Hangman’s Tree

A lone Ponderosa pine, just west of Helena's present-day Blake Street between Highland and Hillsdale, served as the town’s Hangman’s Tree. It was the only tree left standing in 1865 after miners had denuded the countryside for cabins and sluices. Mary Sheehan Ronan attended school up the hill in a simple cabin at Rodney and Broadway. From the schoolyard the children had a clear view of the lone Ponderosa. One morning as they arrived at school, the children saw the limp form of a man dangling from the tree. The boys ran up and down the gulch, speculating about the “bad man” who received such awful punishment.  Mary later wrote: “I hated the talk. It made me shiver… that dreadful, pitiful object, with bruised head, disarrayed vest and trousers, with boots so stiff, so worn, so wrinkled, so strangely the most poignant of all the gruesome details. I tried to forget, but I have never forgotten.” At least eleven men suffered this fate on the famed Hangman’s Tree. The last of the eleven hangings took place in 1870 when vigilantes hanged Arthur Compton and Joe Wilson for the attempted murder of a local rancher. Photographer Mary Ann Eckert captured the grisly scene in a graphic, horrific photograph.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 948-121

Until recently a copy of it graced the hallway of a Helena elementary school, a strong message that crime doesn’t pay. In 1875, thousands thronged the neighborhood to cut a souvenir sliver from the tree when Reverend Shippen, a Methodist minister, cut it down. He claimed recent flooding had undermined its roots and the tree was so unstable that he feared it would fall on his barn and kill his horse. Many years later, while workers were digging a foundation for a new house, the huge roots of the Hangman’s Tree came to light. They were just as sturdy and secure as they must have been when the tree was young.

P.S. Tales of hauntings abound throughout the neighborhood around the tree. Read about them in Beyond Spirit Tailings, now available as an ebook.