Cinnabar Hosts Teddy Roosevelt

A few buried foundation walls are all that mark the place where the town of Cinnabar once hosted a presidential entourage. Situated on the flats between the Yellowstone River and the Gallatin Mountains in the shadows of the famous Electric Peak and Devil’s Slide, Cinnabar took root in 1883. As the Northern Pacific Railroad’s terminus of its Yellowstone National Park branch, the town, four miles north of the park’s entrance, was a lonely stopping place for some twenty years. In 1902, the Northern Pacific extended its line to the new town of Gardiner where the monumental entrance arch to Yellowstone Park was under construction. But the depot and visitor services were as yet nonexistent when, in May of 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt planned a preseason tour and dedication of the entrance arch.

Roosevelt dedicating the entrance arch at Gardiner. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-stereo-1s02085

Cinnabar was the only place to locate the nation’s portable capital. For sixteen days, pullman, parlor, and dining cars serving President Roosevelt and White House staff parked along the tracks at Cinnabar. A contingent of secret service men and newspaper writers added to the throng of visitors. The cavalry stationed in the area made their horses available for fishing trips and sightseeing, and stagecoaches offered excursions into the park.

Preparing to go into Yellowstone National Park. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-18932

Cinnabar’s shabby buildings and antiquated services were a far cry from the nation’s sophisticated capital. Associated Press official Harry Colman remarked, “Well, thank goodness, this blooming town will be wiped off the map when we leave. It’s a mystery to me how it ever got on in the first place.” Once the presidential cars sped down the tracks, Cinnabar’s businesses moved to Gardiner, and that brief moment in time was Cinnabar’s last hurrah.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Scherlie Homestead

The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 lured many homesteaders to Montana and to an area in Blaine County called the Big Flat. One of these was thirty-two-year-old Anna Scherlie, who arrived in 1913 to file a claim near her brother’s place. Anna was one of many women homesteaders in Montana. In fact, in the four surrounding townships, women made up about one-fourth of the total homestead applicants. By 1916, Anna had forty acres planted in wheat, oats, and flax. Isolation on the Big Flat led many settlers to winter elsewhere, and Anna followed suit. Legend has it that she went to St. Paul to work for the family of railroad magnate James J. Hill. Over the decades, Anna made few changes to her small wood-frame shack, adding only a vestibule to use as a summer kitchen and laundry.

Photo by Nellie Cederberg, May 6, 1996. On file at Montana State Historic Preservation Office, Helena.

Droughts, depression, and two world wars passed. Anna’s neighbors built modern homes, but she insisted that she was too old for modern conveniences. Anna died in 1973, leaving an estate of more than one hundred thousand dollars to eighteen nieces and nephews. Her ashes were scattered beneath a lilac bush on the property. Leon and Nellie Cederburg purchased the homestead, but rather than return it to cropland, the Cederbergs maintain Anna’s home exactly as she left it.

P.S. Anna's neighbor Lois Imler Warren kept a detailed diary.

Mining Camp Courthouses

The gold-rush-era towns of Bannack and Virginia City have something in common that has gone almost unnoticed. Bannack, originally the county seat of Beaverhead County, and Virginia City, the county seat of Madison County, share courthouses of very similar design built almost at the same time in the mid-1870s. Loren Olds was the architect of both buildings.

Madison County Courthouse, 1963. Photo by John N. DeHaas Jr.
Library of Congress, HABS MONT,1-BRAN,2--3

While the Madison County courthouse in Virginia City still serves the public housing county offices and the county courtroom, Bannack’s courthouse is known today as the Meade Hotel. That’s because in 1881, the seat of Beaverhead County moved to Dillon. The courthouse sat empty until 1888 when Dr. John Meade remodeled it into a hotel.

Original Beaverhead County Courthouse, 1963. Photo by John N. DeHaas Jr.
Library of Congress, HABS MONT,1-BRAN,2--2

If you have visited each of these two buildings, you may have noticed especially that their grand staircases are identical. These gracefully curving staircases are distinctive, with beautiful newel posts and banisters, manufactured in sections, by the same unknown competent craftsman.

