Friday Photo: Painting the Bleachers

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 94-59 folder 12/21

The men of Kalispell's Local 975 painted the bleachers at the baseball park as a community service project on April 26, 1958. Left to right brushing are Lee Barnes, Bob Casady, Ray Lincoln, and Perry Melton, while Bill Hagestad stands by.

P.S. Remember this baseball team?

Cinnabar Hosts Teddy Roosevelt

A few buried foundation walls are all that mark the place where the town of Cinnabar once hosted a presidential entourage. Situated on the flats between the Yellowstone River and the Gallatin Mountains in the shadows of the famous Electric Peak and Devil’s Slide, Cinnabar took root in 1883. As the Northern Pacific Railroad’s terminus of its Yellowstone National Park branch, the town, four miles north of the park’s entrance, was a lonely stopping place for some twenty years. In 1902, the Northern Pacific extended its line to the new town of Gardiner where the monumental entrance arch to Yellowstone Park was under construction. But the depot and visitor services were as yet nonexistent when, in May of 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt planned a preseason tour and dedication of the entrance arch.

Roosevelt dedicating the entrance arch at Gardiner. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-stereo-1s02085

Cinnabar was the only place to locate the nation’s portable capital. For sixteen days, pullman, parlor, and dining cars serving President Roosevelt and White House staff parked along the tracks at Cinnabar. A contingent of secret service men and newspaper writers added to the throng of visitors. The cavalry stationed in the area made their horses available for fishing trips and sightseeing, and stagecoaches offered excursions into the park.

Preparing to go into Yellowstone National Park. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-18932

Cinnabar’s shabby buildings and antiquated services were a far cry from the nation’s sophisticated capital. Associated Press official Harry Colman remarked, “Well, thank goodness, this blooming town will be wiped off the map when we leave. It’s a mystery to me how it ever got on in the first place.” Once the presidential cars sped down the tracks, Cinnabar’s businesses moved to Gardiner, and that brief moment in time was Cinnabar’s last hurrah.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Observing Memorial Day

The first Decoration Day, or Memorial Day as it came to be called, was formally celebrated in 1868 when the Grand Army of the Republic designated a day of observance honoring casualties of the Civil War. The idea caught on nationally and observances gained popularity during the 1870s. On May 30, 1883, Helena celebrated its first formal observance of Decoration Day with a mile-long procession from Broadway out of the city to Benton Avenue Cemetery. Nearly 1500 people marched in the procession, including some fifty Civil War veterans and a few veterans of the war with Mexico. The Silver Coronet Band provided music. Ladies and gentlemen in carriages joined the crowd at the cemetery, bringing flowers to place on the graves of their loved ones. This observance, the Helena Daily Herald pointed out on June 2, brought to light the deplorable condition of the city's protestant and Catholic cemeteries whose wooden head and foot boards had deteriorated and could not be deciphered.

Wooden grave markers in Helena's Benton Avenue Cemetery, 2003.
Photo courtesy Ric Seabrook and Charleen Spalding. 

Few burial records were being kept. The Herald noted that the county gravedigger simply dug a hole, covered the corpse, and the name of the dead was “…buried in the same oblivion as his body.” An informal tally taken at this time revealed that only one-fourth of the graves in the city's several cemeteries even had markers. Helena was not alone in this situation. If a grave had a wooden marker, it often deteriorated quickly, and until the mid-1880s, Montana had no stone monument makers. Tombstones had to be ordered from catalogs. A. K. Prescott, Montana’s first tombstone maker, did not begin taking orders until about 1885. Unmarked graves exist in nearly every Montana community.

With the moment of national remembrance, which comes at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day, consider all those forgotten dead that lie beneath the sod in your communities.

The Discovery at Alder Gulch

May 26, 2013, marks an important anniversary. On that date in 1863, Barney Hughes, Thomas Cover, Henry Rodgers, William Fairweather, Henry Edgar, and Bill Sweeney discovered gold along a stream fringed with alder trees. Word soon leaked out, and two hundred miners trampled the ground to the discovery site; many others quickly followed. Within two weeks, dwellings lined a crude road connecting numerous settlements, dubbed the “Fourteen-mile City.” Of these settlements scattered along the gulch, Virginia City and Nevada City rivaled each other. Virginia City became the largest and most permanent. At the height of this famous gold rush as many as 30,000 people flooded Alder Gulch. The first two hundred miners came from dwindling placers at Bannack. Some 10,000 disappointed miners came from the Salmon River area in present-day Idaho where the gold strikes there could not support so many people.

