A Territorial Period Landmark

Summer is county and state fair season and Montana’s fairs at Helena stretch back to 1867. Horse racing—both trotting and racing under saddle—was central to those celebrations. Helena’s official racetrack, completed in September 1870, accommodated six to eight totting horses and sulkies abreast, and it was the only regulation one-mile track in the territory. Early fairs attracted racers from across the West. Kentucky thoroughbreds, Montana-bred runners and trotters, and non-pedigreed horses all raced at the Helena track in the early years. But by 1884, entrants had to go through a nomination process to be accepted to race. After statehood in 1889, Helena’s fair became the State Fair. Purses of $300, $500, and $1,000 in the various trotting and running categories emphasize the importance of these races and Helena’s track. The track was refurbished in 1890, and according to local tradition, trains brought in carloads of imported Kentucky earth to spread on the track for luck. The newly refurbished track, said the Independent, was “as smooth as a billiard table….”

This aerial view shows the historic footprint of the Lewis and Clark County Fairgrounds Racetrack circa 1970s.
Courtesy MDT.

In 1904, relay races were introduced. Racers rode only thoroughbreds. Riders changed horses at top speed. Fannie Sperry, later the Lady Bucking Horse Champion of the World, rode Montana’s first relay race at the fairgrounds racetrack. Betting on horse races became illegal in 1914, the state cut its funding, drought impacted agricultural displays, and the fair began to decline. A new auto racing track built inside the one-mile racetrack brought a new attraction in 1916, although horse racing remained popular.  Betting resumed in 1930 when more than 350 horses from the best circuits in Canada, Mexico, and the United States vied for generous purses, but the Great Depression suspended fairs. Helena’s last was in 1932. The state fair later moved to Great Falls.

Portions of the track remain intact, recalling the days when horse racing was a popular sport.  Courtesy SHPO.

Horse racing reemerged with the Last Chance Stampede from 1961 to 1998. Today surviving sections of the racetrack, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, are a rare territorial period landmark. Recent insensitive remodeling of the fairgrounds destroyed some of the track. The surviving portions remain highly endangered.

Gus Thompson’s Nearly Forgotten Legacy

In 1953, baseball fans celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first World Series. All the living players were invited back as guests of honor—all except one player who history seems to have forgotten. John Gustav “Gus” Thompson was a young pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1903 when he pitched for the Pirates in the first World Series against the Boston Americans (renamed the Red Sox in 1907). Thompson went on to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals and pitched his last major league game in 1906. He then pitched for Western and Pacific Coast leagues. In 1910 at the end of his professional career, he was playing in Seattle. Around 1911, Thompson and his family moved to Kalispell, Montana, where his wife, the former Edna Knapp, whom he met in college in Iowa, was a former graduate of Flathead County High School. Thompson managed the Kalispell Baseball Club and was the longtime proprietor of the Thompson and Cahill cigar store on Main Street.

This photo was taken at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston before game three of the first World Series in 1903.
Photo courtesy of National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.

The invitation to the fiftieth World Series reunion was not the only time Gus Thompson has been forgotten. Thompson Field on Tenth Avenue in Kalispell was named for him, and was once one of the town’s most popular sandlots. But the field long sat unused, overgrown, and forgotten until some neighborhood residents—newcomers to the area—banded together a few years ago, cleaned it up, had tennis and basketball courts resurfaced, and renamed it Eastside Park. They had no idea why it was named Thompson Field.  
Fortunately not everyone had forgotten Gus Thompson. An article in the Daily Inter Lake on October 5, 1913, reminded the community of Thompson’s career and his contributions to the sport. He was the first Montanan (although a later transplant) to play not only in a World Series, but the FIRST World Series.  He died in 1958 and is buried in the Conrad Memorial Cemetery.

P.S. Remember this baseball team?

Friday Photo: Missoula Track Meet

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2006-26.30

Boys wearing track uniforms from various Montana high schools line up for the start of a race at a track meet in Missoula in 1910. The officials stand at the right side of the photo. This track meet was probably held at the University.

Friday Photo: Skiing

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3285

Children ski in Yellowstone National Park in 1894. F. Jay Haynes took the photo.

Friday Photo: Fly Fishing

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 98-12.12

Montana's reputation as a fly-fishing destination began long before this photo was taken. The fisherman is unidentified.

P.S. Remember these anglers?

Friday Photo: Miles City Horse Race

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-969

The famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale is this weekend. Are you going? You can compare it to this photo, which shows what the Miles City fairgrounds looked like at a horse race around the turn of the twentieth century. Photo by L. A. Huffman.

P.S. Remember this racehorse?
P.P.S. L. A. Huffman is famous for his photos of cowboys on the range.

