Mining Camp Dangers

Epidemics were fairly commonplace throughout the nineteenth century and knew no social boundaries. Rich or poor, no person was immune. Typhoid and cholera plagued mining camps because miners quickly polluted the water source. But measles, whooping cough and diphtheria also invaded the communities. The great silver camp of Elkhorn that flourished in the 1880s has a particularly pathetic legacy, reminding us that sometimes the sacrifices of parents—leaving home and family for new opportunities—were minor compared to the sacrifices they imposed on their children. Dr. William Dudley served as camp doctor but could do nothing when a diphtheria epidemic in 1889 claimed most of Elkhorn’s children. His wife was pregnant with their second child, and the Dudleys left Elkhorn abruptly, leaving their first born son, a casualty of the epidemic, buried in the hillside cemetery. During that same year, on September 27, Harry Walton, 9, and Albin Nelson, 10, found a quicksilver container full of black powder. Adults filled these containers to detonate for community celebrations like the Fourth of July, and had overlooked this one. The boys managed to explode it and blew themselves to bits. They share a grave in the small cemetery.

Young boy in a coffin. Illness knew no social boundaries in Montana’s mining camps.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Mining-related accidents were a hazard to children, and explosives and mine shafts were not the only perils. Dredging created its own danger. At Bannack in 1916, three girls were enjoying the warmth of a summer afternoon, splashing and wading in Grasshopper Creek. Laughing and talking, they waded out into a pond created by the dredge boat, not realizing they had gone too far. Suddenly the girls stepped off a ledge into nine feet of water. None could swim. Twelve-year-old Smith Paddock heard the commotion and managed to pull two of the girls out, but the third girl, sixteen-year-old Dorothy Dunn, drowned.

Dorothy Dunn, second in line on the left, wading in the dredge pond at Bannack.
Courtesy of Kathie Stachler, Dorothy's great-niece.

Thanksgiving Day Murder at Elkhorn

The silver mines at Elkhorn yielded $14 million and the mining camp once had more than 2,500 residents. Three passenger trains arrived weekly on the Northern Pacific’s branch line.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

In 1893, the Fraternity Hall Association built the town’s architectural and social centerpiece. Fraternity Hall was aptly named: the town’s various fraternal organizations, including the Masons, Oddfellows, and Knights of Pythias, shared its upstairs lodge room. Dances, traveling theatrical troupes, graduations, prize fights, and other public gatherings at Fraternity Hall bound citizens together. The building’s outstanding architecture blends the western false front with a sophisticated twist. A unique neo-classical style balcony is suspended above the entry. After the Silver Panic of 1893, the mine began to play out and operated only off and on until 1931 when the Northern Pacific removed its tracks. Fraternity Hall has endured time, neglect, and heavy snows to become one of Montana’s most photographed buildings.


Gilliam's Hall and Fraternity Hall in Elkhorn

Although local lore says that an argument over a dance led to a murder at Fraternity Hall, the true incident actually began at a Thanksgiving Eve dance in 1889 at Gilliam’s Hall, Elkhorn’s other substantial surviving building. A shortage of women compelled Thomas King and George Peters to dance together. Manager Mat Fogarty asked them to stop. The ensuing quarrel later became a huge free-for-all bar fight at Lloyd’s Saloon. Taking their fight into the street early on Thanksgiving morning, King shot and killed Fogarty. Thomas King was hanged at Boulder for the crime in June of 1890, several years before Fraternity Hall was built. And this was especially noteworthy because King’s hanging was the first in the new state of Montana.

P.S. It makes Thanksgiving in Virginia City seem downright tame, doesn't it?

Children in the Mining Camps

Children who spent time in the mining camps of Montana faced numerous dangers. Typhoid and cholera plagued mining camps because miners quickly polluted the water source. But measles, whooping cough and diphtheria also invaded the communities. In 1889, diphtheria in the great silver camp of Elkhorn, for example, claimed almost all the children, including the Roberts sisters whose poignant tombstone tells the tragic tale.

During that same year, Harry Walton, 9, and Albin Nelson, 10, somehow escaped diphtheria, but they found a quicksilver container full of black powder. Adults filled these containers to detonate for community celebrations like the Fourth of July, and had overlooked this one. The boys managed to explode it and blew themselves to bits. They share a grave in the small cemetery. Mining-related accidents, mine shafts, and explosives posed real dangers. But of all the mining camps, the huge metropolitan industrial hub of Butte was probably the most dangerous place for youngsters. Growing up in Butte made children tough and unusually daring. They seemed to thrive in the polluted air and unsanitary conditions frequently noted in reports to the Board of Health. One Butte native who grew up there in the 1930s and 1940s recalled that mine officials came around to his elementary school and showed the kids what a blasting cap was, warned them not to pick them up, and showed them the explosive inside. After the lecture, every boy went out in search of caps. They poured the powder into a bottle with a wick, put it on the train tracks, preferably on a trestle, and hoped it would explode as a train passed by. Children lost limbs to this form of play, but danger made the game that much more fun.