The Pekin Noodle Parlor: Not a Brothel!

Butte’s Chinese community settled on the block bordered by West Mercury, South Main, West Galena, and Colorado streets in the late nineteenth century. Dwellings, club rooms, laundries, restaurants, and stores selling Chinese goods crowded its thoroughfares and alleyways. Butte attorney F. T. McBride built the Pekin Noodle Parlor building at 117 South Main on speculation in 1909. Hum Yow moved his Mercury Street noodle parlor to the second floor of the new building and soon owned the property.

Upstairs noodle parlors were common in urban Chinese communities, and the Pekin’s central stair and neon sign has long beckoned both Asian and Euro-American customers. Close proximity to Butte’s once-teeming red light district has long fueled local legends about the Pekin. Online reviews of the restaurant unfortunately label it a former brothel because of its seventeen curtained booths. However, these booths were a fixture in Asian restaurants across the West and simply offered diners privacy. Hum Yow’s Chinese Goods and Silks and G. P. Meinhart’s sign painting business originally occupied the two storefronts. A gambling casino operated in the basement from the 1910s to the 1950s. It was a business and family home and never housed prostitution.

For more than a century, the curtained booths in the Pekin Noodle Parlor
have provided private dining and nothing more.

Hum Yow and his wife Bessie Wong—both California-born first-generation Chinese—raised three children in the family living quarters in the building and housed immigrant lodgers as well. While it is true that the building has a basement entrance to Butte’s underground tunnel system, these tunnels were designed to provide steam heat to downtown buildings and are not what many call “Chinese tunnels.”  Butte’s tunnels sometimes provided a means of delivery for food and messages as well as steam heat, but they were not built by the Chinese nor were they exclusively used by them. (Read more about mythical “Chinese tunnels.”)

Butte's Pekin Noodle Parlor is Montana's oldest Chinese restaurant still operated by the same family.
(1979 HABS/HAER photo by Jet Lowe, Library of Congress.)

The Hums retired to California in 1952 and several more generations of the family have maintained this landmark business. It is Montana’s oldest family-operated Chinese restaurant.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a harvest tradition long celebrated in New England, but it took a while to catch on in Montana. In 1863 there really was no harvest to celebrate and Henry Plummer was perhaps the only resident to observe the occasion. He used it to cultivate good relations with the Sidney Edgerton family, and spent a small fortune freighting in a turkey. You can follow that story here.  

In 1864, miners at Last Chance were too busy searching for gold to celebrate. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a holiday to unify the nation torn by the Civil War. Cornelius Hedges observed, however, that southern sympathizers were too busy mourning the “lost cause” to be thankful. In 1875, the Montana territorial legislature formally proclaimed Thanksgiving a holiday. At Sun River, residents held a grand Thanksgiving dance with music by the Fort Shaw band. When the dance ended at three in the morning, everyone had had such a good time they organized a dance club.

By the 1880s, Thanksgiving was a tradition. In 1881, ladies at Helena’s Presbyterian Church held a holiday sale of items that mirrored their roots. New Englanders contributed, for example, miniature Boston baked bean pots. In 1892, the Red Lodge Picket noted that on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the Miners’ Meat Market featured an exceptionally artistic display arranged by E. J. Dugan, a Kansas City butcher. Beautifully dressed beeves, sheep, and veal hung on the pegs along with turkey and other fowl. The fantastic display was the “finest of any ever made in Red Lodge.”    

By the start of the twentieth century, Thanksgiving traditions were well established, and elaborate meals the norm. The Anaconda Standard noted in 1903 that “The stranger will find Anaconda equal to providing the great American feast.” At the Montana Hotel, orchestra music filtered throughout the hotel from nine till midnight. But the meal was the focus. Along with standard fare, the menu included green sea turtle quenelles, calves’ sweetbreads Genovese, orange fritters with brandy sauce, and frozen egg nog.

