Friday Photo: Santa Claus is Coming

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3736

Santa Claus stopped in front of F. Jay Haynes's photo studio to have this photo taken in 1897.

Friday Photo: At the Park

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-372

This family is relaxing in Miller's Park at Coal Banks Landing, a low-water unloading and refueling site for steamboats headed up the Missouri River to Fort Benton. The landing is now a BLM recreation site. Well-known photographer F. Jay Haynes took the photo.

Boxcar Adventure

Emma Gardner was a homesteading wife who came with her husband and children to the brand-new town of Ryegate in what would later become Golden Valley County. Like many families during the homestead boom, the Gardners came by boxcar. It was a seven day trip from their home in Minnesota, and the boxcar was loaded with all their earthly possessions including chickens and cows, furniture, children, and the family dog. Traveling in a boxcar in warm weather, especially with livestock, could be very uncomfortable. The boxcars were unbearably hot and stuffy, and so most families kept their big doors at least partially open so the fresh air could circulate. At one point, the train slowed down to travel up a steep grade. The dog decided to seize the moment and jump out of the car. Not only did he jump out, he took off running like mad across a field. The children were screaming, thinking that they would never see their pet again. Mr. Gardner did the noble thing and jumped out after him. Emma and the children lost sight of them both. The children began to think they would not only lose the dog, but maybe their dad, too. However, the dog was finally captured, and Mr. Gardner ran with him in his arms back to the train. But the train was starting down the other side of the grade, and it began to pick up speed. Mr. Gardner made it back to the train, but his own boxcar was way up ahead. As the train rumbled past, he had no choice but to toss the dog into someone else’s open boxcar. He hopped on the speeding train and, according to the family, hopped from car to car until he got back to his very anxious family and told them the dog was just down the way. The next time the train stopped, the Gardners collected their pet and all ended well.

A locomotive pulls boxcars across green horn trestle on Mullen Pass west of Helena. Photo by F. J. Haynes.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3202

Friday Photo: Yellowstone Lake

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-699

The Zillah carries tourists around Yellowstone Lake, probably in 1904. The photo was taken by Yellowstone National Park photographer H. Jay Haynes.

P.S. Haynes is also known for his photographs of the Northern Pacific.

Driving the Golden Spike

The most visible art in the Montana State Capitol attests to the importance of the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Driving the Golden Spike commemorates the great event that took place at Gold Creek on September 8, 1883, marking the completion of the last section of track across the vast stretches of the state.

Amédée Joullin, Driving the Golden Spike, 1903. Oil on canvas, 183" x 90". Grand Stairway

While Governor Joseph Toole oversaw the subjects of the Capitol’s other art, the Northern Pacific insisted upon the right to dictate the subject matter and the people depicted in this painting. Railroad officials chose as the artist Amédée Joullin, who earned his credentials as an artist at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris. Finished in 1903, the oil on canvas was unveiled first in California and subsequently mounted in its place of honor at the top of the grand stairway beneath the stained glass barrel vault in the Capitol. It is indeed impressive in its place of honor. In consultation with railroad officials, Joullin drew on photographs of the event and portraits of the participants to create the mural. Former President Ulysses S. Grant holds the sledgehammer while Northern Pacific president Henry Villard looks on. A delegation of Crow Indians, whose land the railroad crossed, includes Chief Iron Bull. Generic onlookers include soldiers, cowboys, miners, and railroad men. Absent, however, are those who actually did the work laying the tracks across Montana: the Irish, the Chinese, and other laborers. The golden spike used in the ceremony was not actually gold at all but a working iron spike that reputedly was used to begin the transcontinental project in Minnesota in 1872.

This view shows the Last Spike ceremony on which Joullin's painting is based. Photo by F. Jay Haynes.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-984

Friday Photo: Snowplow

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-1800

The Northern Pacific Railroad rotary snowplow clears track during the winter of 1887-1888. Photo by F. Jay Haynes.

Friday Photo: Bull Elk

Happy Friday, history buffs! There's a pile of fresh snow here in Helena. What's it like in your corner of Montana? Are you going to get out and play in it?


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3262

Elk in Yellowstone National Park's Hayden Valley struggle to find forage in this 1894 photo by F. Jay Haynes.

Cooking on the Hook

The Olympics are winding down, and this is our last post remembering Montana sports and champions (at least for now). Let's remember a sport that has long since been abandoned: cooking on the hook.

Photo by F. Jay Haynes
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-6318

Members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition heard of the wonders of the Yellowstone region, but they did not venture that far south. When Expedition member John Colter returned to Montana to trap, his near death experience escaping the Blackfeet led him through a portion of what would become Yellowstone Park. Most attributed his descriptions of fire and brimstone to delerium, and they called the area Colter’s Hell. But other stories gradually emerged. One of the famous tales first told by mountain men involved fishing. Montana pioneer attorney Cornelius Hedges was the first to provide a written account. An avid fisherman, Hedges was with the 1870 Washburn-Doane Expedition organized by a group of Montanans to explore the Yellowstone region. Hedges wrote that as he hooked a trout, he missed landing the fish on the bank. The fish came off the hook and flopped into a nearby thermal spring. By the time Hedges retrieved the fish with his pole, the trout was cooked through. While Hedges was too shocked to try it again, others reading his account took up the sport. Henry Winser, in his 1883 guide to Yellowstone Park, describes the art of hooking a trout, swinging the pole over to a thermal pool, and plunging the fish in, hook and line still attached. Cooking on the hook became a favorite sport. One preferred place was the Fishing Cone that Hedges described, which is a spring in the West Thumb Geyser Basin. Fishermen at the Fishing Cone sometimes dressed in a chef’s hat and apron to have their picture taken “cooking on the hook.” The Park once allowed this practice, but it is now prohibited. Cooking on the hook is now just another famous fish story.