Scene in Virginia City, 1866. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-100

Many of these prospectors were veterans of California and Colorado diggings. Other significant groups included Irish Catholic immigrants who were tied to the Union but supported the Democratic party; Southerners escaping the Iron Clad Oath; Republicans who were vehemently against slavery; and others who were tired of the divisions the Civil War created. These made the early community a place of complicated allegiances. A few weeks after the discovery, the Varina Town Company platted the townsite. Some company members, who supported Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy, intended to name the new town after Jefferson Davis’ wife, Varina. But the newly elected miner’s court judge, G. G. Bissell, was an equally stubborn Unionist. When it came time to file the official documents, he submitted the name Virginia instead. Thus Virginia City was born against the backdrop of the Civil War.

Virginia City in 1868 as drawn by A. E. Mathews. Montana Historical Society Research Center

P.S. This weekend, celebrate the anniversary of Montana’s great strike at Alder Gulch by attending the festivities at Virginia and Nevada cities.

Sullivan Saddlery

Nevada City, once a booming gold camp, is now a recreated western town with buildings from across the state. One of its best treasures was rescued from demolition in 1940. Fort Benton was itching to demolish what they considered a public eyesore. The late Joseph Sullivan had crafted saddles in this shop for nearly forty years. Sullivan had died, and Charles Bovey of Great Falls chanced to meet the saddle maker’s daughter who gave him the building along with all its contents.

Inside the Sullivan Saddle Shop. Photo by Daniel Hagerman

The historic saddler was one of the first buildings constructed outside the stockade of old Fort Benton. It was originally used as the first Blackfeet agency in 1863. Acting Governor Thomas Meagher, agent Gad Upson, and others negotiated an important treaty with Piegan chiefs Little Dog and Mountain Chief in the building in 1865. Later, it was a flop-on-the-floor hotel and saloon known as the Council House. In 1881, partners Sullivan and Goss set up their saddlery business in the building. Artist Charlie Russell was a frequent visitor. The rocking chair where he sat and told his endless yarns remains as if Russell were about to return. The entire Sullivan inventory remains intact in the shop. It still smells of horses and leather. This was the first building Charles Bovey “collected” and the beginning of his indoor exhibit in a huge barn at the Great Falls Fair Grounds called “Old Town.”  When asked to remove the “Old Town” exhibit in 1959, Bovey relocated his buildings to Nevada City, and that began the fabulous building collection you can visit today.

The Sullivan Saddlery building in 2012. Photo by Larry Myhre via Flickr

Mountain View School for Girls

The Montana legislature created the Boys and Girls Industrial School at Miles City in 1893. This reformatory was for boys and girls who were either in serious trouble with the law or had nowhere else to go. It was one step toward the establishment of the juvenile court system that came about in 1907. Some felt strongly that there should be separate industrial schools for boys and girls. One of these advocates was Dr. Maria Dean, a Helena physician whose practice specialized in the diseases of women and children. A great humanitarian, Dr. Dean took up many causes during her lifetime, but she felt most strongly about separating boys and girls in detention. Dr. Dean worked tirelessly with other women’s groups toward this end, and finally, in 1919, legislator Emma Ingalls sponsored a bill establishing the Mountain View Vocational School for Girls in Helena. Dr. Dean died just weeks after the bill passed. The first six girls were transferred from Miles City to the new facility seven miles north of Helena in April 1920.



Stewart Hall, 1961. Image clipped from "State of Montana Vocational School for Girls"
Montana Historical Society Research Center

By 1922, fifty-three girls between the ages of nine and eighteen lived in cottages on the campus. Some were orphans, some were runaways, and others had behavioral problems. Until the 1950s, harsh discipline included solitary confinement and lock up. By the 1960s, there was more emphasis on education and less on punishment. In 1996, the school closed and the Montana Law Enforcement Academy moved in. A few buildings, stables, and attic graffiti recall the former use of the campus.

From More Montana Moments

Friday Photo: Miles City Horse Race

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-969

The famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale is this weekend. Are you going? You can compare it to this photo, which shows what the Miles City fairgrounds looked like at a horse race around the turn of the twentieth century. Photo by L. A. Huffman.

