William Allen Montgomery

William Allen Montgomery was 64 years old and widely regarded as an “old timer in Nevada” when he died in Tonopah on January 19, 1902, from what was most likely pneumonia. Born in Kentucky in 1838, Bill Montgomery belonged to that first generation of men who helped stitch Nevada together long before its mining camps became towns.

Over the course of his life, he earned more than one distinction. He stocked the first overland stage route in Nevada and later became the first elected Treasurer of Eureka County, running on the Democratic Liberal ticket. Public service seemed to come naturally to him, as did hard work of nearly every kind.

Montgomery’s movements followed the shifting centers of opportunity in the West. He lived for years in Eureka, where he and his wife, Josie, raised a large family—ten children in all, six of whom lived with them there. During that time, Bill somehow managed to operate a wholesale butcher shop, run a stage route, and serve as county treasurer simultaneously. Contemporary newspaper accounts frequently placed him at the center of community affairs. One article in the Eureka Sentinel of April 25, 1875 praised him for “serving as a committee of one” to remove a large number of animal carcasses that had been left to rot beside a public thoroughfare—an unglamorous task, but one that benefited the entire town.

By the late 1890s, Montgomery had relocated yet again. The 1900 U.S. Census records Bill, Josie, and nine of their children living in Joseph, Sevier County, Utah, with Bill listing his occupation simply as “teamster.” It was work he knew well, and one he continued into his later years.

In September 1901, the Pioche Record reported that “Bill Montgomery leaves this week for Tonopah loaded with passengers. He goes as head teamster for J. A. Denton.” Whether he intended the trip to be temporary or whether the excitement of Tonopah’s new mining boom persuaded him to remain is unknown. What is certain is that Tonopah became the place where his long, itinerant life came to an end.

No death certificate has been located for Montgomery, though one newspaper stated that his death resulted from “a complication of diseases.” His funeral was said to have been largely attended, a final indication of the respect he had earned across decades of work, service, and community involvement.

Bill Montgomery did not die rich or famous, but he left behind something more enduring: a reputation for usefulness, reliability, and quiet civic duty—qualities that helped sustain Nevada’s earliest towns long after the stage routes and butcher shops had disappeared. The boomtown he entered in 1901 was built in no small part by men just like him—merchants, teamsters, stage operators, butchers, and miners—who arrived carrying experience rather than hope alone. When he died here in 1902, Tonopah lost one of its earliest inhabitants, and Nevada lost another of the old hands whose lives bridged the territory’s rough beginnings and its uncertain future.