Stairway to second floor, Beaverhead County Courthouse, 1963. Photo by John N. DeHaas Jr.
Library of Congress, HABS MONT,1-BRAN, 2--3

Each staircase has a window with a very deep sill, almost like a window seat. The two courthouses, also similar in exterior appearance, are important landmarks not only because they recall early territorial justice, but also because they were among the first architect-designed buildings on the Montana frontier.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Patrick Largey’s Murder

Patrick Largey, Butte’s fourth Copper King, was president of the State Savings Bank, located on the site of the present Metals Bank Building. In January of 1898 miner Thomas Riley gunned Largey down as he sat at his desk. The shooting took place nearly three years to the day after the great powder explosion in the warehouses of the Kenyon Connell and Butte Hardware companies. Illegally stored dynamite caused the blast that killed at least fifty-nine and injured one hundred others. Riley lost a leg in the blast and held Largey personally responsible. Though Largey owned stock in the hardware business, he had no part in the disaster. But Riley, who could no longer work, demanded compensation. Largey and Riley had several violent quarrels, and the last culminated in Largey’s murder.

Portrait of Patrick Largey from A Brief History of Butte, Montana, The World's Greatest Mining Camp
Via the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library's Flickr photostream

Charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, Riley went to the federal prison at Deer Lodge in 1898. He kept his union membership in Local No. 1. In 1910, 170 members signed a petition asking the governor and the Board of Pardons to review Riley’s case. But the influential Largey family made sure that nothing came of it. Riley wrote letters to friends, lawyers, priests, and legislators to no avail. Nearly forty years later, Governor Roy Ayers met Riley during a prison inspection. He found no bitterness left in him and granted seventy-year-old Riley a full pardon. Riley left Deer Lodge in 1937. He died in 1938 after little more than a year of freedom.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

P.S. Remember what happened when a couple of prisoners tried to escape from the Deer Lodge prison?

Butte Explosion

Butte has had its share of mining disasters and mourned its share of fallen heroes. But no disaster precipitated more fire protection improvements than an explosion that occurred on January 15, 1895. Butte firemen answered a fire call in the South Butte warehouse of the Royal Milling Company. The firemen did not know that tons of blasting powder had been illegally stored in the nearby Kenyon-Connell Commercial Company and Butte Hardware Company warehouses. Flames reached the powder, and the first terrific explosion blew the metal roof of the Kenyon-Connell building one hundred feet in the air, hurling bystanders and nearly the entire Butte fire department to their deaths.


A page from Souvenir History of the Butte Fire Department

As passersby rushed to aid victims, two more blasts turned iron bars and metal pipes stored in the warehouse into deadly missiles that found targets as distant as a mile from the explosions. Searing oil rained down on the crowd. Sidewalks throughout Butte all the way to Walkerville glistened with broken glass from shattered windows. Authorities counted at least fifty-nine dead and more than one hundred injured, but Butte’s transient population and the complete annihilation of some victims suggested the toll was much higher. Only the Speculator Mine disaster in 1917 eclipsed this horrendous calamity.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Update: Richard Gibson tells the stories of two firefighters who survived the explosion on his blog, Butte History.

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

Friday Photo: Quartz Street Fire Station

Butte’s Quartz Street Fire Station has a past that refuses to be forgotten. Built in 1900, the station housed twenty-two men, Chief Peter Sanger, and his family. Sanger’s first wife Margaret died in the family’s apartment in 1904. He remarried in 1908, and his second wife, Louisa, like Margaret before her, took up a post by the window where she watched for her husband’s safe return. In January 1915, Sanger’s truck collided with a Walkerville streetcar en route to an alarm. Hundreds attended his funeral at the station. After several more generations of firefighters had come and gone, the station became the Butte–Silver Bow Public Archives in 1981. Traces of its past include a wall of long-disconnected alarm boxes installed by Chief Sanger. Archivists and volunteers can tell you that they have heard the disconnected alarm bells clang as if the firemen never left. After the building has closed and darkness edges in, some say you can hear the men banter back and forth, reenacting scenes played out in the past hundreds of times. One late afternoon the building was empty, and the director was out in the parking lot. She was certain she saw an older woman gazing out the east window, drying her hands on a dish towel. Some time later a photograph of Louisa Sanger came to light. She was standing in the same window, drying her hands on a dish towel, gazing out to the street.

