Episodes 001-050

Episodes 151-200

Episodes 201-250

Episodes 251-300

Episode 51 - Donald Campbell

In 1883 Donald emigrated to the U.S., to Massachusetts, where he worked in mental hospitals. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Vermont in 1891. Young Doctor Campbell came to Butte, penniless, in the spring of 1892.

Episode 52 - Chinese Boycott

Intense discrimination and prejudice against the Chinese was common in 19th Century Butte and throughout the west. How did the Butte Chinese community survive? The Butte Bystander, an unabashedly pro-union newspaper, supported efforts at boycotting the Chinese.

Episode 53 - Hancocks of Caledonia

The 900 block of Caledonia was home to four related families for much of the early 20th Century. Their diverse occupations connect us to much of Butte’s history. The three similar homes at 943, 947, and 951 Caledonia were all built about 1898, probably by the same builder.

Episode 54 - Union Hall Destroyed

The Butte Miners Union Day Parade on June 13, 1914, turned into a riot pitting union factions against each other. The ten days following were tense, but little if any violence took place in Butte.

Episode 57 - Centennial Hotel

The two-story Centennial Hotel included a saloon run by Beal’s son-in-law George Newkirk, plus an office, the 30-by-40-foot dining room, kitchen, laundry, wood house, and a two-level outhouse, as well as a nearby ice house.

Episode 58 - Babcock’s Hats & Furs

One of the first clothiers was Babcock’s, but the name was superseded by his successors, Babcock’s managers Smith and Mattingly in 1900, and by Ignatius Mattingly alone from 1904 until 1925. The “Babcock’s Hats & Furs” ghost sign on the alley building is pre-1900.

Episode 59 - Julian Eltinge

Julian Eltinge was perhaps the greatest female impersonator of the 20th Century. Born William Julian Dalton on May 14, 1881, in Newtonville, Massachusetts, he arrived in Butte as a child with his father, a mining engineer, and as a teenager began to perform dressed as a woman or girl in Butte saloons.

Episode 60 - The Fires of 1912

The original 1886 Thomas Block on Park Street between Main and Dakota Streets burned down September 1, 1912 in one of the most costly conflagrations in Butte’s first 75 years, with losses estimated at nearly $221,000 in dollars of the day.

Episode 61 - First Auto Show

There were Cadillacs, Fords, Dodges, and Buicks, but also Velies, Hudsons, REOs, Pierce-Arrows, Chandlers, Franklins, Studebakers, Saxons, Wintons, and Maxwells. The April 1916 Butte Auto Show displayed 8,200 vehicles worth more than $250,000 – and that’s 1916 dollars.

Episode 62 - Butte Curling Club

December 3, 1905 saw Montana’s first recorded curling match, among members of the newly established Butte Curling Club. Scotsmen led by Donald McMillan, a cashier at W.A. Clark’s Western Lumber Company, organized the club August 31, 1905, with 41 charter members.

Episode 63 - Easter Rising

On April 24, 1916, about 1,200 rebels attacked buildings in Dublin and elsewhere in a concerted attempt to establish an Irish Republic. In Butte, with at least 20,000 residents of Irish heritage, many Irish-born, the impact was huge.

Episode 64 - Ella Haskell

Ella Knowles Haskell must have been an amazing woman. She’s one of the few women with an entry in the 1500-page inappropriately named “Progressive Men of the State of Montana.”

Episode 65 - The Nine Mile

There’s Four Mile Road and the Five Mile House out Harrison Street, but the way east from Butte was dotted with inns – Mile Houses – at least at 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 18 miles from the heart of uptown Butte, the last one about five miles east of the Continental Divide.

Episode 66 - Colusite

For all its mineral wealth, Butte is home to just one type locality for a mineral, the place where that mineral was first found and described. Colusite is a rare copper-vanadium-arsenic sulfide named for the Colusa Claim on the east side of the Butte Hill, where Meaderville developed.

Episode 67 - Giant Elk

If anything symbolized Butte’s over-the-top eclectic affluence, it might be the giant elk of 1916. Butte was near its peak population, and the Fourth of July holiday that year coincided with the statewide Elks convention, which drew 30,000 members to Butte from across the state and beyond.

