The Beginnings of the Milton Business Block

The Milton Hotel is on the right side, followed by the Brown store and post office, harness shop and Breen's Saloon/barber shop.The balconies and awnings are just temporarily attached until painting is completed and the board sidewalk is installed.

As I had mentioned, the next step in reconstructing Milton was to build up the business blocks. There are very few pictures of this area but there are three good Sanborn insurance maps. Between all of these, I think I have a good shot of getting a decent reproduction of the town.
   

This long view shows the wood baseboard with pads attached to create a slope. Structures will eventually stretch from the lower left to the right end of the base.

The first five buildings are the Milton Hotel, the Brown store and Post Office, the harness shop, barber shop and Breen's Saloon. Since these structures will be up against the backdrop, almost all of them have been shortened. The street itself (San Francisco Street), was on a slight slope. To reproduce this, I used a 1x4 base board and glued pieces of wood of varying thicknesses to hold the buildings and provide a slight upgrade. The structures themselves are all built of styrene with Tichy and Grandt Line windows and doors as close to the originals as I could get. Some of the windows have had panes cut out to shorten them to prototype length.
 

The first business block can be seen at the left in this 1890s photo. Breen's Saloon is on the left with the Milton Hotel at the right.

These five businesses mark the end of the first block. The second block will contain the Pioneer Livery, Big Tree Saloon, Frank Brown's store and a boarding house. The third block will house another boarding house and the Tornado Hotel.