From Spirit Tailings: Ghost Tales from Virginia City, Butte, and Helena
Original photo from Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives

Recent major renovations have erased the tangible elements of the former station. Time will tell if the work has erased the spirits, too.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Elinor Knott

For me, October means telling ghost stories by the dozen, which is what I'll be doing tomorrow night. Join me here at the Historical Society at 6:30 Thursday evening for "How We Miss Them." In the mean time, here's another ghost story to tide you over until then.

Elinor Knott was one of the many madams at the Dumas Hotel in Butte. On a winter night in 1955, Knott packed her suitcase, put on her hat, and sat down to wait. Her lover had promised to leave his wife and come for her. They would leave Butte to start a new life together. But the next morning a friend discovered Knott’s body in her rooms at the Dumas. The coroner pronounced her dead of natural causes. Dark whispers among acquaintances suggested that something was amiss. Although officials declared her destitute, friends knew Knott owned jewelry, a red Cadillac, and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. These never surfaced and there was no inquest into her death. The coroner pronounced it suicide by a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs. A few years ago, a woman who had worked at the Dumas in the 1970s returned to Butte on a visit. She told of a curious experience. She said she was staying alone at the Dumas one night. She was in the bathroom upstairs at the end of the hall, with the door open. She had a clear view of the hall and the corner stairway. She saw a woman wearing a hat and carrying a suitcase walk past the bathroom door and descend the stairs. She was so shocked she didn’t move until the top of the woman’s head disappeared. She hurried down the stairs after her, but there was no sign of the woman. The front and back doors were locked and barred shut. Some time later, an artist commissioned to paint a mural for the city of Butte rented Knott’s former apartment to use a studio. Something compelled her to paint portrait after portrait of a woman she had never seen. She couldn’t seem to paint anything else.


Courtesy F.O.G (Friends of Ghosts)

 One of the canvasses, rescued from the trash, shows a middle-aged woman with a coy smile and a quaint little hat.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

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

Robber’s Roost

Because events supposedly connected to Sherriff Henry Plummer and his suspected gang occurred near the Daly ranch in 1863 and 1864, mystery, legend, and mistaken identity have long been part of the history of the stage stop called Robber’s Roost. Although it never served as a gathering place for the road agents and no early-day murders have been documented there, the inn is historically important as a link between the two territorial capitals—Bannack and Virginia City—and one of few surviving log stage stations of this very early territorial period. Orlin Fitzgerald Gammell, who was born in 1846 and died in 1952, helped procure the logs that built Robber’s Roost. He says in his written reminiscence that ranch owner Pete Daly built the structure in the winter of 1866–1867, well after the vigilante hangings of Sheriff Henry Plummer and other suspected road agents.

From http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/

Robber’s Roost never served as a hideout for robbers during that turbulent time, but it did later serve as an inn and stage station along the busy road between Bannack and Virginia City. So-called Robber’s Roost is actually important for a different reason. It was the place where Bill Fairweather, credited as the discoverer of the vast Alder Gulch gold deposits, died in 1875. Mrs. Daly cared for him during the final stages of acute alcoholism. He died penniless at the age of thirty-nine.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Bill Fairweather

Some men just weren’t meant for good fortune. Bill Fairweather was a tragic example of luck gone awry. In the company of a party of miners on May 26, 1863, Fairweather panned the first gold at Alder Gulch, setting off the famous stampede. The gulch made him rich, but to Fairweather, the gold meant little. Legend has it that he would ride up and down the streets of Virginia City on his horse, Old Antelope, scattering gold nuggets in the dust. He loved to see the children and the Chinese miners scramble for them. He mixed gold dust in his horse’s oats, saying that nothing was too good for Old Antelope, the horse that brought him such good luck. But Fairweather died of hard living at Robber’s Roost in 1875. His pockets were empty and a bottle of whiskey was his only companion. He was not yet forty years old. A diet of gold dust did Fairweather’s horse, Old Antelope, no harm. He long outlived his master, enjoying the Ruby Valley pasture of E. F. Johnson into extreme old age. Fairweather’s remains lie in Hillside Cemetery, a windswept burial ground overlooking Alder Gulch where an iron fence surrounds his grave. A recent marker credits him with the Alder Gulch discovery.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Evelyn Cameron

Today's post remembers Evelyn Cameron. She was born on August 26, 1868.