May you all once again eat too much and enjoy this day of national celebration.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, postcard collection

Jersey Lilly

Completion of the “Milwaukee Road” brought hundreds of homesteaders to Ingomar in Rosebud County during the 1910s. During its heyday, Ingomar was the sheep-shearing and wool-shipping center. It saw two million tons of wool annually.  On July 2, 1914, the Ingomar Index announced that a bank would soon open, marking an important milestone in the community’s development. Investors H. B. Wiley, C. W. Greening, and E. B. Clark hired bookkeeper W. T. Craig. All, declared the Index, were businessmen of sterling reputations. When the new building was completed that October, the newspaper declared it a “pippin,” noting that “cashier Craig feels like a kid with a new toy.” It was Ingomar’s first brick building. The bank indeed prospered, reorganizing and expanding in 1917 as a state bank, and reorganizing again in 1921 under federal charter. Economic reversal led to the bank’s sudden closure later that year. Craig was convicted of misuse of bank funds, a ruling that was later overturned on appeal. The bank stood empty, a painful reminder of delinquent loans and failed homesteads. In 1933, the Oasis Bar opened in the building and the Jersey Lilly Bar and Café moved into the former bank in 1948.

The Jersey Lilly is a Montana must!

Named for the beautiful nineteenth-century actress Lilly Langtry, the Jersey Lilly has since served as a community gathering place with a devoted clientele. Original pressed tin ceilings, bank vaults, and the outline of teller cages on unfinished hardwood flooring suggest the building’s previous function. Recalling the sheepmen who once drove their flocks through the area, the Sheep Herder Hors d’Oeuvre — orange slices, onions, and cheddar on saltine crackers—is a favorite. And as in days of old, there is always a pot of beans on the stove. Fare is simple and facilities are out back, but today’s Jersey Lilly Saloon and Eatery is an unforgettable Montana experience.

The interior of the Jersey Lilly preserves some of the original features of the former bank.

Friday Photo: Watermelon

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 82-23.42

Nothing says "summer" like a juicy watermelon. The women who enjoyed this one are, unfortunately, unidentified.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

Summer makes you think of ice cream, but have you ever wondered where it came from?
It has a longer history than you might think. The Roman emperor Nero used ice brought down from the mountains to mix with fruit. In the seventh century A.D., the Chinese introduced milk and ice mixtures which were then brought to Europe. Sorbets and ices were popular at French and Italian courts. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dolly Madison served “iced cream” at their tables. Home cooks and ice cream parlor confectioners would put a bowl of sweetened cream into a larger bowl of salt and ice and stir until it froze. The invention of the wooden bucket freezer and rotary paddles was a major breakthrough, and along with the first hand-cranked freezers patented in 1846 and 1848, ice cream making became easier.
 

An early advertisement for an ice cream freezer.

Ice cream was made from the very earliest days on the frontier. In 1865, the Montana Post advertised a Ladies' Ice Cream Saloon in Virginia City.

Advertisement from the Montana Post, August 5, 1865. Via Chronicling America.

In 1868, ice cream was a major part of the Fourth of July in Helena. On May 11, 1869, as the steamer Nile made its way to Fort Benton, the crew acquired a load of ice from Fort Peck. The steamboat stopped at the mouth of the Musselshell to buy cordwood from woodchoppers “Liver Eating” Johnson and X. Beidler. As was customary, the woodchoppers were invited aboard. It was Captain Grant Marsh’s birthday, and the cook made ice cream to celebrate. Neither Johnson nor Beidler had ever heard of it. They were suspicious of its coldness on a hot day, but they bravely ate their portions. And in 1872 at Urgam’s Occidental Restaurant in Deer Lodge, a plate of ice cream cost twenty-five cents. But it wasn’t until the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 that “walk away” ice cream was introduced. We have been enjoying ice cream cones ever since.

Friday Photo: Drying Meat

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-032

This Northern Cheyenne family dried meat in the traditional manner. They sliced it thin, salted it, and hung it on a rack. The meat would have been carefully turned over every day so that it dried evenly. When it was ready to eat, it might have been roasted or boiled with bacon for flavor. L. A. Huffman snapped the photo in 1896.