P.S. Remember this racehorse?
P.P.S. L. A. Huffman is famous for his photos of cowboys on the range.

Red Lodge Mausoleum

Above-ground burials in mausoleums are the norm in Europe and in some places in the United States. In New Orleans, above-ground burials are required to prevent cemeteries from becoming bone gumbo during frequent flooding. While private mausoleums dot Montana cemeteries, above ground mass burials were never common practice. After 1900, inexpensive concrete construction made building large multiple crypt facilities economically feasible. At the same time, Progressive-era ideology was encouraging individuals to join together for community improvement. Thus, the communal mausoleum movement was born, placing above-ground entombment within financial reach of ordinary citizens. In 1921, the Consolidated Mausoleum Company advertised communal mausoleums in Montana newspapers. “The present high state of civilization demands,” read the ad, “a more humane and sanitary method of taking care of the dead, than found in earth burial.” This opportunity intrigued Red Lodge, and construction of a mass mausoleum engaged the community. More than two hundred people subscribed to the project, and construction of the mausoleum with more than two hundred crypts, or burial spaces, began along Montana Highway 78. Designed as a “time-defying” monument, its simple, but massive temple front, heavy bronze doors, and enormous Tuscan columns emphasize strength and permanence. The reinforced concrete walls are durable and moisture tight, fulfilling the requirements for the mausoleum to survive in perpetuity.

Courtesy Montana State Historic Preservation Office

Nationwide, hundreds of communities joined the movement, but the Red Lodge Communal Mausoleum, recently listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is one of only three identified in Montana. True to plan, the mausoleum housed Red Lodge citizens of all classes. Wealthy businessmen, immigrant coal miners, and their families, lie entombed together “within the walls of one building… imposing and everlasting.”

The Circus Comes to Town

In 1964 Gertrude Hoover Wilcox recalled the summer day in 1917 when the circus came to Kalispell. She and her mother set out for the depot to watch the train unload. Her mother was impeccably dressed in a stylish white blouse with rows of tiny tucks, high topped black shoes, a long black skirt that was extremely tight at the bottom, and a black straw sailor hat with a huge cluster of bright red artificial cherries. A black ruffled parasol completed the outfit. Gertrude’s mother had to walk very slowly as the tight skirt impeded her progress along the board sidewalk. They followed the railroad tracks to the depot, and what a thrilling scene met them! The elephants were pushing the circus wagons down the ramp. Horses waited to pull the wagons that held a tiger, a chimpanzee, and a lion. The boxcars held camels and beautiful performing white horses.

Barnum and Bailey printed this poster in 1917, the same year that Gertrude and her mother saw the circus.

Suddenly someone yelled, “Lookout, there’s an ostrich loose!” The big bird headed straight for Gertrude’s mother. They tried to outrun the bird, but the tight skirt slowed them up, and in a flash the ostrich was right behind them, its neck fully extended, its big beak snapping at those red cherries on her mother’s hat. Gertrude’s mother knew she could never outrun the ostrich with that skirt, so every time the ostrich snapped his beak at the cherries, her mother popped him one with the parasol. The men were laughing so hard it took a few minutes for them to surround the ostrich. Gertrude’s mother was so indignant she had nothing to say but “hmph! hmph!” all the way home.

Happy Mother's Day

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 21 D

Moms have a tough job, but with a hand on her hip and determination in her eye, this homestead mom looks up to the task. Happy Mother's Day to all Montana moms!

P.S. The photo was taken by Evelyn Cameron in 1913 near Fallon, Montana.

Friday Photo: Fishing on the Missouri

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 74-104.136N

In today's photo, Blanche Guillot Judge fishes on the Missouri River circa 1916. There's beautiful weather in the forecast this weekend. Will you take a cue from Blanche and go fishing?

