Friday Photo: Glacier Park Hotel

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-665

Visitors gather around the fireplace in the lobby of the Glacier Park Hotel in East Glacier, circa 1914.

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

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.

Friday Photo: European Hotel

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.25

Happy Friday! Today's photo shows the European Hotel and Cafe in Roy, Montana, in 1915. A note on the back reads, "I waited table here in winter of 1915 & 16—in Roy, while I was homesteading—me to the left, Josephine."

Wassweiler Hot Springs

Montana has a number of hot springs that gained popularity for recreational and therapeutic use during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ferdinand and Caroline Wassweiler operated one of the first near Ten Mile Creek just west of Helena. Their first hotel and bathhouse opened in 1865. The soothing mineral water offered local miners a relaxing day off from the dusty diggings in Last Chance Gulch.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-609

In 1869, the Wassweilers gained title to the land and two hot water springs. But short of funds in 1874, they sold their hotel and water rights to Colonel Charles Broadwater. Broadwater then ran the Wassweilers’ hotel until 1889 when his grand Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium opened on the property a short distance away. All traces of his first hotel have since vanished, but Wassweiler kept eighty acres and built a second hotel on that same site in 1883. The little complex survives out on U.S. Highway 12 west of town. The hotel features seven exterior doors accessing the separate guest rooms. A stone building a few steps behind served as the bathhouse. Wooden tubs outfitted each of its four individual compartments. Local legend has it that when the famed Broadwater Hotel opened, the Wassweilers lost business. So Wassweiler converted his bathhouse to cribs and imported ladies to entertain miners. The Wassweilers’ hotel and bathhouse, in its second life, operated until 1904. These are the only hot springs hotel structures left in the Helena area.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Grand Union Hotel

Fort Benton’s beautifully restored hotel, the Grand Union, once welcomed travelers to the Gateway of the Northwest, offering them a luxurious refuge before they set out for less civilized destinations. Its opening in 1882 came at the end of the steamboat era when Fort Benton was still an unchallenged hub. But the very next year, the Northern Pacific stretched across Montana, bypassing Fort Benton and ending its reign as the Chicago of the Plains.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 947-095


In its heyday, the Grand Union was the “Waldorf of the West.” It had a saloon, a grand dining room, a saddle room for cowboys to store their gear in winter, and a secret lookout room where guards could supervise gold shipments. A separate ladies’ stairway led to elegant parlors, since proper women never entered rooms adjoining saloons. Each bedroom had black walnut, marble-topped furnishings and its own woodstove and fancy chimney. From its vantage point near the docks, the Grand Union witnessed the arrival of everything from stamp mills to grand pianos brought by steamboat and transferred to freight wagons. The regal Grand Union reflects prosperity and optimism in a town unaware of the imminent coming of the railroad and the disastrous effects on its economy.

Have you ever stayed there?

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Thanksgiving at the Madison House 1903

If you're tired of eating turkey after yesterday's feast, you might want to try out some of these dishes...

The Madison House was Virginia City’s best hotel from the 1890s into the twentieth century. The hotel consisted of seven connected buildings, all at slightly different levels. For this reason it was nicknamed the seven-story hotel.

“Seven Story Hotel.”  Sanborn-Perris Map Company, Virginia City  1907.

Proprietors F. W. Allen and Dennis Mahagin set a nice table in the early 1900s. On Thanksgiving Day in 1903, the Madisonian invited those who might be unfortunate to be away from their own family firesides not to let the day pass without enjoying a good dinner. The Madison House prepared an especially elaborate meal, which was served between 4:00 in the afternoon and 8:00 in the evening. The published menu for Thanksgiving was indeed a delectable one. The first course included New York or fresh oysters, cole slaw, or consommé, and relishes. The salad course included lobster salad in mayonnaise. For the main course, diners could choose baked salmon, boiled ox tongue in wine sauce, roast prime rib of beef, roast goose with baked apples, macaroni in red wine—presumably for vegetarian guests—and of course, young turkey with oyster dressing, cranberry jelly, and pineapple sherbet. The choice of vegetables included mashed and steamed potatoes, braised sweet potatoes, French peas, or asparagus on toast. For dessert the offerings included mince pie, sliced green apple pie, English plum pudding with brandy sauce, walnut ice cream, assorted cakes, and grapes, cheese, apples and mixed nuts. The Madison House closed as the town declined in the 1920s, and its seven buildings were later torn down. The memory of that wonderful Thanksgiving dinner in 1903 is preserved only in the archives of the local newspaper.

Friday Photo: Boulder Hot Springs

One dark evening a few years ago a group assembled on the stairway of the unused wing at the historic Boulder Hot Springs Hotel. There were a dozen adult students, led by Patrick Marsolek of Helena, who wanted to practice their intuitive skills. None of the participants knew the history of the hot springs, which stretched back to the mid-nineteenth century.