Friday Photo: Scobey's Baseball Team





Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-885

Here's a photo for all the baseball fans celebrating the start of spring training. Scobey's 1925 baseball team boasted an impressive 30-3 record. Left to right are batboy Charles Smith, Porky Dallas, Wally Hilden, Honey Guyer, Delno Cottingham, Happy Felsch, George Eastman, Joe Lupe, Johnny Meyers, Steve Mattick, and Swede Risberg.

Friday Photo: Dogsledding

Race to the Sky starts this weekend at Camp Rimini. Will you attend any of the events?


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2000-54.7

Dogsledder Celey Baum and his team race, possibly in Red Lodge, in 1939. Just look how excited those dogs are!

P.S. Are you a dog person? Here's a story to touch your heart.

Friday Photo: Skiing at Big Mountain

Happy Friday!


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 97-62 B5 W2-D-735 2

The caption of this undated photo reads, "Annual ski meets are held at many Montana ski runs." Bill Browning snapped the photo for the Montana Chamber of Commerce, probably at Big Mountain near Whitefish. Have you ever skied there?

Friday Photo: Boxing

Happy Friday!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.3-13

This boxing match within a hand-held rope ring entertained the men of state senator Kenneth McLean's sheep camp. Evelyn Cameron snapped the photo in 1905.

P.S. Remember the time Cameron scandalized Miles City?

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.

Speed Skating

Speed skaters Sylvia White and Judy Martz both competed in the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Norway, but it is Judy Martz whom most Montanans remember. The two future teammates met in Butte when Sylvia was a national champion and Judy was just a kid who loved to compete and had not been training. Sylvia challenged Judy to an informal race, and Judy lost by a narrow margin of only two yards. So Judy began to set her sights on real competition. She won a spot in the nationals at St. Paul, and in 1963 she was a member of the U.S. World Speed Skating Team. Later that year, both she and Sylvia White made the U. S. Olympic Speed Skating Team. They were the first Montana women ever to make an Olympic team. Judy skated only once during the games at Innsbruck. She believes that she peaked too early during practice races. When she skated the 1500 meter race, she lost focus, fell and slid, and was too fatigued to gain ground. Even so, she was proud to finish 15th. Today Judy says that competing in that race was a golden experience. Although she doesn’t have a medal that she has to lock in a safety deposit box, she feels as if she has a gold medal tucked in her heart. But competing as one of the first two Montana women at the Olympics was not Judy’s only first. She went on to serve as Montana’s first female lieutenant governor under Mark Racicot from 1997 to 2001. She then won her bid as governor in 2001 and served one term, the first woman to take the helm of Montana’s ship of state.

The 1964 Olympic Speed Skating team, including Judy Martz (bottom row, far left) and Sylvia White (bottom row, second from right). Image from National Speed Skating Museum.

Spokane

Not all of Montana's great athletes have been human. As we continue our look at sports history, let's remember a four-legged champion...

Noah Armstrong made a fortune in the Glendale mines southwest of Butte. He had a ranch in Madison County where he built a beautiful three-story round barn. If you drive along the highway near Twin Bridges in Madison County, you can see it off the highway. Its board-and-batten walls are painted red, and its shape is like a wedding cake, with each story smaller than the one below it.

Photo by Tom Ferris in Hand Raised: The Barns of Montana.

This barn is famous as the birthplace of the only Montana horse to win the Kentucky Derby. Armstrong invested some of his wealth in raising and racing thoroughbreds. In 1887 the famous racehorse Spokane was born in Armstrong’s round barn. A quarter-mile track inside the barn was the colt’s first training ground. Armstrong sent him to Tennessee for further training. In 1889 when Spokane was three, Armstrong entered him in the fifteenth Kentucky Derby. Spokane had only run a few undistinguished races. Bookies overlooked him at six to one odds, favoring the famous Proctor Knott, a proven winner who already had brought his owner seventy thousand dollars. That day at Churchill Downs, thousands witnessed the little copper-colored horse from Montana make racing history. He passed Proctor Knott at the finish line. Spokane went on to win two more big races: the American Derby at Churchill Downs and the Clark Stakes in Chicago, beating the mighty Proctor Knott both times. No other three-year-old horse has ever won all three great races. Spokane lives on in the annals of racing history.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Friday Photo: Fishing for Trout

Let's take a day off from remembering the history of Montana champions and go fishing—a classic Montana sport!


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Maloney Collection
Myrta Wright Stevens, photographer

In today's photo, anglers enjoy fishing for trout near Lolo Hot Springs in the 1890s. Which Montana river do you like to fish?

Olympic Illness

Our look at Montana sports and champions continues with Eric Flaim, an Olympic speed skater from Butte...

