Dorothy’s Rooms Part 1

Prohibition and World War I brought reforms, and Helena, along with two hundred other American cities, closed its old red-light district in 1917. The women re-emerged in other locations billed as “furnished rooms.” Such places never mentioned exactly what was “furnished.” Madams Ida Levy, Pearl Maxwell, and a few others ran businesses above the Boston Block and the St. Louis Block on South Last Chance Gulch.

Ida Levy. Photo courtesy Susan Bazaar.

By 1927, Ida Levy operated her “rooms” upstairs at 19 1/2 South Last Chance Gulch. Ida was handsome, big-hearted, and fond of jewelry so gaudy it didn’t look real. But the diamonds and gems she wore were not only authentic, they were the best.  Ida bought distinctive, expensive neckties for her regular customers at Helena’s best stores. Employees noted Ida’s purchases, and waited to see what prominent citizens would turn up wearing them. After Prohibition, Ida’s Silver Dollar Bar (where the Windbag Saloon and Grill is today) was a favorite watering hole. Her upstairs “furnished rooms” had regular customers too. Marks in the flooring reveal that Ida’s rooms consisted of a long row of tiny cribs, one-room offices where prostitutes conducted business. In 1943, however, federal law banned cribs and Ida remodeled her upstairs into “proper” bedrooms. In 1954, Ida retired and Dorothy Baker took over as madam. She eventually purchased the property and leased the downstairs storefronts. Customers visiting Dorothy’s Rooms entered as they had during Ida’s tenure, at the back.

Dorothy's back door, where the Ghost Art Gallery is today.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Dorothy had no liquor license, but ushered her patrons hospitably into a small kitchen/bar where she sold drinks anyhow. Beyond the bar, a long hallway connected seven bedrooms, five sitting rooms, and Dorothy’s private apartments. Dorothy was a generous benefactor. She rewarded her paperboys with five-dollar tips and was a soft touch for youngsters peddling fundraisers. She donated hundreds of children’s books to local institutions; she wrote countless checks to charities; and she paid for several college educations. She loaned money without question, tipped off the police to drug pushers, and was polite to tipsy teenagers who knocked on her door. She sent them off with humor if they were underage. Little wonder the town was outraged when police finally closed her down in 1973.

P.S. Remember this Helena madam who operated nearly a century earlier?

Friday Photo: The Bob Saloon

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-837

The cowboys in this L.A. Huffman photo are enjoying a lazy day off at Bob Leavitt's Saloon in Jordan, Montana, circa 1904. The horse, on the other hand, looks ready to go. I hope your weekend is just as relaxing.

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.

Little Cowboy Bar

Musty, gnarly, and eclectic would be a good way to describe the Little Cowboy Bar and Museum, a landmark along Fromberg’s West River Road which is the tiny town’s main street. If you duck into the low slung bar where brands cover the green stucco storefront, you’ll be amazed at the Montana history hidden inside.

Courtesy Shannon Kaple, Center Avenue Imaging. Used by permission.

Longtime owner Shirley Smith has collected a mixture of oddities, autographs, artifacts, and memorabilia spanning more than a century. A. L. Anderson, writing about Shirley Smith in the Clark’s Fork Pioneer, noted that the bar is a local gathering place where the legendary outlaw spirit that you read about comes alive. Clippings and photographs define the renegade cowboys and cowgirls who dared to ride the toughest rodeo stock. Worn weapons, a beaver fetus pickled in alcohol, an insect collection, famed bronc rider Turk Greenough’s cowboy hat, native beadwork,  and acres and acres of other items all wonderfully displayed  remind the visitor that the West was a catch-all where people worked hard, played hard, and sometime broke the law.

Owner Shirley Smith. Photo courtesy Shannon Kaple, Center Avenue Imaging. Used by permission.

Smith has stories about everything from outlaws to artists and movie stars. She says that she’s done everything in the bar except birth a baby, and she’s come close to doing that too. She has set bones, pulled teeth, taken stitches out, and taken lots and lots of ticks of out of kids’ ears. The Little Cowboy Bar is, as one writer put it, “the real thing—a moving lament for the way it was, once upon a time in the West.”  Take a jog off the highway and experience the Little Cowboy for yourself. You won’t be sorry.

P.S. Add this place to your road trip bucket list, too.

A Mild Thanksgiving in Wild Miles City, 1882

Miles City was a wild town in its day. Wooden false fronts, wide dusty streets, and saloons where whiskey flowed made the town on every cowboy’s route and a place where a good time was easily found. Cowboys and soldiers at Fort Keogh frequented the numerous houses where the ladies entertained them lavishly, for a fee, of course.

Miles City prostitutes and patrons in a parlor house reception hall.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Morrison Collection

But for one day in the 1880s, an unusual atmosphere pervaded the air. The Miles City Daily Press noted after Thanksgiving Day in 1882 that seldom had there been such a mild holiday. The weather that day was clear and brilliant and the temperature balmy, precisely the kind of day one would choose for a holiday. And so Miles City gave itself up to relaxation and enjoyment. The bank and the post office were closed although citizens received their daily mail. Stores were open early for shoppers planning holiday meals, and by noon, all stores had hung their closed signs in their windows. Visitors flocked into town from neighboring settlements and reaches to see what fun might be going on. But, said the paper, there was only the mildest type to be found. There was never a more sober and orderly day witnessed in Miles City. The saloons were all open and they were well patronized and did a brisk business, but the patrons were all unusually well behaved.  Unlike the usual barroom scuffles and rowdy behavior, the spirit of good behavior seemed to hover over all. Miles City was in it glory that Thanksgiving night in 1882, and it was gratifying to record that not a single disturbance occurred to mar the general harmony that had prevailed throughout that pastoral Thanksgiving Day.

May yours be as pleasant.

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

Legal Beer

Eight months before the official end of Prohibition, patrons at Walkers Bar in Butte raised glasses of beer in celebration. A sign read, “The only place in the United States that served Draught Beer over the bar April 8, 1933.” President Franklin Roosevelt gave the repeal of Prohibition top priority because traffic in illegal liquor fostered so much criminal activity. Roosevelt knew its repeal would take time. So when he took office in 1933, he signed the Cullen-Harrison Act legalizing beverages with an alcohol content of 3.2 percent. Twenty states, including Montana, legalized 3.2 beer. The law took effect on April 7, and within twenty-four hours, the nation consumed 1.5 million barrels of beer. Montana enjoyed its 3.2 beer until the Twenty-first Amendment repealing Prohibition took effect eight months later on December 5.


Photo from Metals Sports Bar

 Although Montana was one of twenty states legalizing 3.2 beer, except for Walkers in Butte, beer didn’t magically appear in local Montana bars. While state beer licenses brought in seventy-three thousand dollars in the first two days, legal beer only trickled into the state. The first shipment of 3.2 Pabst left Milwaukee on April 7, the very same day it became legal. A new refrigerated warehouse at the Northern Pacific Railway yards in Helena waited to store it for distribution. But it was five days before Helena got its first taste of legal beer. With 1.5 million barrels of beer consumed nationwide in the first twenty-four hours after the signing of the Cullen-Harrison Act, Walkers could not have been the country’s only outlet. The question is: how did Walkers get its first legal 3.2 beer at a moment’s notice?