ("M.J. Lott Papers"). Melvina kept a diary of a September 1880 trip to the geysers of Yellowstone and in 1931 wrote the first part of a history of Twin Bridges and vicinity for the local Woman's Club ("M.J. Lott Papers"). John never married and served as territorial auditor from 1864 to 1866 (Bowen; Society of Montana Pioneers). A photograph held at Montana State University shows Mortimer as an elderly man behind a picket fence, in front of a frame house, captioned as the founder of Twin Bridges at his old home (Brook). He died on October 4, 1920 ("M.J. Lott Papers"; "Mortimer Hewlett Lott").

The Afterlife of a Reputation

In 1965 the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum inducted Lott into its Hall of Great Westerners ("Mortimer Hewlett Lott"). A smaller recognition came in 2005, when Montana's Domestic Names Committee considered a proposal to rename a Madison County stream then called Squaw Creek, a name considered by some to be derogatory. An advisory committee had proposed Indian Woman Creek. The Forest Supervisor reported no local support for that change and suggested a name commemorating pioneer families, and Lott Creek was offered instead. On March 10, 2005, the committee voted six to two against Indian Woman Creek and six to two to approve Lott Creek. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall were sent the proposals and did not respond ("Change Squaw Creek").

A Note on the Evidence

Several points in Lott's biography rest on a single source or on sources that disagree. The details of Lott's schooling, his 1857 journey west, and the Jimmy's Bar yield come from Bowen alone, a compendium of the kind that commonly drew on the subjects' own accounts, while the Big Hole discovery is also reported independently by Miller's Illustrated History (1894) and by Noyes, with different dates. John Lott's arrival is given as 1862 in the pioneer register and fall 1863 in Bowen. Most sources call him John S., while the National Cowboy Museum says John T. His birth is placed in 1830 by Bowen and 1829 by the family papers. The museum places the brothers' store in Virginia City rather than Nevada City. The museum and the Names Advisor describe Mortimer as probate judge for the territory, whereas Bowen says Madison County. The Names Advisor also calls John first auditor of the state, though the register and Bowen say territorial auditor. The family-papers finding aid says John led the party that arrested Henry Plummer, a claim corroborated only by a late secondary narrative, Hoffman Birney's Vigilantes (1929), pp. 248–251, which is self-admittedly dramatized. The online text of Bowen was generated using artificial intelligence, according to the hosting page, and may contain errors, and should be checked against the page images before any quotation.

Works Cited

Bowen, A. W., and Co. Progressive Men of the State of Montana. Part 1, pp. 720–722, A. W. Bowen and Co., [1902?]. LDSGenealogy.com, https://ldsgenealogy.com/MT/books/Progressive-men-of-the-state-of-Montana-pt-1-part-139.htm. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

Brook, Thomas B., photographer. "M. H. Lott the Founder of Twin Bridges Poses at His Old Home." Thomas Brook Photographs, Archives and Special Collections, Montana State University Library, https://arc.lib.montana.edu/brook-0771/item/631. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

"Change Squaw Creek to Lott Creek, Madison County, Montana." Montana Geographic Names Advisor, Montana State Library, https://mslservices.mt.gov/geographic_information/applications/geographicnamesadvisor/geonamesProposal.aspx?ID=38601. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

"M.J. Lott Papers, 1878-1908." Collection 0347, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, Montana State University Library. Archives West, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv37554. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

Montana Historical Society Library and Archives. "Society of Montana Pioneers Records, 1884-1956." Collection MC 68, Archives West, https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv13342. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

"Mortimer Hewlett Lott." Hall of Great Westerners, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, https://nationalcowboymuseum.org/collections/awards/great-westerners/inductees/mortimer-hewlett-lott/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

Society of Montana Pioneers. Montana Pioneers: Constitution, Members and Officers, with "Portraits and Maps." 1899. Transcribed as "Montana Pioneers in Madison County MT," Genealogy Trails, https://genealogytrails.com/mon/madison/pioneers.html. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.

Sparks, Meleah. "Twin Bridges - Gathering of Three Rivers." This Is Montana, Davidson Honors College, University of Montana, https://www.umt.edu/this-is-montana/columns/stories/twinbridges.php. Accessed 24 Oct. 2026.