A Christmas Ghost

There is a beautiful house on Helena’s lower West Side that has been home to a number of tenants in the past twenty-five years. Some of those who have been associated with the house report odd experiences that I have detailed in Haunted Helena: Montana’s Queen City Ghosts. For the Scott family, the house was a magical place that holds special memories of family and one unique Christmas dinner. The house was built in 1877, and its longtime owner was Christmas Gift Evans, whose pioneer hardware firm of Sanford and Evans was a well-known, reputable Helena business. Chris Evans was born in Deerfield, New York, on Christmas Day in 1840. His parents felt so blessed at his birth that they named him Christmas Gift.

The Christmas Gift Evans House, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is a rare example of the French Second Empire style. Its Mansard roof has elegant wrought iron cresting and inside, the handsome dark woodwork evokes another time. Original built-in furniture includes a dining room breakfront with exquisite beveled glass. The house has seen its share of tragedy including the death of Evans. Suffering from circulatory problems in 1915, Evans died in the house after the surgical amputation of his leg.

Christmas Gift Evans, born on Christmas Day, 1840, still likes to celebrate his birthday.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Garth Scott was a single parent with two children when the family moved into the house in 2004. During the year they lived there, the Scotts thoroughly enjoyed the historic home and created some wonderful family memories. But it was Christmas that year that was especially memorable. Garth’s mother cooked a huge family dinner for some thirty family members who gathered around the dining room table. They took many photographs to capture Christmas memories. An extra guest appears in many of the photos, reflected in the beveled glass of the breakfront. The image of a man with a distinctive goatee does not match any of the guests seated at the table.

The family later discovered a portrait of Evans in a drawer of the breakfront. The identity of the image is certain. Christmas Gift Evans, perhaps in celebration of his birthday, apparently shared the family’s Christmas dinner.

Friday Photo: Standing on the Car

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 94-84.4

This man, Thomas Leslie Lyle, opened a photography studio in Helena in 1914. This photo was taken in 1917, and the location is unknown. Does anyone recognize it?

Chinese Altar

Preparations are underway for the Montana Historical Society’s latest major exhibit, The Chinese in Montana: Our Forgotten Pioneers. The exhibit will feature Chinese textiles, ceramics, and cultural treasures that have never been on public exhibit. Items  include a sixteen-foot hand written banner from the Chinese Masonic Temple in Virginia City, a noodle machine from the Mai Wah Noodle Parlor in Butte, and traditional clothing. But one especially exciting item is an altar from the Chinese Masonic Temple in Helena.

The Chinese altar from Helena’s Chinese Masonic Temple is currently undergoing conservation.

When the conservator laid the altar on its back, the address “206 Clore” was discovered penciled on its underside. From the 1870s to about 1892, the address belonged to a small log cabin on what is now Park Avenue, immediately next door to the Pioneer Cabin. The tiny dwelling was one of a row labeled “Chinese.”  Whoever the occupant of the cabin was must have played some role in the altar’s installation in the Helena temple.

The altar is not only beautiful art, but it is also richly symbolic of the land left behind.  Worship in the temple was a solace to these sojourners who kept their customs, their beliefs, and adapted their lifestyles to the western frontier. Rich green, red, and gold paint is typical of Chinese furnishings.  Intricate characters flanking the altar’s sides, according to our translators, poetically glorify some long ago military hero. Carvings in the wood across the top poignantly represent the Chinese homeland. Golden silkworm moths, wings outspread, flutter among flowers; pairs of bats, their expressions peculiarly menacing, symbolize good luck.

Bats appear menacing in the altar carving but represent good luck.

The altar was a gift in 1973 of Helenan Doris Marshall who, with her husband Walter, founded the Brewery Theatre.  The altar was purchased at auction when the temple fell to urban renewal. Mrs. Marshall likely used it in a stage production and then donated it to the Montana Historical Society. And it is fortunate that she did. This rare object will be a focal point in Forgotten Pioneers, scheduled to open in May 2015.

