Poacher Gulch

Tales of Chinese terraces along a remote, heavily timbered hillside in Sanders County attracted the attention of Forest Service and University of Montana archaeologists in 2006. The site was unlike any other in Montana with rock-lined terraces, moss-covered with age, spanning several hundred feet along a steep slope. Forest Service archaeologists discovered these terraces in 1979, tucked away in an obscure drainage known as Poacher Gulch. Locals firmly believed that Chinese miners built them. The moss and a tree trunk growing through an iron wheel seemed good evidence that the site was of great age.

Photo by Chris Merritt

As the local story went, Chinese workers laying tracks of the Northern Pacific Railroad along the Clark Fork River in 1883, underpaid and mistreated, left their jobs to search the hills for gold and silver. It was logical, and these terraces resembled terraces Chinese farmers constructed in Idaho’s Payette National Forest. So between 1979 and 2006, the Chinese terrace theory was so convincing that it nearly became accepted as fact. Archaeologists assumed they would discover evidence of 1880s Chinese occupation, when laborers were in fact laying track along the Clark Fork. However, that is not what came to light, and it served to prove that local stories do not always match historic facts. Forest Service archaeologist Milo McCloud, University of Montana graduate student Chris Merritt, and a Passport in Time volunteer crew worked for weeks under terrible conditions in cold and rainy weather in 2007.

Photo by Chris Merritt

They found no evidence of Chinese settlement. Instead, they found thousands of tiny pieces of tarpaper, mushy wood, nails dating to the early 1900s, and the cultivation of corn on the terraces. The “Chinese terraces” of Poacher Gulch turned out to be something completely unexpected. No Chinese ever lived there. Its real inhabitants were cultivating corn for moonshine during Prohibition in the 1920s.

The WCTU

The Montana Chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union or WCTU, formed in 1883. The national organization was primarily evangelical and protestant, and helped women become more involved in politics. Its purpose was to create a pure and sober world. Delegates from Butte, White Sulphur Springs, Helena, and Dillon met to organize the Montana chapter. The organization took up a number of causes and current social issues including labor, prostitution, public health, sanitation, and international peace. The organization especially advocated the prohibition of alcohol and tobacco. The Montana WCTU began with a strong leadership, but by 1886 its membership had dwindled. In that year, fifty-year-old Thomas Cruse of Helena married twenty-five-year-old Margaret Carter in the most lavish, extravagant wedding Helena had ever seen. Cruse spent an astronomical sum on the reception which officially took place at Helena’s Cosmopolitan Hotel. But the entire community celebrated the event, and saloons all over town offered free drinks. Thomas Cruse paid all the bar bills to the tune of $30,000. There was so much public drunkenness and so many hung over husbands that it reinvigorated the WCTU. The organization re-emerged. There were thirteen local chapters and departments, or committees. These included Social Purity, Unfermented Wine at Sacrament, and Purity in Literature and Art. By 1910, Montana’s WCTU had over 1,000 members and had taken up the cause of destitute mothers, the opposition to drinking Coca Cola which at that time was made with cocaine, and other causes. In 1913, the Montana WCTU had its own influential lobbyist and was instrumental in getting suffrage and eventually prohibition on the ballot. By 1916, more than 4,000 had joined. The WCTU continued to have substantial influence until the 1950s.

Etta Weatherson, Candace Shaw, Elizabeth Blakeman ride on a WCTU parade float on July 4, 1916, Columbus, Montana.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-822

Birdie Brown

The rutted road was a familiar one to Fergus County locals during the days of Prohibition. You had to be careful—bad hooch could cause blindness and even death. Those looking for a place to party knew to point their cars toward Black Butte and Birdie (or Bertie) Brown’s place. She was as nice a woman as they come, and her still—according to locals—produced some of the best moonshine in the country. Birdie was among a very small number of young African American women who homesteaded alone in Montana. She was in her twenties when she settled in the Lewistown area in 1898. She later homesteaded along Brickyard Creek in 1913.

Birdie Brown's Homestead in Fergus County. Courtesy Great Falls Tribune.

During Prohibition in the 1920s, Birdie carved a niche for herself. Her neat homestead where she lived with her cat was a place of warm hospitality. Birdie’s parlor was legendary. In May 1933, just months before the end of Prohibition and Birdie’s livelihood, the revenue officer came around and warned her to stop her brewing. But as Birdie multitasked, dry cleaning some garments with gasoline and tending what would be her last batch of hooch, the gasoline exploded in her face. She lived a few hours, long enough to request that someone take care of her beloved pet. But the cat that followed her everywhere was never found. Birdie’s once orderly homestead now lies in a state of collapse, tragically transformed into a ghost of its former self. Roundup artist Jane Stanfel, who has painted Birdie’s homestead, makes a strange observation. Although it’s been nearly eighty years since Birdie’s passing, every so often someone catches a glimpse of a black cat perched in her parlor window.