Episode 68 - Cooking With Gas

Butte and the rest of Montana got natural gas for heating and cooking in the early 1930s, when the Bowdoin Dome, near Malta, Montana, began to produce significant natural gas. But Butte was using gas long before that.

Episode 69 - Butte vs. The Nez Perce

In July 1877, western Montana was under a terror alert as Chief Joseph (also known as White Bird) and the Nez Perce went “on the warpath.” The Missoulian put out an extra on July 25, screaming “Help! Help! White Bird Defiant. Come Running,” dispatched by messenger to surrounding towns.

Episode 70 - Boom of 1916

Butte’s prodigious growth from perhaps 100 people in 1874 to more than 90,000 in 1917 wasn’t a continuous boom. The biggest spurts were probably the late 1880s, 1906-08, and the final explosion of construction in 1916-17.

Episode 71 - Owsley Block

William Owsley was born in Independence, Missouri, in 1842, and joined the gold rush to Bannack in 1863, when he was 21 years old. He came to Butte just a year later, in the first wave of prospectors here, but he was a saloonkeeper more than a miner.

Episode 72 - Germania

The Germania mine was about a half mile almost due south of the Orphan Girl. It was established by a German immigrant about 1881. He promptly died, and his nephew, Louis “Lee” Freudenstein inherited the claim when he came to Butte in 1882.

Episode 73 - Moving Pictures

Butte was always at the forefront of entertainment — no surprise given its large population with, on the whole, a lot of money. The first recorded theatrical performance in Butte took place in 1875, the year the first two-story building in Butte, the Hotel de Mineral at Broadway and Main, was erected.

Episode 74 - Race Track

Horse races took place in Butte as early as 1879, when a $2,500 purse was advertised, but the sport really took off when the West Side Racing Association began about 1881, led by such Butte luminaries as Lee Mantle, Henry Valiton, William Owsley, and Patrick Largey.

Episode 75 - Frances Symons

The 1903 Congregation B’nai Israel Synagogue at Galena and Washington contains two dedicated stained glass windows. The large circular one in the south face of the building commemorates Elias and Mina Oppenheimer. The other window, a triptych, is in memory of Mrs. Frances A. Symons. Who was she?

Episode 76 - Omar Bradley Raid

The raid was a consequence of one of the edicts of Montana’s Council of Defense, which had ordered that no weekly newspaper could become a daily paper – an action aimed squarely at the Butte Bulletin, essentially the only newspaper in the state that expressed any anti-Anaconda sentiment.

Episode 77 - Caplice Block

Park and Main and Park and Montana Streets have pretty much always been the most important intersections in Uptown Butte. The southwest corner of Park and Montana has seen a long architectural evolution.

Episode 78 - Knights of Pythias Castle

The $75,000 building, among the tallest buildings in Butte when it was built, was touted as the most gorgeously furnished lodge rooms in the West, “possibly excepting the Elks Lodge in Seattle.”

Episode 79 - Destroying Angel

Lee Mantle, mayor of Butte and U.S. Senator in the 1890s, got his start as a miner and entrepreneur. About 1880, he established the Diadem Lode Claim, a narrow block that extended from Montana Street between Broadway and Park to the intersection of Galena and Main, and a bit beyond.

Episode 80 - Salvation Army

“The territory appears to have better churches and educational facilities than one would at first expect, but still they are far removed from having as much as they need. Gambling is carried on publicly.”

Episode 81 - Barnard Block

The fire began in a building under construction across the street, and although the damage estimate exceeded $500,000 in dollars of the day, the Barnard Block did survive. Anthony W. Barnard was a real estate and mining broker who built the building in 1886 during one of Butte’s many building booms.

Episode 82 - Stables

Stables were the garages of the 1800s, and prospering Butte had plenty. In 1884, in the area bounded by Jackson, Caledonia, Arizona, and Silver Streets at least 102 stables protected an unknown number of horses and other stock.