A Gruesome Legacy

Violence in Montana’s mining camps affected everyone, and Helena’s Hangman’s Tree was a community icon. Mary Ronan recalled in her memoir, Girl from the Gulches, that one morning she and her classmates saw a man hanging from the tree. She never forgot  “…that 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.” Nearly seventy years later as she dictated her memories to her daughter, Mary still remembered.

David Hilger recalled climbing the tree’s dead branches as a youngster and examining rope burns on its lower limbs. He and his friends played marbles beneath it. On April 30, 1870, vigilantes interrupted their game for the lynching of Arthur Compton and Joseph Wilson. Once the double hanging was over, according to Hilger, the boys resumed their game. These were the last two recorded hangings on the Hangman’s Tree.

Records show that some of the tree’s victims were buried in various Helena cemeteries, but the burial places of others are unknown.  At least two coffins have surfaced in the neighborhood where the Hangman’s Tree once stood. In 1900, a workman digging a foundation for an addition in a backyard uncovered one coffin. A crew hit the other working on gas lines on Davis Street in 1931. Were these victims of the Hangman’s Tree? Both burials were in close proximity to the spot where the tree once stood.

This photo of James Daniels' hanging in 1866 clearly shows his high-topped boots.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 948-124

David Hilger examined the contents of the pine box discovered in 1931. Along with shreds of clothing were the remains of the victim’s unusual high topped boots. Hilger compared the boots with a photograph of the 1866 hanging of James Daniels. The boots, further described as “wrinkled,” seemed to match those in the photograph. If the remains were those of Daniels, the boots could be the ones that Mary Ronan described.  

Hangman's Tree

Virginia City placers dwindled and many transferred their stores and shops to Helena to “mine the miners.” The settlement boomed. William Sprague, an early settler, recalled that there were one thousand people at Last Chance Gulch by May 1865 and, “There was a good deal of shooting and hanging. The shooting was most all done by the gamblers, other people having very little trouble.”  By summer, there were three thousand residents. John Keene committed the first murder on June 7, 1865, when he killed Harry Slater outside a Bridge Street saloon. There being no government presence, Helena’s vigilance committee escorted Keene to the Hangman’s Tree in Dry Gulch. There he became the first of some dozen recorded victims who breathed their last on the gnarled branches. However, territorial Supreme Court justice Judge Lyman Munson observed upon arrival at Helena in July 1865 that some claimed the tree had already seen eight victims.
The venerable ponderosa pine stood until 1875 when the Reverend William Shippen chopped it down. He claimed flooding had loosened its roots, and the tree could fall on his barn and kill his horse. Citizens were incensed at the loss of this symbolic landmark, and hundreds crowded the neighborhood to take souvenir slivers of the tree. In 1913 when excavating for an addition on the home of Jacob Opp, workmen encountered the roots and found them as stable as if the tree were still alive. The tree’s exact location was on the property line between 521 Hillsdale and 528 Highland, just west of Blake Street.

Helena's Hangman's Tree appears on this map, drawn in 1875, just before the tree was cut down. Its placement is only approximate. Montana Historical Society Research Center Map Collection.

The activities of the Helena vigilante group—not the same as the group in Bannack and Virginia City—made a lasting impression on the community, and numerous eyewitnesses left accounts of their gruesome work. Rachel Parkinson remembered the morning she and a friend took an early-morning walk to the outskirts of town and came nearly face to face with the body of a man hanging on the scraggly tree. That same morning, children caught glimpses of the dangling corpse from their Rodney Street schoolyard. A few years later, as David Hilger and his young friends played marbles beneath the branches of the ill-famed tree, men arrived to scatter the boys so that ghastly business could be done. When the hanging was over, the boys resumed their game.

George Bartholomew and the Great Western Circus

Theatrical troops and circuses traveled to Montana from the earliest times. The first circus performed at Bannack, Virginia City, and Helena in 1867. The Montana Post reported on July 6 that George Bartholomew’s Great Western Circus drew a crowd of eight hundred at Virginia City. Mary Ronan remembered the much anticipated event in Helena and that the only animals in Bartholomew’s circus were horses. There were bareback riders, equestriennes, acrobats, tightrope walkers, and clowns. These earliest traveling circuses, as Mary correctly recalled, were limited to performing horses. Bartholomew’s horses, however, were highly skilled and later brought him fame.