Smith Mine Disaster

Thirty-nine corrugated metal structures mark the site of the Smith Mine, a ghostly reminder of a once vibrant mining district near Bearcreek in Carbon County. The Montana Coal and Iron Company began developing the Smith Mine after the Montana, Wyoming and Southern Railroad arrived in 1906. By 1907, it produced 8,000 tons of high-grade coal. The company mechanized the mine, and throughout the 1930s, it continued to invest in new equipment, building a new crushing plant, elevator, cleaning plant, coal sheds and scales, electrical substation, and other above-ground structures to support the underground operation. By 1943, miners working three shifts a day, six days a week produced almost 500,000 tons of coal annually to meet coal needs for the nation during World War II.  But investments in safety lagged behind other improvements, and in the 1940s, many Smith miners still used open-flame carbide headlamps (as opposed to safer electric lamps). The highly gaseous mine also lacked good ventilation or rock-dusting equipment to control coal dust. On February 27, 1943, this proved a deadly combination when a methane gas explosion in Smith Mine #3 killed seventy-four miners and, later, one rescuer in the worst coal mining disaster in Montana history. There were only three survivors. Although the company closed the #3 adit after the explosion, it continued to work its other mines, raking in record profits through 1945. Declining demand, lower quality coal, competition from diesel and natural gas, and bad management led to the operation’s closure in 1953. Sometimes visitors to the lonely site, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, report anguished cries. They seem to come from deep within the earth and carry on the breeze.

The Smith Mine #3 site in 1968. Library of Congress, HAER MONT,5-RELO.V,2--1

Train Wreck at Boulder

At four o’clock on the afternoon of October 15, 1890, a train laden with ore on the Northern Pacific’s Helena, Boulder Valley & Butte Railroad chugged south along its rugged route from Helena to Boulder. Samuel T. Hauser filed articles of incorporation, with himself as president, and financed the line, built in 1887. Although intended to enter Butte, the line never extended to Butte and ended at Calvin. On that October day in 1890, the locomotive, four freight cars full of ore, and a caboose made its way up the nine miles to the summit of Boulder Hill at the Zenith station. This rugged route consisted of three short tunnels, several wooden trestles on a 3 percent grade, and several sixteen-degree curves. The train was moving at no more than ten miles per hour as regulations required. As the train passed over the first bridge south of the Zenith station, the trestle collapsed beneath it and the train fell into the ravine below.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.23

The caboose and one of the ore cars landed upright. Miraculously the only injury was a broken arm, but for engineer H. H. Mayhew and his seven-man crew, the accident was a horrific event. Mayhew was so traumatized he could not work and sued the railroad. He used his five thousand dollar settlement to open a cigar store in Anaconda.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.24

Northern Pacific investigators determined that the bridge design was not faulty. Rather, after the trestle was constructed, workers forgot to tighten the bolts. Northern Pacific maintenance crews spent the next several weeks tightening bolts on all the other trestles on the Helena, Boulder Valley & Butte line.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.22

Friday Photo: Advertising Butte

Are you planning a vacation this summer? Do you get ideas from travel brochures or magazines? Here's the cover of a pamphlet, published during the Great Depression, that aimed to lure tourists to Butte, Montana.

Montana Historical Society Research Center

Published in 1933 by the Butte Chamber of Commerce, the brochure describes the city this way: "Beautiful by night, unique by day, Butte is literally 'a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid.'" You can read the rest of the promotion here.

What do you think? Based on this description, would you visit Butte?

Great Northern Insignia

The white silhouette of a Rocky Mountain goat on red background was the majestic insignia for the Great Northern Railway. How this famous symbol came to be is a long forgotten tale.  William P. Kenney, who served as Great Northern president in the 1930s, grew up in south Minneapolis. As a boy he sold newspapers. His business was so lucrative that he established a corner newsstand, but carrying newspapers to stock his stand became a problem. So Kenney acquired a billy goat and cart.  But neighbors complained about the billy goat.  Kenney searched the want ads and found a rancher in Midvale, Montana who wanted domestic goats. This rancher was experimenting with breeding domestic goats with some Rocky Mountain goats he had captured.  Kenney made the sale. Many years later, Kenney was the traffic vice president for the Great Northern Railway. He and board chairman Louis W. Hill were traveling across the country and stopped at Glacier Park Station. Kenney recalled that the station had changed its name from Midvale, where he has so long ago sent that billy goat. Making inquiries, he discovered that the rancher and his herd were long gone. The next day Kenney and other officials went out to take in the sights. High on a mountain ledge they spied a magnificent Rocky Mountain goat. From his lofty vantage point, the goat surveyed the party below. Kenney remarked that the goat must be the great-great grandson of the billy goat that pulled his wagon. Everyone laughed, but Hill had an idea. It wasn’t long before Glacier Park artist John L. Clarke had designed the famous logo. And among railway men, it was always known as Kenney’s goat.

This brochure printed by the Great Northern Railway shows the famous mountain goat insignia.
Montana Historical Society Research Center, PAM 4256