Terry, Montana, on the state’s eastern edge, was home to Evelyn Cameron, a talented woman who documented the homesteading era and Montana outdoors with shutter, lens, and expert eye. Cameron’s photographs capture the spirit of the West just as surely as Charlie Russell’s famous paintings define Montana cowboys. Cameron came to Montana from England with her husband to raise polo ponies to ship back to the British Isles. Although that idea failed, Cameron learned the art of photography and set about capturing life on the eastern plains. She died in 1928, but years later in the late 1970s, Time-Life books editor Donna Lucey stumbled upon 1,800 photo negatives and 2,700 original prints, stored for half a century in the Terry basement of Janet Williams, Cameron’s best friend. Lucey studied Cameron’s meticulous diaries and photographs to research her book, Photographing Montana 1894–1928: The Life and Works of Evelyn Cameron. Published in 2000, it revealed many of Cameron’s photos for the first time. If you visit Terry, be sure to stop at the Prairie County Museum and visit the Cameron ranch site.


Cameron snapped this photo of her brother Alec Flower with a magnificent cabbage harvest in 1898.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 90-87




Dick Brown poses next to a pile of wolf hides in this Cameron photo.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 90-87.24-5

Cameron kneads dough in this 1904 self-portrait.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives PAc 90-87.35-5

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember the scandal Cameron created when she rode into Miles City wearing this skirt?

Sedman House

One of Montana’s best-kept secrets is the Sedman House, a beautifully furnished territorial period home in Nevada City, now under state ownership and maintained by the Montana Heritage Commission. It originally stood in nearby Junction City where it was one of the first large homes built in the region in 1873. Its builder, Madison County rancher and territorial legislator Oscar Sedman, met an unfortunate end. In 1881 during the legislative session in Helena, he suddenly took ill and died of “black measles,” the tick-born disease we know today as Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Sedman was the first Montana legislator to die during a session. He left a wife and four small children. His colleagues paid him tribute by draping his official chair in black crepe, turning it backwards to face the wall. After Oscar’s death, two of the Sedmans’ four children died. Mrs. Sedman remarried and moved to Missoula.

Sedman House, June 12, 2009
Photo by E.L. Malvaney via Flickr

The Sedmans’ lovely home later became the Junction Hotel. After that, it served as a stable. Charles Bovey disassembled the badly deteriorated building and moved it a mile and a half to Nevada City where he put it back together. The home today is a focal point. The period furnishings include the desk of vigilante prosecutor Wilbur Fisk Sanders and Colonel Charles Broadwater’s personal gold-trimmed bathtub from his private suite at the far-famed Broadwater Hotel. A visit to the Sedman House in Nevada City is well worth it.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. This weekend would be an especially good opportunity to visit the Sedman House.

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?

Marie Gibson

In honor of the Olympics, let's look back at sports and champions in Montana history...

Sixteen-year-old Marie Gibson’s marriage was on the rocks, so she joined her parents on their homestead near Havre in 1914. With the encouragement of neighbors, including legendary cowboy Long George Francis, Gibson began trick riding in local fairs and rodeos for prize money to help support her children. Her professional debut came in 1917 at Havre’s Great Stampede. She married for a second time in 1919. Her husband, rodeo veteran Tom Gibson, retired to the family homestead and Marie went on to travel widely, busting broncs overseas and back East. During a performance in England she so charmed the Prince of Wales that he presented her with a prize horse. Gibson earned many titles including World Champion Cowgirl Bronc Rider in 1924 and 1927.



Image from University of Wyoming

In 1933, Gibson made a successful ride on a wild bronc in Idaho. The horse was still bucking as the pickup man approached to take her off. The two horses collided, and Gibson’s horse lost his balance and fell on her, fatally fracturing her skull. Her hobbled stirrups prevented her from kicking free. Her son Lucien, then twenty-three, rushed to her aid, but it was too late. Gibson is buried in Havre where locals rightfully claim her as one of their own.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this lady bronc rider?