In Virginia City, residents lined the major thoroughfares as the performers paraded along the main street to the rousing music of the circus band.  The next evening, the audience thrilled at the “perch act,” the trick ponies Napoleon and Zebra, the hurdle chase, and expert bareback riding. There was, however, one mishap. As Mademoiselle Mathilda entered the ring, the band stopped to switch music and the horse followed suit coming to an abrupt stop. Mademoiselle sailed off and crashed against the outer ring-boards. Despite her violent fall, she hopped up and gracefully skipped out of the arena. She did not return to perform, but the Post speculated that she was not seriously hurt.

 
Circus owner George Bartholomew was a colorful character and an uncanny horse trainer who traveled the West with his Great Western Circus between 1867 and 1869. Bartholomew was perhaps the first professional “horse whisperer.” Several times his fortunes were reversed until 1879 when his horses performed in Oakland, California, in front of an audience of ten thousand. The performance cemented his fame. The valuable horses in Bartholomew’s Equine Paradox traveled in a special train car across the country. The sides of the boxcar advertised gentleness and kindness toward helpless creatures. Bartholomew’s horses performed a play in which horses played the major characters. Bartholomew believed horses could be trained like children and treated his horses thus. They performed incredible feats. According to their trainer, the only difference between horses and children was that horses couldn’t talk, or talk back.

Lewis & Clark(e) County

At the top of the stone tablet carved into the north entrance of the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse in Helena, you’ll find the name Lewis and Clarke County. It’s the only county in the United States with the name of both explorers. But you’ll also notice that on the tablet, Clarke is spelled with an “e” at the end. That’s because our forebears often spelled their names in various ways. Captain William Clark couldn’t seem to make up his mind, and so sometimes he used the final “e” and sometimes he didn’t. Which spelling was the most correct became a matter of concern. In 1900, Montana Historical Society librarian Laura E. Howey settled the question, researching Clark’s official records.

Laura E. Howey. From Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
with Its Transactions, Officers, and Members, vol. 6. Helena, 1907

Both as a military officer and as governor of Missouri Clark’s name has no final “e.” Further, publication of Lewis and Clark’s journals at the turn of the twentieth century regularized the spelling of Clark without the final “e.” That meant—oops—the county had the wrong spelling. It took an act of the Montana legislature to allow dropping of that final “e,” but the memory of the older spelling remains on the courthouse tablet.

Commodity Cat

Del Leeson of the Helena Daily Independent  wrote a column in 1940 about the Commodity Cat. Now this cat was adept at breaking into the Lewis and Clark County jail. In fact she was so adept that one dark winter night the jailer put her out in the bitter cold seven times in a row, and still the cat stole back in. County auditor Bill Manning felt badly for the jailer and for the cat, and so he opened the door of the courthouse and invited her in. The cat’s whiskers twitched as she sniffed the stale courthouse air and made a beeline for the basement. In its dark depths the county stored surplus commodities—much like our present-day food bank—for distribution to needy families in the social welfare system. Somehow the cat knew that the ancient dungeon-like basement was overrun with mice, and she quickly earned her keep. Once she had cleaned up the basement mouse population, she was on the prowl for more. On the third floor she found a fertile field. WPA sewing classes met up there, and the ladies always brought their lunches. Crumbs and scraps tossed into a sack were tempting to mice. And the commodity cat soon crouched by the bag, waiting to pounce. Soon the third floor mouse population was also eliminated.  But then, the commodity cat lost her freedom to roam the lofty halls. This was because, cuddled in a soft nest of old pants down in the basement, the commodity cat gave birth to four kittens.

These tiny little creatures were miniature carbon copies of their mother, black as coal, sleek and shiny. Although courthouse staff willingly adopted them, welfare employees thought the commodity cat should apply for aid for her dependent children. But that required proof of paternity. And the commodity cat wasn’t talking.