Christmas in Helena 1884

One of the coldest holidays on record in Montana was that of 1884 when temperatures dipped to 30 degrees below zero. That Christmas Eve there was a foot of new snow as some fifty children assembled at the Episcopal Church at Grand and Warren in Helena. They stood in awe of the Christmas tree decorated with ripe, golden fruit. With mouths watering, they anticipated distribution of the rare, precious treats. As Benjamin Benson arrived at the church late, he smelled smoke and saw telltale signs curling out the windows. Benson ushered the children to safety in a storefront at the Brown Block. The alarm sounded. Firemen came quickly with their hose carriage and the steamer named “City of Helena.” Firemen took water from a cistern at Fifth and Warren and pumped it through two hundred feet of hose. Although ice soon coated the firemen, the water miraculously did not freeze in the hose. The church was insured, but the Christmas tree with its delectable decorations was a total loss and the children were disappointed.

This map shows the location of the Episcopal Church (center). Library of Congress, American Memory Map Collection.

Christmas dinners at local eateries, however, were not a disappointment. At the Cosmopolitan Hotel, a grand Christmas tree sparkled and bouquets adorned the festive tables. The International Hotel served many who preferred the chef's traditional meal rather than one at home. The Bon Ton restaurant served the most expensive dinner adding quail and woodcock to traditional fare. And at Mrs. Norris' exclusive boarding house, guests enjoyed a Christmas feast finished with luxurious ice cream. But it was a tiny private restaurant that won the highest praise. The Nagle sisters at Porter Flats on Ewing Street—the first large apartment building in Helena with fully equipped kitchens in every unit—served the most impressive meal. The Herald praised everything from the oyster soup, roast turkey, and mashed potatoes to Philadelphia ice cream and Java coffee.  The Nagle sisters, said the reporter, “made us think that our lot was cast in pleasant places when we put our legs under their mahogany table for our Christmas dinner of 1884."

May your Christmas be just as pleasant.

The Gold Nugget

In the early summer of 1857, Granville Stuart and his brother James were en route from California to visit their parents in Iowa. Granville became very ill near the future site of Corrine, Utah, delaying their journey for seven weeks. During this delay, an armed confrontation between the Mormon settlers in Utah and the United States government made travel along the emigrant routes impossible. When Granville could travel, Hudson’s Bay employee Jacob Meek advised them to head for the Beaverhead valley where they could safely wait out the Mormon conflict.

Granville Stuart, 1883. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-260

It was this circumstance that led to Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. On Christmas Day of 1857, as the Stuarts and others camped in the Beaverhead valley, trader Richard Grant had built a three-room log cabin for his family, and he invited those camped in the area to Christmas dinner. Among the invited guests were the Stuart brothers, Jacob Meek, and Reece Anderson. Grant had hoarded some flour for the feast. The men had not tasted bread in a long time, and so soda bread, chokecherry preserves, dried buffalo meat, boiled smoked buffalo tongue, and coffee made a remarkable feast. Granville’s widow many years later claimed that at this Christmas dinner, Richard Grant gave Granville a gold nugget as a gift, claiming it had been mined at a certain creek in the territory. This supposedly led the Stuarts and Reece Anderson to prospect along Gold Creek the following May 1858. There they made Montana’s first recorded gold discovery. It was later proven, however, that the gold nugget Christmas gift that prompted the Stuart party to prospect had really been mined in California. So that first gold discovery was actually an incredible coincidence.

P.S. Remember Granville's crazy book-buying trip?

Thanksgiving in December

The first official observance of Thanksgiving after the creation of Montana Territory came in 1865. Although President Lincoln had established the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day, following Lincoln’s assassination, President Johnson chose December 7 as the day of official observance.