Prairie Figs

Johnny Grant, founder of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, was the son of the factor at the Hudson’s Bay Company fort near Pocatello, Idaho. Johnny’s memoirs, wonderfully edited by Lyndle Meikle under the title Very Close to Trouble, are full of interesting historical anecdotes. One memorable footnote recounts the story of a green Missourian who came into the fort store. Johnny’s father decided to have some sport with the unsuspecting traveler. Castorums are beaver glands that trappers used as bait. There were a number of these foul objects hanging in the store. The Missourian asked what they were. “Prairie figs,” replied the elder Grant. “Are they good to eat?” asked the Missourian. “For those who like them,” answered Grant. “Can I taste one?” Grant answered, “Certainly.” The traveler picked a good full one and bit into it. The putrid gum and oil ran down the sides of his mouth, and Johnny recalled how comical it was to see the man making faces trying to spit it out. For some time he couldn’t speak. Finally he said, “They might be good for those who like them, but I declare I do not.” This comical story and the singular name suggests that Prairie Figs would make a terrific name for a modern-day band!

Johnny Grant posed for this photo sometime after founding the Grant-Kohrs Ranch.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 942-461

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Hog ‘Em

Hog ’Em was originally the name for the town of Springville, one of the first-named towns in Montana Territory. With gold discoveries in the mid-1860s, greedy miners staked out claims over such a wide area that miners named this camp Hog ’Em. Other local camps were Beat ’Em, Cheat ’Em, Rob ’Em, and Sinch ’Em. Hog ’Em was known as the “father of the ’Ems.” When the post office came to Hog ‘Em, officials didn’t like the name so they changed it to Springville. Springville took its name from nearby warm water springs. The tiny settlement was a stopping place for trappers, traders, and, later, freighters and stagecoaches. In 1879, the Springville post office moved to Bedford and Hog ’Em ceased to exist. Only a few foundations and a small cemetery remain. You may have heard the local myth that the cemetery contains the graves of suicides and murder victims. But the truth is that only two of its silent occupants have actually been identified. Jack Wright committed suicide in the Missouri River, date unknown, and Michael O’Keefe died in 1878 of complications from a fall down a mineshaft.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember the mystery of Missoula's first cemetery?

Camel Trains

If you are stressed out about your Fourth of July preparations, here's a humorous perspective:

In the earliest days of the Montana mining camps, transportation was slow, and miners often waited in vain for ox-drawn freight wagons and mule trains to deliver supplies. Bad weather frequently delayed such essential items as mail, flour, and of course, whiskey. Stories abound about freighters caught in winter storms (check out the Winter issue of Montana The Magazine of Western History for an example). Such delays caused the rationing of supplies and brought on the infamous flour riots in Virginia City. Private companies tried to improve the delivery system, and some began to employ camel trains to carry goods over the Mullan Road to remote mining camps. It sounded like a great idea. Camels could carry up to one thousand pounds of flour each, they needed little food and water, and they plodded along at a slow but even pace. They were rather like today’s postal service: neither rain nor sleet nor snow seemed to stop them. But there was one problem. Bullwhackers and muleskinners detested the ungainly critters and dreaded meeting them on the trail. A mule train could smell the peculiar odor of camel from a long way off. Camel stench on the wind made horses and mules impossible to control. A mule train laden with a supply of whiskey earmarked for the Fourth of July met a camel train on a narrow road, and the mules stampeded. When it was over, whiskey soaked the ground, the Fourth of July was dry, and the camel experiment was over.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Carrie Nation

In 1910, the hatchet-wielding, bar-smashing temperance crusader Carrie Nation came to Butte. At that time Butte had 275 saloons; even Mayor Charles Nevin owned a bar. Booze joints in nearby Anaconda sported signs that read, “All Nations welcome except Carrie,” while reformers welcomed her with open arms. Onlookers cheered as the stout sixty-three-year-old Mrs. Nation, with a flourish and a crowd in tow, charged down the length of Butte’s notorious Pleasant Alley.

Carrie Nation flourishes her hatchet in this 1909 photo.
Kansas State Historical Society, B Nation, Carrie *48

She had some difficulty communicating with the resident prostitutes because few of them spoke English. At the end of the alley back on Mercury Street, she burst into the Irish World, a well-known parlor house, and met her match in madam May Maloy. The two got into a scuffle, and Maloy booted Mrs. Nation out the door with a well-placed kick. She emerged with her bonnet askew, suffering from a wrenched elbow. It was a moment Maloy’s patrons savored, and they celebrated with drinks all around. Thus Carrie Nation made not so much as a single convert in Butte. In fact, Butte likes to claim that Maloy’s was the last saloon Carrie Nation ever set foot in. While that’s not exactly true, it may have marked a turning point in her career.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go