Rex Bar

A twist of fate landed sixteen-year-old German immigrant Alfred Heimer a job with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show in 1894. Although the irascible Colonel Cody fired young Heimer three times during that first day, the youth remained as steward of Cody’s private railway car until 1903, developing a close friendship with the famous frontiersman. The genial Heimer then settled in Billings. He built the Rex Bar around 1909. It served such colorful patrons as his friends Buffalo Bill and Will James. Early advertisements extolled Heimer’s German lunches and promised the “Best Beer in Town.” In 1917, addition of the third floor converted Heimer’s “nice furnished rooms” into a classy hotel which hosted many dignitaries including the great Crow chief, Plenty Coups, who stayed there in 1921 en route to Washington, D.C. Under new proprietors the Rex flourished during Prohibition; the bar simply went under cover.

Photo courtesy Montana State Historic Preservation Office

The hotel closed in 1974 and narrowly escaped demolition. Award-winning rehabilitation has restored the Rex to its former glory where the hospitality first offered by Alfred Heimer is again a Billings tradition.

P.S. Put the Little Cowboy Bar in Fromberg on your bucket list, while you're at it.

Josephine Doody

On the way to isolated Harrison Lake, in the wilderness area on the southern border of Glacier National Park, lie the ruins of a secret cabin. The area is extremely difficult to access because you have to cross the Middle Fork of the Flathead and there is only a short time when it’s not frozen or deep. The remote cabin was home to Josephine Doody, a woman even more notorious than Calamity Jane. And unlike calamity, the events of her life are not disputed. John Fraley, in his book Wild River Pioneers, details Josephine’s adventures. Around 1890. Josephine shot a man in Colorado, she claimed in self-defense. Awaiting trial, she fled to MacCarthyville, Montana, a railroad town Montana along James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway. There, as a dance hall girl, she met Dan Doody who fell for her. But Josephine had an opium addiction. So Dan kidnapped her, tied her to a mule, took her to his homestead on the Flathead River and locked her in to dry out.

Josephine Doody in front of her cabin on the Flathead. Photo courtesy Glacier National Park.

Josephine survived and took up moonshining. Dan kept a tiny cabin where she could hide when the revenue officers of Colorado lawmen came looking for her. James Hill built a siding to the Doody place, and the engineer would blow the whistle once for each quart of moonshine the engineers wanted. Dan was one of the first park rangers at Glacier, but was soon fired because he liked to poach the game.

Dan Doody. Photo courtesy Glacier National Park.

He died in 1919, and Josephine stayed in the two-story homestead, keeping guest rooms and leading occasional fishing parties. She died in 1936 after a long, colorful life.

A Persistent Myth

Stories abound across the West about “Chinese tunnels” beneath the buildings and streets of cities and towns. According to Priscilla Wegars of the University of Idaho, a foremost authority on Asian culture in the West, there is overwhelming evidence that “Chinese tunnels” are nothing more than myths. Not a single “Chinese tunnel” has ever been identified. While it is true that Chinese businesses, opium dens, and even living quarters are sometimes found in basement spaces, these in no way can be called “tunnels.” The Chinese were often targets of discrimination, but they did not live underground because of persecution as many believe. Basements were simply cheaper to rent than rooms above ground. Further, the basements of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century business blocks frequently had arched doorways leading to sidewalk vaults. These were storage or delivery areas. Lit by glass blocks turned purple with age, these mysterious vaults had nothing to do with the Chinese. Tunnel systems beneath downtown areas in Helena, Butte, Missoula, Bozeman, and elsewhere do exist; they served as steam-heat delivery systems. While sometimes steam tunnels served clandestine purposes, particularly for alcohol delivery during Prohibition, these passageways cannot be termed “Chinese tunnels.” Finally, in all settlements where mining was extensive, hand-dug tunnels often remain beneath residential neighborhoods and downtown business areas. Miners of all ethnic groups dug tunnels, and there is nothing that makes a tunnel exclusively Chinese.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this remnant of Chinese culture found in Big Timber?

Legal Beer

Eight months before the official end of Prohibition, patrons at Walkers Bar in Butte raised glasses of beer in celebration. A sign read, “The only place in the United States that served Draught Beer over the bar April 8, 1933.” President Franklin Roosevelt gave the repeal of Prohibition top priority because traffic in illegal liquor fostered so much criminal activity. Roosevelt knew its repeal would take time. So when he took office in 1933, he signed the Cullen-Harrison Act legalizing beverages with an alcohol content of 3.2 percent. Twenty states, including Montana, legalized 3.2 beer. The law took effect on April 7, and within twenty-four hours, the nation consumed 1.5 million barrels of beer. Montana enjoyed its 3.2 beer until the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition took effect eight months later on December 5.


Photo from Metals Sports Bar

 Although Montana was one of twenty states legalizing 3.2 beer, except for Walkers in Butte, beer didn’t magically appear in local Montana bars. While state beer licenses brought in seventy-three thousand dollars in the first two days, legal beer only trickled into the state. The first shipment of 3.2 Pabst left Milwaukee on April 7, the very same day it became legal. A new refrigerated warehouse at the Northern Pacific Railway yards in Helena waited to store it for distribution. But it was five days before Helena got its first taste of legal beer. With 1.5 million barrels of beer consumed nationwide in the first twenty-four hours after the signing of the Cullen-Harrison Act, Walkers could not have been the country’s only outlet. The question is: how did Walkers get its first legal 3.2 beer at a moment’s notice?