President Andrew Johnson, courtesy Library of Congress

Residents of the mining camps paused in their relentless search for golden treasure and gave thanks for their good luck and for the end of the Civil War. Virginia City businesses closed. There were private celebrations and culinary preparations in many homes and restaurants. The Montana Post reported that sleighs were gliding merrily around town all day, men hobnobbed at the bars, and there was a singing party in the governor’s office. The next year, 1866, at Last Chance, celebrations were more community oriented. Young ladies put on their pretties and attended the Firemen’s Ball on Thanksgiving Eve at the Young America Hall. Markets were well supplied for Thanksgiving Day feasts. Shoppers could choose elk, deer, bear, sage hens, grouse, and pheasant. There was no mention of turkeys, however, at Thanksgiving tables on that particular holiday.

This Helena meat market on Bridge Street offered mostly wild game in 1869.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 954-179

Friday Photo: Inside a Homestead Cabin

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.34-8

Evelyn Cameron snapped this rare photo of the interior of a homestead cabin circa 1900. Bread is rising in the pan by the oven.

P.S. Remember this cramped homestead cabin?
P.P.S. Have you seen the beautiful postcards in Evelyn Cameron's Montana?

Friday Photo: Chuck Wagon

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-256

Rodrick "Butch" Munroe prepares to feed the cowboys on the LU Bar cattle roundup in eastern Montana in August 1904. The man on the right is LU foreman Ben Fleming. L. A. Huffman snapped the photo.

Dedicating the Going-to-the-Sun Road

Glenn Montgomery cooked for several of the crews that built Going-to-the-Sun Road and was head cook for West Glacier Park. But never in his career did he feed more people than on July 15, 1933, the day Going-to-the-Sun Road was dedicated. Park officials expected to serve lunch to twenty-five hundred people before the opening ceremony. The day before, Montgomery gathered his groceries, including 500 pounds of red beans, 125 pounds of hamburger, 36 gallons of tomatoes, 100 pounds of onions, and 15 pounds of chili powder. The brew bubbled on four woodstoves in nine copper-bottomed washtubs until midnight. Crews transported the first batch of hot chili up to Logan Pass and transferred it to waiting cook fires to keep it hot. Meanwhile back at headquarters, Montgomery prepared a second batch that cooked the rest of the night. Nineteen-year-old Ernest Johnson, who worked on the road’s construction at forty cents an hour, stayed up all night helping to stir the chili.

At the dedication of Going-to-the Sun Road
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-617

The morning dawned sunny and clear, drawing four thousand people to the festivities on Logan Pass. The chili stretched thin, but with additional hot dogs and coffee, everyone got something to eat. Johnson later said that he slept through the event, but helped clean up the mess. He never saw so many paper plates in all his life.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Mystery Ovens

There are some curious features along the historic railroad grades in Montana, particularly in Lincoln and Prairie counties. These are domed rock structures that resemble small huts. They are typically called Chinese ovens and serve as a good example of misunderstanding and faulty logic.

When Henry Villard, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, brought the line across Montana and the Northwest, he hired 15,000 Chinese as well as many Slavic and Italian workers to lay the tracks. Many believe that these domed rock features found along the Northern Pacific and other western rail routes where made by the Chinese. But these are bread ovens, and the Chinese did not make bread. The truth behind this odd idea is much more logical. Railroad laborers worked grueling hours in all kinds of weather and had little relaxation. It is little wonder that they wanted something to remind them of their homes far away. Italians could not survive without their fresh-baked bread. Every Italian home had an oven called a formello, usually outside, especially for baking bread. Bread baked in a charcoal fire has a special flavor. Thus tasty charcoal-baked bread was a staple. And so it was the Italian workers in particular, and to a lesser extent other European groups, that built these ovens to satisfy their hunger for fresh bread in the camps. It is not surprising that the ovens show little use. These camps were transient, moving frequently as the tracks spread across the Northwest. Bread ovens remain to document this dietary craving.

P.S. Here's the truth about Montana's Chinese pioneers.

A Miner’s Lunch

Among the many ethnic groups that came to Butte were miners from Cornwall, England. These miners brought beliefs and traditions with them. They feared the Tommyknockers, who were the spirits of departed miners. Their ghostly knocking warned of cave-ins. Like all miners, the Cornish carried their lunches on their shifts underground. Terry Beaver of Helena has a collection of lunch boxes and has made a study of them. Often they were oval shaped and usually contained two inner trays, dividing the lunch pail into three separate compartments.

