[1] Located in the Bitterroot Range near the Idaho border along the route of the Mullan Road, it was a thriving railroad town c. 1908, named after William H. Taft (shortly before he was elected president in 1908).

It is said in both Up the Swiftwater by Sandra A. Crowell and David O. Asleson, and in The Big Burn by Timothy Egan, that the unnamed work camp got its name after Taft, then Secretary of War, traveling on a Northern Pacific train, berated the town as a blight on the American landscape which must clean up its act, to a cheering drunken crowd.

[4] In its earliest years, the town consisted mostly of men working for the railroad, mining, or forest industries.

It was notorious for drinking, gambling, a murder rate higher than Chicago, and a reputed "five prostitutes for every man."

The area hosts a maintenance yard for the Montana Department of Transportation, access to the Route of the Hiawatha rail trail,[4] and access to St. Regis (Sohon) / Mullan Pass vía Randolph Creek Road, which heads north and west from I-90.