Friday Photo: Dry Cleaners

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Mulvaney Collection, 1723

This Helena tailoring shop probably belonged to Miles York. The date on the calendar is, unfortunately, not legible. It might be July 1910.

Pioneer Artifacts

Helena’s Pioneer Cabin, the oldest documented dwelling in the capital city, was built in 1864 during the height of the gold rush to Last Chance Gulch. In the late 1930s, women in the community saved it from demolition and created Montana’s first house museum. The Pioneer Cabin opened to the public in 1939. Helena’s pioneer families generously donated heirlooms of the 1860s and 1870s, used by their ancestors at Last Chance, to furnish the museum. Among the interesting items in the cabin is a pie safe dated to 1864. Its punched tin panels let the air circulate but kept insects out, allowing safe storage of baked goods. The rustic cabinet was discovered on the property in an outbuilding.

Pie safes with punched tin panels were essential in well-equipped frontier kitchens. 

Another item of interest is a Civil War era “hat bathtub” that came West by covered wagon. It has a place for the bather to sit, a place to put the soap so it doesn’t fall into the water, and just enough room for one’s legs. It was difficult to heat quantities of water on a small cookstove for a bath, and so bathing was not a frequent occurrence. The tradition held that the oldest person in the family got the first shot at the hot water. In mining families, by the time the youngest child got to the water after all that dirt came off the adults, it was dark and murky. The expression, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,” comes from the fact that the youngest child could get lost in the dirty water.

Hat bathtubs—resembling an inverted hat—were popular during the Civil War.

During the Victorian era, it was common to clip a lock of hair from a person who passed away. Jewelry made of human hair was lovingly worn by grieving family members. But sometimes families saved these cherished locks to weave them into beautiful forms which were framed, cherished, and passed down. Some of these incredible works of art came west. The Pioneer Cabin displays two beautiful—although a little creepy—“mourning wreaths.”

The human hair in this mourning wreath was likely from more than one individual and was an artistic tribute to deceased family members.

A Territorial Period Landmark

Summer is county and state fair season and Montana’s fairs at Helena stretch back to 1867. Horse racing—both trotting and racing under saddle—was central to those celebrations. Helena’s official racetrack, completed in September 1870, accommodated six to eight totting horses and sulkies abreast, and it was the only regulation one-mile track in the territory. Early fairs attracted racers from across the West. Kentucky thoroughbreds, Montana-bred runners and trotters, and non-pedigreed horses all raced at the Helena track in the early years. But by 1884, entrants had to go through a nomination process to be accepted to race. After statehood in 1889, Helena’s fair became the State Fair. Purses of $300, $500, and $1,000 in the various trotting and running categories emphasize the importance of these races and Helena’s track. The track was refurbished in 1890, and according to local tradition, trains brought in carloads of imported Kentucky earth to spread on the track for luck. The newly refurbished track, said the Independent, was “as smooth as a billiard table….”

This aerial view shows the historic footprint of the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds Racetrack circa 1970s.
Courtesy MDT.

In 1904, relay races were introduced. Racers rode only thoroughbreds. Riders changed horses at top speed. Fannie Sperry, later the Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World, rode Montana’s first relay race at the fairgrounds racetrack. Betting on horse races became illegal in 1914, the state cut its funding, drought impacted agricultural displays, and the fair began to decline. A new auto racing track built inside the one-mile racetrack brought a new attraction in 1916, although horse racing remained popular.  Betting resumed in 1930 when more than 350 horses from the best circuits in Canada, Mexico, and the United States vied for generous purses, but the Great Depression suspended fairs. Helena’s last was in 1932. The state fair later moved to Great Falls.

Portions of the track remain intact, recalling the days when horse racing was a popular sport.  Courtesy SHPO.

Horse racing reemerged with the Last Chance Stampede from 1961 to 1998. Today surviving sections of the racetrack, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, are a rare territorial period landmark. Recent insensitive remodeling of the fairgrounds destroyed some of the track. The surviving portions remain highly endangered.

