Hangman's Tree

Virginia City placers dwindled and many transferred their stores and shops to Helena to “mine the miners.” The settlement boomed. William Sprague, an early settler, recalled that there were one thousand people at Last Chance Gulch by May 1865 and, “There was a good deal of shooting and hanging. The shooting was most all done by the gamblers, other people having very little trouble.”  By summer, there were three thousand residents. John Keene committed the first murder on June 7, 1865, when he killed Harry Slater outside a Bridge Street saloon. There being no government presence, Helena’s vigilance committee escorted Keene to the Hangman’s Tree in Dry Gulch. There he became the first of some dozen recorded victims who breathed their last on the gnarled branches. However, territorial Supreme Court justice Judge Lyman Munson observed upon arrival at Helena in July 1865 that some claimed the tree had already seen eight victims.
The venerable ponderosa pine stood until 1875 when the Reverend William Shippen chopped it down. He claimed flooding had loosened its roots, and the tree could fall on his barn and kill his horse. Citizens were incensed at the loss of this symbolic landmark, and hundreds crowded the neighborhood to take souvenir slivers of the tree. In 1913 when excavating for an addition on the home of Jacob Opp, workmen encountered the roots and found them as stable as if the tree were still alive. The tree’s exact location was on the property line between 521 Hillsdale and 528 Highland, just west of Blake Street.

Helena's Hangman's Tree appears on this map, drawn in 1875, just before the tree was cut down. Its placement is only approximate. Montana Historical Society Research Center Map Collection.

The activities of the Helena vigilante group—not the same as the group in Bannack and Virginia City—made a lasting impression on the community, and numerous eyewitnesses left accounts of their gruesome work. Rachel Parkinson remembered the morning she and a friend took an early-morning walk to the outskirts of town and came nearly face to face with the body of a man hanging on the scraggly tree. That same morning, children caught glimpses of the dangling corpse from their Rodney Street schoolyard. A few years later, as David Hilger and his young friends played marbles beneath the branches of the ill-famed tree, men arrived to scatter the boys so that ghastly business could be done. When the hanging was over, the boys resumed their game.

Fort Benton’s Hoo Doo Block

Vigilantes hanged desperado William Hynson at Fort Benton in 1868. The hanging on Block 25, some believed, triggered a series of dark events on that site. Sheriff John Morgan built a livery stable, a hand-dug well, and a home on Block 25 around the time of Hynson's hanging. Morgan's wife died and his house burned down. Soon after, during a skirmish in the streets of Fort Benton, an Indian was hanged on Block 25 and the bodies of several Blackfeet were thrown into Morgan’s well. It was thereafter known as the Place of Skulls. By 1870, Morgan had died and his livery passed to others. A small log house on Block 25 served as the county jail.  On November 28, 1872, it burned down with three men inside. Officials found the charred remains of two men. Officials speculated that the third prisoner killed the other two and escaped. Locals whispered that the block was cursed, although Morgan’s livery continued to do a brisk business under other owners. Rumors circulated, however, that the ghost of a the dead prisoners spooked the livery’s horses, wandering over the other empty, overgrown lots of Block 25.

Block 25 in 1884 included Ferdinand Roosevelt’s first furniture store, destroyed in a freak wind, the River Press offices, and the livery business. Sanborn fire Insurance Map, MHS Research Center.

On the site of the jail in 1884, Ferdinand C. Roosevelt’s furniture store was nearly finished when a freak wind tore the boards apart and blew the entire frame structure into the river. The wind touched nothing else.  Roosevelt rebuilt. In 1885, fire claimed the store, Roosevelt’s huge inventory, and nearly destroyed the River Press next door. Property owners did not rebuild on Block 25. Brothers Ed and George Lewis rebuilt the livery in 1895, then Ed died in 1897. By 1900 only George Lewis’s new livery stood on the east half of Block 25. In a final burst of evil energy, fire consumed it. George Lewis promptly relocated his business. Finally, A brave citizen built a home where the jail once stood. Renumbering of the townsite blocks, twice, helped erase the stigma of the Hoo Doo Block. W. S. Stocking wrote in 1906 that forty years later, only the one dwelling stood there: “…and good luck seems to attend the occupant—from which it may be argued that the ‘hoodoo’ has exhausted its power for evil."

The Camp at Last Chance

After the four discoverers staked their claims at Last Chance, Helena’s early story continues. The Georgians christened the new diggings “Rattlesnake District” for the snakes that were everywhere. A monster rattler with ten buttons on his tail, nailed to a post, warned of the danger. A monstrous grizzly bear that made nightly visits at the gulch’s south end, gorging on the chokecherries along Last Chance Creek, inspired the name Grizzly Gulch.  The howling and barking of wolves and coyotes, discoverer Reginald Stanley recalled, “made the nights hideous.”

Other miners joined the Georgians to pitch tents and mine claims during the summer of 1864.  Some stayed but more moved on, discouraged by the scant supply of water.  In mid-September, the first group of emigrants arrived with the Thomas A. Holmes wagon train from Shakopee, Minnesota. The train included several hundred men and fourteen women. Only half of their names were recorded. Many hailed from Minnesota, but emigrants also came from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and some were European-born immigrants. The incomplete roster includes a number of pioneers who stayed and became citizens of Helena. Among them were longtime Helena attorneys John H. Shober, his partner Thomas J. Lowry, and pioneer rancher Nicholas Hilger. John Somerville, who would soon play a key role in naming Helena, was also part of the group.

The hill in the center of this early Helena panorama, circa 1866, is where the fire tower stands today.
Sketch by A. E. Mathews. Montana Historical Society Research Center.

Most of the emigrants had no experience as miners, and the Montana Post poked fun at them, noting that they used blunt picks and worked “like chickens on a grain pile.” But some had good luck. John Marvin Blake of Wisconsin found one of the largest gold nuggets in the area, worth $2,300. With his fortune Blake studied dentistry in Philadelphia and returned to practice in Helena for fifty years. Others opened businesses and made places for themselves in the new community.

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.

Last Chance Stream

Some Helenans dispute the fact that Last Chance Stream, or Creek, once flowed through what is now the downtown. But water was the one essential ingredient needed for placer mining, and we know that the discovery site was where the parking lot for the Colwell Building is today. Water had to be present in that immediate area. Further, the first historic Sanborn Maps of Helena, drawn in 1884, clearly show the water source, although by this time it has been diverted underground into a wooden flume.

Click the map for a bigger version.

The flume runs parallel and roughly between Clore Street (now Park) and Main Street (now Last Chance Gulch). The stream is still there. When it rains, the stream swells. You can see it and hear it flowing beneath the grates in downtown city streets. Richard Buswell has made a study of tracing the stream from its source south of town. One cold day a small group of us followed the stream’s historic path. There are several places where the stream re-emerges above ground. The most dramatic is in Nature Park, east of the Bill Roberts Golf Course. The City of Helena purchased the land in 1974 from the McHugh Land and Livestock Company intending to create “McHugh Park.” Gold dredges once worked the area, leaving behind huge round tailing piles in the destructive search for gold. Porter Brothers Corporation had dredged the location from 1935 until 1943 when gold mining was declared a nonessential industry during World War II. Dredging resumed briefly after the war in 1945. Porter Brothers reportedly took 2.5 million dollars in gold from the area. But the city left the spot undeveloped when the costs to turn the barren landscape into a park proved prohibitive. Vegetation began to regrow. Nature Park is now habitat for deer, fox, birds, and other wildlife.  Last Chance Stream emerges from a large culvert and gurgles merrily along. It runs a lovely crooked course through the park.