Hamilton grew from the Anaconda Company’s demand for lumber, was strengthened by the Bitterroot apple boom, and was later sustained by medical research. Copper King Marcus Daly, whose Big Mill cut millions of board feet annually for his mines and smelter, created the timber town after coming to the area to raise race horses. Engineer James Hamilton, working as Daly’s front man, quietly bought 160 acres from local farmers and platted the townsite in 1890, with Main Street running between the Big Mill on the west and the railroad on the east. By 1893, more than forty businesses operated downtown, serving mill workers along Main Street’s wooden boardwalks. Concern over fire led merchants to replace many early false-front wooden buildings with structures of locally made brick or blue-gray stone from nearby Corvallis. After 1907, the Bitterroot apple boom brought new wealth, Hamilton’s population grew to three thousand, and downtown gained several stylish architect-designed buildings with high-fire brick, metal mullion storefronts, and leaded glass transoms. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, founded to fight spotted fever, helped sustain the economy, and business owners introduced a sleeker architectural style. The Bower Building at South Second and West Main, designed by Missoula architect H. E. Kirkemo, typifies the smooth lines fashionable in the 1930s, while the wood-frame false-front building at 411 West Main reflects the community’s earliest history.