The men poured their coffee in the bottom of the pail. The first tray fit over the coffee. This level contained a pasty, or meat pie. Made with bits of leftover meat and potatoes enclosed in a pastry envelope, this culinary staple had a tender nickname. Miners called it a “Letter from Home.” A second tray on top of the pasty made the third and final level for pie or cake. The lid fit on top of it all, and a coffee cup fit on top of the lid. Miners would light a candle, stick it in the tunnel wall, and hang their lunch pails over the flame to heat their coffee and warm their pasty. Miners would never eat the crimped edges of the pasty. This they crumbled and dropped on the ground to pacify the Tommyknockers and feed the rats that lived in the mines. The rats, they believed, deserved their respect and the miners took good care of them. Always present underground, rats sensed when a cave-in was imminent or if poison gas began to fill the tunnels. They would run out of the mine in droves, warning the miners of danger.

P.S. A traditional (and delicious) Cornish pasty recipe
P.P.S. Remember these cute little miners?

Scarred Trees

Culturally scarred trees in Glacier National Park, the Nez Perce and Bitterroot Forests, the Flathead Lake area, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and elsewhere in western Montana are indicative of travel corridors that native people used seasonally. Majestic Ponderosa pines and, less often, western larch and other types of trees served as a source of nutrition in the spring when the sap was running. Food was scarce at this time of the year and the people were hungry. Various tribes harvested the sweet bark, or cambium. For the Salish, it was women’s work. They used a stone knife or ax to make a foot-long waist-high incision on the outer trunk of the tree. A pole thrust upward into the bark served as a lever to loosen and peel the outer bark. Then the women used a sharp knife to shave thin strips from the inner layer. Some of the strips were eaten raw on the spot and immensely enjoyed. What remained was dried on drying racks like jerky. When the strips were completely dry, the women pounded the strips into a fine powder and used it as a nutritious sweetener. The procedure did not kill the tree, and often the scars are so old they are nearly healed over. Lewis and Clark noted the practice of peeling bark in their journals, and some scarred trees were harvested as long ago as the 1700s, before Lewis and Clark trekked through Montana. Ponderosa pines are not ready for harvest until the bark turns a reddish color when the tree is about two hundred years old. Forest fires have claimed some of these treasures, but some of the massive survivors have stood for centuries.

Friday Photo: Healthful Holiday

Will you be cooking a Christmas feast like this one that Rose Drew Paulley hosted in Lavina in 1938?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

We tend to overindulge during these special times of year, and we pay for those extra pounds in the New Year. But it's not a modern problem, as an article from 1881 goes to show...

In 1881, Montana newspapers ran an article cautioning holiday hostesses to think carefully about the health of their guests. "Friends," said the article, "those of you who expect to treat your children to a holiday feast, let us give you a hint. Why are all our holidays filled with unreasonable feasting? Overeating at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s causes sickness, and doctors always expect to be busy at this time of year. Instead of loading the table with certain foods that injure the digestive system and work mischief in every part of one’s vital organs, wouldn’t it be better to put more healthful foods on the table? How can certain foods be pronounced unwholesome and bad for you, but at those special times of the year considered good and desirable? Women control the meals in their households and could greatly reform the world if they heeded this advice and put wholesome food that does not stimulate the palate into gluttony on their tables." The article went on to point out that there are other ways people get sick during the holidays besides overindulging. Keeping late hours then sleeping late, compressing the stomach in tight clothing, wearing thin shoes, neglecting to bathe to keep the pores open, exchanging warm daytime clothing for evening attire, eating at irregular times, fretting over unimportant issues and taking quack medicines for imaginary maladies all compound the misery of holiday ill health. Back in 1881, these things were all of concern. Things haven’t changed very much, have they?

P.S. Remember this 1893 recipe for duck?