The Camp at Last Chance

After the four discoverers staked their claims at Last Chance, Helena’s early story continues. The Georgians christened the new diggings “Rattlesnake District” for the snakes that were everywhere. A monster rattler with ten buttons on his tail, nailed to a post, warned of the danger. A monstrous grizzly bear that made nightly visits at the gulch’s south end, gorging on the chokecherries along Last Chance Creek, inspired the name Grizzly Gulch.  The howling and barking of wolves and coyotes, discoverer Reginald Stanley recalled, “made the nights hideous.”

Other miners joined the Georgians to pitch tents and mine claims during the summer of 1864.  Some stayed but more moved on, discouraged by the scant supply of water.  In mid-September, the first group of emigrants arrived with the Thomas A. Holmes wagon train from Shakopee, Minnesota. The train included several hundred men and fourteen women. Only half of their names were recorded. Many hailed from Minnesota, but emigrants also came from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and some were European-born immigrants. The incomplete roster includes a number of pioneers who stayed and became citizens of Helena. Among them were longtime Helena attorneys John H. Shober, his partner Thomas J. Lowry, and pioneer rancher Nicholas Hilger. John Somerville, who would soon play a key role in naming Helena, was also part of the group.

The hill in the center of this early Helena panorama, circa 1866, is where the fire tower stands today.
Sketch by A. E. Mathews. Montana Historical Society Research Center.

Most of the emigrants had no experience as miners, and the Montana Post poked fun at them, noting that they used blunt picks and worked “like chickens on a grain pile.” But some had good luck. John Marvin Blake of Wisconsin found one of the largest gold nuggets in the area, worth $2,300. With his fortune Blake studied dentistry in Philadelphia and returned to practice in Helena for fifty years. Others opened businesses and made places for themselves in the new community.

The Real Last Chance Discovery Site

Today—July 14, 2014—marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery at Last Chance Gulch by "the Georgians." Reginald Stanley seems to have been the spokesperson for the group, and reading his account leaves little doubt about the location of the discovery site. However, back in 1920, a committee researched the discovery site and came to the erroneous conclusion that the its location was at Sixth and Fuller, exactly where the Montana Club is today. The Montana Historical Society was in on this “research,” and ignored Stanley’s recollection, the most critical and authentic evidence.  A plaque bolted to the building, placed by the Montana Historical Society in 1924, remains there today, identifying the Montana Club as the discovery site. However, Stanley’s description of the discovery leaves no doubt that the first gold was not found at Sixth and Fuller.

This painting, The Four Georgians, by Shorty Shope, was commissioned in 1952 by the Helena HS class of 1953. It now hangs in the Helena Regional Airport. 

Stanley returned to Helena in 1883 and walked the gulch, noting the discovery site was near where Samuel Hauser’s First National Bank then stood. Hauser located his bank there for a good reason. It was the territory’s first federally chartered bank and thus it was appropriate for him to build it where the fabulous gulch yielded up the first gold. It was a stone building with an elaborate imported lock system and a sod roof. In 1886, that building was torn down. The handsome Securities Bank Building on the north Walking Mall replaced the old bank. Over its entry are the dates 1866 for the founding of the bank and 1886 for the building of the new one. The Colwell Building immediately replaced the old bank at the south end of the gulch. The Colwell Building was originally called “Uncle Sam’s Block” for its association with the discovery site and the first federally chartered bank. Samuel Hauser could have corrected the research committee’s mistake, but he died in 1914. How soon we forget!
In honor of the 150th anniversary, a monument has finally marked the real site of the discovery at Last Chance Gulch.

Happy birthday, Helena!

This sign will be unveiled at the south end of the walking mall on the anniversary of the strike.

