Pete Zortman Comes Home

Oliver Peter Zortman came west in 1888, lured by gold discovered in eastern Montana’s Little Rocky Mountains. He struck it rich several times, ran a cyanide mill, and left his name on the town of Zortman. He was part of an elite group—one of very few to leave the Little Rockies with a small fortune in gold.

Zortman, Montana, 1908. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-885

He joined the Masons in Chinook and eventually ended up in Big Timber where he died of cancer in 1933, penniless. No stone marked his final resting place, but the local newspaper that documented his passing mentioned that he was buried in a hand-dug pauper’s grave. A few years ago, Zortman residents decided to honor their namesake. It was no small task to discover Zortman’s unmarked resting place. A long search led to Zortman’s membership in the Masons. The leatherbound records of the Big Timber Masonic Lodge offered details of Zortman’s funeral. With permission from Zortman’s relatives, several veterinarians, a Chinook undertaker, cemetery workers, and assorted Zortman residents oversaw the exhumation. The remains of Pete Zortman surfaced from the chocolate soil in Big Timber’s Mountain View Cemetery with some difficulty. Water from an irrigation ditch immediately flooded the hole as the backhoe dug. Three feet of muck was removed, and pieces of the coffin and Zortman began to surface. The yellowed bones were placed in a newly made pine coffin and loaded onto a truck. On August 27, 2005, a vintage hearse carried the pine box to the Zortman Cemetery. A smattering of relatives and most of the town of Zortman attended the graveside services. Pete Zortman was home.

Unearthing Chinese History

Distinctly Montana recently published my article on Montana's Chinese history. Here's a tidbit:

The story of Montana’s Chinese pioneers has almost entirely escaped the state’s written history. By 1870, Chinese comprised ten percent of Montana’s population, but by the mid-1950s, few remained. Their homes and businesses fell victim to urban renewal programs. Time erased their remote mining and railroad camps. Traces of their culture disappeared, and their stories have become the stuff of myth and legend. In 2008, Big Timber gave up some information about its Chinese residents.  University of Montana archaeology graduate students, led by Justin Moschelle and Chris Merritt, uncovered a Chinese restaurant and laundry next to a brothel. Historic maps confirm that Chinese businesses and a “female boarding house”—the euphemism for prostitution—operated in the neighborhood in the early 1900s. Western red light districts and Chinese settlements, both housing outcast populations, were often adjacent. Volunteers working on the Big Timber project unearthed 35,000 artifacts, which comprise Montana’s only known Chinese deposit of the 1930s and 1940s. Among the artifacts are shards of pottery and porcelain, a bluing ball used in laundry operations, Chinese game pieces, and one very curious item. Intentionally placed beneath the doorframe of the entryway was a domestic cat’s paw. Likely some kind of talisman, its placement remains a mystery.

The crew also accessed Big Timber’s tunnels, which locals insist are Chinese. But in Big Timber as in other communities, passageways dubbed “Chinese tunnels” provide convenient access or under sidewalk storage. While they might have been used by Chinese residents, others used them too, and nothing makes these passageways exclusively Chinese.