A postcard view of Boulder Hot Springs in the 1940s.
From the collection of Kennon Baird via Helena As She Was

The property manager allowed the group access to the long-abandoned wing. After exploring the dark corridors and many rooms with flashlights, the students gathered on the stairway which led to this unused area. The idea was to share their individual impressions. While women made up most of the group, there were several men. Each of the male students claimed that they felt a seductive female presence. Although historically unsubstantiated, locals claim prostitutes once worked in a portion of this wing. Even more eerie were the impressions of at least half the other students who said they heard children’s laughter, children running in the corridors, and balls bouncing down the hallways. None of the students knew that after the destructive Helena earthquakes in 1935, Boulder Hot Springs opened this wing to St. Joseph’s Children’s Home. The children lived at the hotel for a year while the orphanage was repaired. Finally one last student remained to share her experience. She had curled up comfortably in a corner of the landing. As she stood, she commented, “I feel just like a cat and I need to stretch.” A hotel staff member heard this comment and looked incredulously at the woman. “Oh my goodness,” she exclaimed. “You were curled up in our elderly cat’s favorite napping place. She died right there last week.”

Nevada City Hotel

Spirits wander in the Nevada City Hotel. The 1860s front portion was a stage stop, its log walls disassembled and rebuilt where the original Nevada City Hotel once stood. A two-story employees’ dormitory, circa 1912, from the Canyon Hotel at Yellowstone Park form the hotel rooms. Guests have related odd incidents, but the most dramatic event happened in February 2001.  A Global Stage production crew filmed a scene of Henry Ibsen's Enemy of the People in the Nevada City Hotel’s saloon. The temperature dipped below zero in the unheated hotel. The guest rooms and corridors, upstairs and down, were locked. Fifty people—cast, crew, and local extras—crowded into the bar. State employee John Ellingsen remembers it well: “The director called ‘quiet on the set’ and the camera began to roll. Everyone held their breath, afraid to make a sound. Suddenly there were footsteps in the room above. ‘Cut! Who's up there?’ yelled the director. The crewmembers and I rushed upstairs. When I unlocked Room 7, the room over the bar, it was dark, cold, and empty. But the floor kept creaking, slowly and deliberately, during the entire filming. It was even captured on tape.” Several years ago on a Halloween haunted tour of the Nevada City Hotel, I led my group up the stairs of the old stage stop. We peeked in Room 7, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Across the hall in Room 1 I turned the key in the lock. The door swung open. Two young boys behind me clutched at my jacket, and the adults gasped as we all heard the footsteps. They were coming from underneath the bed.


The second floor of the Nevada City Hotel



Dorothy Dunn

I'm booked across the state through October to tell the ghost stories I've uncovered in my research on Montana history. I thought I'd share a few on here. Warning: spine-tingling tales ahead!

Spirits shroud the ghost town of Bannack, where sluices once ran and whiskey flowed. Vigilantes bestowed violent beginnings. But dig deeper. The town’s windswept cemetery where spirits rest, or don’t rest, is evidence of tragedies even more indelible than hangings and shootings. In August of 1916, sixteen-year-old Dorothy Dunn, her cousin Fern, and a friend waded into a dredge pond and stepped off a shelf into deep water. None could swim. A passerby saved Fern and her friend, but lovely, vivacious Dorothy drowned. The site of the accident to this day is known as Dorothy’s Hole. Bertie Mathews, whose parents ran the Meade Hotel, took the death of her best friend Dorothy very hard. Some time after the tragedy, Bertie was upstairs in the hotel where she saw the apparition of her friend. Bertie recognized Dorothy’s long blue dress. The experience scared her, and she seldom talked about it. Since then, many others have seen Dorothy upstairs in the hotel. Visitors report cold spots, and children who know nothing of Dorothy claim to have talked with a girl in a long blue dress.


The Meade Hotel, where Dorothy's ghost has been seen and felt.
John Vachon, photographer. Library of Congress LC-USF34-065619-D

Story from Montana Moments: History on the Go

Charity Dillon

Priscilla Jane Allen is not the name she left behind when she died. She is known to posterity as Charity Jane Dillon, and her grave, high above Canyon Ferry Lake, is perhaps the most visited site in Broadwater County.

There are several accounts of her life and death, but the common threads recount how this young woman came west, alone and on horseback looking for her errant lover.  She came to Diamond City, twenty miles northeast of present-day Townsend, in the mid-1860s and eventually found him happily married to another woman and the father of several children. She kept her true identity and heartbreak to herself, and never revealed the man’s name. Under the assumed name of Jane Dillon, she settled near a spring on the stagecoach road between Hog ‘Em and Radersburg where she built a log cabin inn. The inn was not an overnight hostelry but rather a place where travelers could stop and have a drink or a meal. The hospitality of this half-way house was well known. Some old timers claim that she was called Charity because of her kindly acts, but others believe that her name came from the inn’s geographic location near Charity Gulch. In 1872, passersby found Charity Dillon dead in her bed, a bottle whiskey hidden underneath. While some conclude that she died an alcoholic, she may have simply stored the whiskey—which she kept for customers—there for safekeeping.  Others believe she died of ptomaine poisoning from contaminated canned goods, a fairly common occurrence. Still others insist that Charity Dillon died of a broken heart.  Whatever the cause, it is this poignant mystery that brings visitors to her grave.