Helena's 150th birthday is on Monday. It was on that day in 1864 that the four Georgians struck gold at Last Chance. I'll be celebrating tomorrow (Saturday, July 12), and I hope you'll join me. I'm going to give a talk called "The Town that Gold Built" at the Montana Historical Society at 12:00 pm and again at 2:00 pm. The Society will be serving birthday cake and ice cream at 1:00 pm, and kids can pan for gold at a “mining camp.” Food vendors will be on hand, too, and there will be a drawing for free gifts. Plus, it’s Second Saturday at the Society, so admission is free thanks to our sponsor, Helena Community Credit Union.

The fun continues on Monday with the unveiling of a sign to commemorate the gold strike. The unveiling will take place at 5:30 on the walking mall by the library. See you there!

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

Summer makes you think of ice cream, but have you ever wondered where it came from?
It has a longer history than you might think. The Roman emperor Nero used ice brought down from the mountains to mix with fruit. In the seventh century A.D., the Chinese introduced milk and ice mixtures which were then brought to Europe. Sorbets and ices were popular at French and Italian courts. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dolly Madison served “iced cream” at their tables. Home cooks and ice cream parlor confectioners would put a bowl of sweetened cream into a larger bowl of salt and ice and stir until it froze. The invention of the wooden bucket freezer and rotary paddles was a major breakthrough, and along with the first hand-cranked freezers patented in 1846 and 1848, ice cream making became easier.
 

An early advertisement for an ice cream freezer.

Ice cream was made from the very earliest days on the frontier. In 1865, the Montana Post advertised a Ladies' Ice Cream Saloon in Virginia City.

Advertisement from the Montana Post, August 5, 1865. Via Chronicling America.

In 1868, ice cream was a major part of the Fourth of July in Helena. On May 11, 1869, as the steamer Nile made its way to Fort Benton, the crew acquired a load of ice from Fort Peck. The steamboat stopped at the mouth of the Musselshell to buy cordwood from woodchoppers “Liver Eating” Johnson and X. Beidler. As was customary, the woodchoppers were invited aboard. It was Captain Grant Marsh’s birthday, and the cook made ice cream to celebrate. Neither Johnson nor Beidler had ever heard of it. They were suspicious of its coldness on a hot day, but they bravely ate their portions. And in 1872 at Urgam’s Occidental Restaurant in Deer Lodge, a plate of ice cream cost twenty-five cents. But it wasn’t until the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 that “walk away” ice cream was introduced. We have been enjoying ice cream cones ever since.

15,000 Miles by Stage

Update: I originally titled this post "10,000 Miles by Stage" by mistake. The actual title of Carrie Strahorn's book is 15,000 Miles by Stage.

Carrie Strahorn wrote a wonderful book—still in print—about stagecoach travel in the West called 10,000 15,000 Miles by Stage. She and her husband Robert were newly married in 1878 when they traveled through Montana and other western states. Mrs. Strahorn’s astute observations about the characters they encountered, stage stops, hotels, and scenery are very entertaining.

Carrie Strahorn is the author of 10,000  15,000 Miles by Stage.
Photo courtesy Idaho Historical Society.

The Strahorns stayed at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Helena. The desk clerk gave them a room key, but they were astonished to discover that no one expected them to lock their door. Mrs. Strahorn writes that they encountered no tramps, no beggars, and no burglars. Unlike other towns along the railway routes where there was crime and poverty, Helena, although isolated, had none of that. Although citizens could not wait for rail service, “It seemed a pity,” Mrs. Strahorn writes, “to propose a railroad to such a happy community.” Among the characters she describes are two memorable women she encountered in the hotel dining room. They were angular in figure, tall, slim, with long features. Each had tried to outdo the other with tiny, elaborate spit curls from the center parts of their foreheads to their earlobes, and they were so prim and precise that they almost appeared to be machines.

The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Helena was one of the best in the region. The Helena Board of Trade published this sketch of the lobby in 1887. Montana Historical Society Research Center.

Mrs. Strahorn goes on the say that that there were so few women out west that military men begged their friends to send for sisters, cousins, and aunts. Sometimes, Mrs. Strahorn writes, they were weird specimens of the fairer sex like the two at the Cosmopolitan, but even they in their minority could reign as queens. They could dance, ride, and flirt to their hearts’ content and marry, too. The success of such women diminished as the population grew and single men had more choices. But in the 1870s, the frontier was a fact and not a fiction. A woman in the Far West was a blessing sent direct from Heaven, or from the East, which was much the same thing in those days.

