1876 there were 12 hotels, 6 stores, 3 bakers, 3 tobacconists and stationers, Edwards the butcher, lemonade factory and a surgeon. The sheer size of the population, estimated in May 1877 at 19,500 for the field, kept money circulating among commercial houses for essentials and luxury goods, but at the same time, there was little financial investment in the permanent manifestations of settlement. By 1882 the number of hotels had declined to six, and there were two European Stores, 10 Chinese stores, two banks, two butchers, baker, blacksmith, saddler, chemist, lemonade factory and printer. A post office existed from 1876 to 1945. By 1877, the Golden Age newspaper was printed followed by the Palmer Chronicle in 1883. Mining Warden Philip Frederic Sellheim, an educated family man residing at Maytown, bemoaned the lack of social institutions and initiated the establishment of a hospital, school and Miners' Institute Library, although these did not eventuate until the 1880s when most of Maytown's population had departed. In 1886 the population was 154 Europeans and 450 Chinese. There was no Christian church, but there was a Chinese temple. By the turn of the century the town had a branch of the Queensland Government Savings Bank, a state school, courthouse, school of arts, hospital, police barracks, one hotel, eight stores - four of which were Chinese, a baker, saddler and Miners Institute. In 1900, the town had a population of 674 (252 Europeans and 422 Chinese). By 1924 only Wah Chong and Company's store remained operating. Buildings like the school, which closed in 1925, remained abandoned until World War II in the hope of a mining revival. The town was largely abandoned by 1945. Today there are only the remains of the baker's oven, stone kerb and channeling along the former Leslie Street, telegraph poles, floor paving, a cemetery with 16 headstones from 1875 to 1986 remaining and in Duff Street a replica hut built by the Palmer River Historical Preservation Society. Description The township is located on the north bank of the Palmer River near the junction of Butcher's Creek. The area contains a high concentration of building surfaces and footings. Some street alignments are discernible and one street contains carefully laid stone kerbing and gutters. Dominant structural remains include a brick baker's oven, timber uprights for the school, a Chinese temple site, and burnt timber stumps and corrugated iron sheets of the police station.