Daniels County Courthouse

Scobey, the seat of Daniels County, has Montana’s most unusual courthouse. It is a stunning false-fronted building, painted a crisp white. But it has a rather shady past. The building has been enlarged and remodeled inside. What was once a spacious hotel lobby is now divided into county offices. But the courthouse began as a hotel, built sometime before 1913 when the town of Scobey relocated from its original site along the Poplar River flats. This hotel had several owners, but during most of the teens, One-eyed Molly Wakefield owned the building. Molly was a rough character who earned her nickname because she was blind in one eye. A long scar ran across it, hinting at some violent episode in her mysterious past. She came on the train from Kansas City with her four sons, all her belongings, and money in her pockets. Molly bought real estate, including the hotel. She and her sons kept pit bulls for fighting staked between her hotel and the Tallman Hotel next door. There was gambling in Molly’s hotel, as there was in Scobey’s other hotels, but women were the main attraction. The hotel had no indoor bathroom facilities, although the first-floor rooms for entertaining were handily equipped with sinks. A large sleeping room upstairs accommodated legitimate overnight guests. In 1917, federal officials closed red light districts across the nation. One-Eyed Molly disappeared, and her hotel sat empty.



Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-886

When Scobey became the county seat in 1920, officials had no reservations about taking over the old hotel. Even today, some of the county offices retain telltale sinks. It is Montana’s only brothel-turned-courthouse.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this savvy madam?

Cattle Dog

An undated clipping from the 1940s in a Bozeman newspaper tells a poignant story of man’s best friend. Oldtime cattleman Ott McEwen was devastated when the cattle dog who had been at his side through blizzards and summer winds, long days and lonely nights, suddenly disappeared. The dog had been his constant companion, sharing hardships and joys. McEwen grieved for the loss of the best friend he ever had.

Four years later at a Stockgrowers meeting, cattlemen had gathered in the Bozeman Hotel’s lobby. Someone noticed a shaggy old dog, limping badly, whining outside the door. The man let him in and watched curiously as the dog wandered from man to man sniffing. Finally the dog dove into the crowd and leapt upon an old geezer. Old Ott McEwen couldn’t believe it. He went down on his knees and on the floor of the lobby, threw his arms around the dog as tears ran down his cheeks. Someone said he had seen the dog weeks before way over in eastern Montana. How did the dog make his way across the mountains, and how did he know his master would be there? Many a gruff cattleman wiped away a tear, and the talk grew gentle among the men, for they understood well the special bond between a cattleman and his dog.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this faithful dog?

Friday Photo

Our last Friday photo celebrating Black History Month shows waiters from the Canyon Hotel in Yellowstone National Park in 1901.


Photo courtesy Montana Historical Society photograph archives, H-4873. Photo by Elliott W. Hunter. Used by permission.

It's technically a Wyoming moment, but I'm posting it anyway because it's a glimpse of the African American experience in the West. Also, it's a great photo. Speaking of great photos, if you have a picture (or story) of a Montana moment that you'd like to share, be sure to email me! I'd love to hear from you.

Placer Hotel

Artist C. M. Russell illustrated the program for the formal ball, held April 12, 1913, inaugurating the largest hotel between the Twin Cities and the Coast. Built almost entirely with donations as a public enterprise, Helena felt real pride of ownership, and the Placer Hotel quickly became the center of civic activity. Its name derives from the placer gold washed from the gravel during the excavation of its foundation. As the foundation was being dug, an oldtimer prospector was called in to demonstrate the art of panning. Soon he had a crowd fascinated with the lesson. Legend has it that in digging the basement, workers found enough gold to pay for the building and then some.  Architect George H. Carsley designed the grand hotel in consultation with Cass Gilbert, architect of New York’s famed Woolworth Building. The Placer’s wrought iron balconies, overhanging eaves, and wide cornice are reminiscent of the nearby Montana Club, designed by Gilbert in 1905. The seven-story hotel was constructed of reinforced concrete and brick from the Western Clay Manufacturing Company which is now the Archie Bray Foundation. Each of its 172 guest rooms, arranged around a U-shape, opened onto the outside. Custom-made china, cutlery, and bed linens—supplied by Helena’s New York Store—all bore the hotel’s prospector insignia. The hotel featured a carriage entrance, a lobby fireplace built to burn seven-foot logs, and a state-of-the-art kitchen with an automatic dishwasher and central refrigeration system. In June of 1960, a campaigning John F. Kennedy visited Helena during the Montana State Democratic Convention and stayed at the Placer as a guest. The former hotel is now divided into condominiums.


Kennedy mingled and spoke at the Marlow Theatre. Images from Helena As She Was