St. Peter’s Hospital

Early Roman Catholic institutions in Montana included missions, schools, and hospitals. Many Protestants saw a great need to balance things out. This began in the 1880s in Helena when Helena Episcopalians planned a hospital to complement St. John’s, founded in 1870 by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. Episcopal Bishop Leigh Brewer suggested the idea to his board of trustees in 1883. Men made up the board, but it was the churchwomen who did the real work. Bishop Brewer’s wife Henrietta, Mary Pauline Holter, Dr. Maria Dean, and Georgia Young stand out stand as the cornerstones upon which today’s St. Peter’s Hospital rests. The hospital first located in the Holters’ former home at Jackson and Grand streets in 1884. Of the 225 patients treated that first year, 80 were East Helena smelter workers sick with lead poisoning. Henrietta Brewer and Mary Pauline Holter had no hospital training and hired Georgia Young, a graduate of the New Haven, Connecticut, nurses training school, as supervisor. She was Helena’s first professionally trained graduate nurse. Hospital conditions were horrific; at the end of her first day, Miss Young was covered with lice.

St. Peters Hospital, at Eleventh Avenue between present-day Cruse and Logan,  was built upon tailing piles in 1887.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives,  953-531.

Dr. Dean joined the cause to build a better hospital. In 1887, St. Peter’s moved to its longtime location at Logan and Eleventh Avenue. The first photographs show the building starkly resting upon tailing piles left over from the gold rush. Under Georgia Young’s supervision, Henrietta Brewer and Mary Pauline Holter organized their friends as “lady visitors” who cooked for patients, cleaned, and conducted weekly inspections. Nursing supervisor Georgia Young nurtured St. Peter’s for three decades. Dr. Dean, who specialized in women’s and children’s health, did the same. These four founders left a living legacy to the Helena community that continues at St. Peter’s present eastside location. Its women’s health facility is appropriately named for Dr. Maria Dean.

Early-day Travel on the Helena to Fort Benton Road

By the mid-1860s, Helena had surpassed Alder Gulch in population. Roads ran in all directions to Gallatin City, Virginia City, Deer Lodge, and Fort Benton. The road between Fort Benton and Helena was an especially well-worn path used by stagecoaches, horsemen, and freighters traveling between these two key settlements. The road saw heavy traffic from the earliest days of Montana Territory until the advent of the railroad in 1883. Bullwhackers performed an essential task, walking alongside the laboring teams. Their cracking whips kept the animals moving, especially on uphill grades. Way stations along the route offered respite as it was hard going for both humans and livestock. Malcolm Clarke’s ranch, today headquarters of the Sieben Ranch, was among the early stops.

A small span of mules and their freight wagon await unloading on Helena’s Main Street in 1874.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 954-200.

The Benton Road, not the same as Helena’s Benton Avenue, entered Last Chance Gulch via North Main Street as did the other major routes to Prickly Pear Canyon and Gallatin City, Deer Lodge, and Virginia City. The popular notion that the Benton Road entered Helena by way of Benton Avenue and wound its way down through Reeder’s Alley is physically impossible. Until 1893, buildings spread into and up the alleyway toward the dead end that was Benton Avenue, preventing all types of traffic except horseback. Freighters could never bring six or eight span of oxen, or a mule team, or several thousand-pound wagons hooked together down that steep, narrow alley. The well-traveled North Main Street route into Last Chance Gulch was flat and plenty wide enough.

All roads entered Last Chance Gulch via Main Street, as illustrated in this 1868 map. Streets on the grid from left to right: Clore (today’s Park) Street, Main (today’s Last Chance Gulch), Rodney Street, and Davis Street.
Click on the map for a bigger image. Courtesy of DNRC.

