The assay office/superintendent's office (now the gift shop) and the blacksmith shop (now the mining museum) both date from about 1906, the time of Ester's first wave of settlement. Both are one-story, gable-roofed structures, the assay office sided with horizontal planks and the blacksmith's shop with corrugated metal. The false fronts were added in about 1958 to make their appearance more picturesque. Between them is the Malemute Saloon, a reconstruction; the original burned to the ground in 1969.