Travelers often complain of strange food and bouts of illness known as Montezuma's revenge, Delhi belly, Turkey trots, and other geographically descriptive distresses. Olympic athletes are susceptible to those upsets like everyone else. And sometimes those distresses cause more trouble than a little discomfort.  Speed skater Eric Flaim of Butte discovered how costly a case of food poisoning could be during the Winter Games in Albertville, France in 1992.


Photo from Wikipedia.com

Eric had won a silver medal in 1988 at Calgary and looked forward to doing well in France. But there was a problem. Eric, along with other athletes, complained bitterly about the food in the Olympic Village. A number of them resorted to cooking for themselves. Eric said that he finally got so sick of his own cooking that he felt compelled to venture out to try the Olympic Village food one more time. It was a bad mistake. He found that not even his own cooking made him as ill as the food in the Village. He was so sick that he was afraid he could not race, and the doctors could not give him the proper medication because of the strict Olympic drug rules. Eric had fallen in a previous race and come back to do well, but he told a reporter that recovering from a fall was one thing. Getting sick and losing everything from your system was a different matter. The bout of food poisoning he endured was so debilitating that it ruined his chances of a medal. He lost his opportunity not to the skating oval, but to the Olympic Village dining room. He did, however, come back in 1994 to earn a silver medal at the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.

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?

The Fight on the Fourth

Happy Independence Day!

Oil discovered near Shelby in 1922 brought the promise of prosperity. Shelby had train service, several banks had recently opened, and the town’s future looked bright. City officials thought they could make the town a center for tourism and further boost the economy. And so to promote the town, officials planned to hold the World Heavyweight Championship Fight between Jack Dempsey and Tommy Gibbons in Shelby. Tying in patriotism with their promotional scheme, the fight was scheduled on the Fourth of July in 1923. Officials built a huge arena on a local farm. It was  the size of a football field and seated 40,000. They began selling tickets. But no one had any money during the depression of the 1920s, and only 8,000 tickets sold. The whole thing proved a disaster, but the fight itself was one of the most memorable events in the history of boxing. As ticket holders waited in the nearly empty arena, 4,000 ranchers and farmers stormed inside as the bell signaled the opening round. In all about 13,000 people got to see the fight for free.

Jack Dempsey (left) and Tommy Gibbons shake hands before the fight.
Photo courtesy Marias Museum of History and Art

Jack Dempsey fought all fifteen rounds. Although he could not effect a knockout, he won the fight in a unanimous decision. The only knockout was that of Shelby’s dreams when the town’s scheme of prosperity failed miserably and the fight was one of the worst financial disasters in the history of boxing. Many years later, Great Falls legislator Charles Bovey—the consummate collector—acquired the slightly soiled boxing gloves Dempsey wore in this famous fight along with three Dempsey photographs. These items later sold at the Bovey estate auction for $31,000. Too bad Shelby couldn’t cash in.

P.S. You can watch the fight here.

Friday Photo: Libby Logger Days

Libby Logger Days started yesterday and runs through the weekend. Are you going?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2002-62 E1B-10890

Competitors put muscle into the cross-cut saw (also known as the misery whip) at Libby Logger Days. Photo by Bill Browning. Date unknown.

Friday Photo: Fannie Sperry Steele



Fannie Sperry Steele rides a steer at the Gilman Stampede, September 1919.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 947-603

Famed bronc buster Fannie Sperry Steele competed in rodeos until 1925. Then she and her husband bought a dude ranch near Lincoln. After her husband died in 1940, Steele ran the ranch by herself for another twenty-five years. She was one of the first women to receive a packer’s license and well into her sixties spent long days in the saddle guiding hunters into rough country. She stocked Meadow Creek before environmental concerns were fashionable, packing six horses with cans of fish over treacherous terrain, stopping at every stream to keep the water cool. She broke her own horses and at the end of the season trailed her twenty-five pintos seventy miles across the Continental Divide to winter pasture. In 1974 at eighty-seven, Steele could no longer live alone and had to move from the ranch. The worst part for her was leaving her beloved string of pintos behind. In 1975, Steele was honored as was one of the first of three women inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame. A few years later at ninety, Steele summed up her life: “To the yesterdays that are gone, to the cowboys I used to know, to the bronc busters that rode beside me, to the horses beneath me (sometimes), I take off my hat. I wouldn’t have missed one minute of it.” Steele died in 1983. She was the quintessential Montana woman: determined, gritty, and independent of spirit.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

P.S. Remember these rodeo-champion sisters?

Friday Photo: Jeannette Rankin

Celebration of Women's History Month continues...


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 88-29

This Missoula women's basketball game includes player Jeannette Rankin (third player from left), who later represented Montana in the U.S. Congress. Click the photo for a bigger version.

P.S. Remember these athletes?