Freighters coming into town pastured their animals on the outskirts of Helena and camped overnight in the wide open spaces north of town. Sometimes the gentle, distant lowing of the oxen carried on the breeze as the animals bedded down in the evenings. The next morning, freighters hitched up the animals—but not necessarily the entire team—and brought the heavy freight wagons into town to unload.

Mining Camp Architecture

Bannack, Virginia City, and Helena each had a turn as Montana’s territorial capital, but each was destined for a different future. Today Bannack is a state park whose empty buildings mostly date to the 1880s and later. Helena owes its survival beyond the mining phase to the Northern Pacific which linked the town to distant markets in 1883. Few 1860s gold camp remnants survive in Helena. But Virginia City has a remarkable fifty-one 1860s gold rush-era buildings. Virginia City’s buildings retain their antiquated storefronts. Only small panes of glass, packed in sawdust, could survive transport over rough terrain. So merchants used French doors that allowed maximum light into their stores. Helena once sported the same type of storefront, but with the advent of the railroad, storefronts were remodeled with big display windows. Lack of rail transportation is partly why most of Virginia City’s storefronts escaped remodeling. Virginia City’s 1860s buildings illustrate how frontier architecture was all about illusion. As the town transitioned from a temporary mining camp to a more permanent settlement, shop keepers began to add false fronts to the log cabins. False fronts were architecturally important to mining camps because they made buildings seem taller, larger, and grander than they really were. This offered residents a sense of security in remote places like Alder Gulch.  To the false fronts, shopkeepers began to add half-columns, arches, and medallions. These, crafted in wood on the frontier, mimicked the stone and brick ornamentation in the buildings of cities far away. Inside, muslin stretched smooth and tacked down over the rough log walls gave the illusion of plaster. Then, wallpaper applied over the muslin made primitive interiors seem like tastefully decorated rooms.

Muslin stretched smooth over log ceiling and walls, seen here in the McGovern Store,  made interiors seem like finished rooms.

Virginia City’s first substantial buildings, like Content’s Corner and the Kiskadden Barn, were of rubblestone. A layer of plaster scored to look like stone blocks covered the rough stones. The effect was dramatic. These survivors and historic photographs of them give us a real sense of early residents’ attempts at civilization.

The Kiskadden Barn sports a tall false front and a on the ground level, plaster  scored to look like cut stone.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-249

Helena’s First Decoration Day

Decoration Day, later called Memorial Day, was a tradition that sprang from the tremendous loses both the north and the south experienced during the Civil War. The tradition of decorating veterans’ graves took root in different states at different times from the 1870s through the early twentieth century. On May 30, 1883, Helena observed Decoration Day for the first time with a mile-long procession that assembled at Harmonia Hall on Broadway. It made its way out of the city to the cemetery on Benton Avenue. Nearly 1,500 people participated in the march, including some fifty veterans of the Civil War and a few veterans of the war with Mexico, accompanied by the Silver Coronet Band. Ladies and gentlemen in carriages joined the crowd at the cemetery, and flowers and evergreens were laid upon the graves of veterans. Wilbur F. Sanders gave a lengthy address while the Reverend T. V. Moore officiated as chaplain. This observance, the Helena Daily Herald pointed out on June 2, 1883, 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:

Some of the noblest men and women... lie buried there; yet their resting places cannot be identified. After considerable inquiry, we do not find that plot of the lots… is kept. The county gravedigger keeps no record of interments. He digs a hole and covers a corpse and the name of the dead is buried in the same oblivion as is his body….

The only known historic photo of a Helena cemetery is this undated one of the Catholic Cemetery on Oakes, also known as St. Mary’s Cemetery. By the 1920s, it was abandoned. Robinson Park, created in 1972, covers some 1100 burials that still lie beneath the sod. Courtesy Charleen Spalding.

Only one-fourth of the graves in the city's several cemeteries were marked. This informal tally included the now-forgotten graves that remained in the old City Cemetery near the grounds of Central School and the Catholic Cemetery on Oakes, now Robinson Park. At this time in Helena’s history, the only well-tended burial ground was the Jewish Home of Peace, now tucked next to Capital High School.