Episode 83 - Passmores of Butte

Passmore Canyon south of Butte recalls a prominent business family from Butte’s early days. Charles Sumner Passmore came to Butte in 1889 not long after a major fire devastated the growing business district and led to the first city ordinance, mandating construction with brick and stone.

Episode 84 - The Success Cafe

Butte’s boasts run the gamut, including firsts, biggest, most, and even smallest. The Midget Saloon at 104 North Main was full if it had eight patrons, and modestly boasted it was the smallest bar in the northwest. But Butte’s best-known claim to fame in the smallest category goes to the Success Café, just 3 feet 9 inches wide.

Episode 85 - Dr. Wah Jean Lamb

Dr. Wah Jean Lamb worked here from 1902 until he retired to California in 1929. In 1896, Lamb was the first Chinese to graduate from the University of Southern California medical school, along with the first woman graduate from that program.

Episode 86 - Election of 1894

“It’s a free for all.” “The senatorial fight begins to grow warm. ”Those headlines focused Anaconda Standard readers on December 31, 1894 on the ongoing U.S. Senate contest. Wait a minute – the Senate race was still in progress December 31? Wasn’t the election November 6?

Episode 87 - Mastodon Hog

In February 1901, Butte and Anaconda were abuzz with the announcement of the arrival of a new engine for the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railway. The “mastodon hog,” No. 19. was built by the Schenectady Company for the express purpose of hauling ore from Butte to the then new smelter being built in Anaconda.

Episode 88 - Richard Liljemark

Richard Liljemark “was one of the most popular and widely known youths of the south side” when he died May 29, 1917, at age 21 after two weeks of pneumonia.

Episode 89 - Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras in Butte in 1904 had nothing to do with “Fat Tuesday,” nor even with the Lenten season. It was a week-long carnival in late August and early September, attended by thousands of people, promising patrons “more for a dime than they have ever seen before in Butte.”

Episode 90 - New Year’s Eve 1897

The society corner in Victorian Butte newspapers recorded all and sundry events, including New Year’s Eve parties. An item from the Butte Bystander for January 8, 1898, reports such a gathering at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Erastus Thomas, 213 East Quartz Street.

Episode 91 - The Carroll Connection

The Burke and Balaklava claims were tiny little triangles on the northeastern flank of the Butte hill – no more than six acres or so, but prime real estate in terms of the subsurface, especially if one could use the apex law to advantage.

Episode 92 - John Noyes

John Noyes is not typically on the list of remarkable men of Butte, but he probably should be. He joined the California gold rush at age 23. In 1860 he was at Virginia City, Nevada, continuing work as a placer miner, when he became part of a company of 115 men sent out to fight the Indians. Noyes was among the 17 survivors.

Episode 93 - Influenza in Stained Glass

The Ascension Window at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church recalls a devastating time in Butte. The window is in memory of Franz Arthur Benz, who died at age 23 in the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. His mother, Mrs. Arthur Benz, paid for the window in 1919.

Episode 94 - Topography of Butte

Butte’s topography has certainly changed over the years, and we’re not just talking about the Berkeley and Continental Pits and the mine dumps. As the city grew, gulches and streams were eliminated or modified to accommodate the needs of housing and business.

Episode 95 - Beaver Block

The Marchesseau and Valiton Block on the northeast corner of Granite and Main was better known as the Beaver Block for the huge copper and concrete beaver gracing its parapet. It was built in 1890 as a typical three-story business block.

Episode 96 - First Elevator

“By means of the elevator one can take a short cut to the top of a sky scraper and come down again without putting forth a greater effort than tossing a “jolly” to the elevator boy, who designates the up and down trips as the “rise and fall of man.”

Episode 97 - Paving Harrison Avenue

From the 1910s onward, Butte issued Special Improvement District (SID) bonds to finance various projects, just as most cities do. People would buy the bonds, to be repaid with interest over time.

Episode 98 - Butte in 1917

1917 represents the peak of many things for Butte: its population, its copper output, and probably its diversity. Here’s a look back at Butte in 1917.

Episode 99 - Butte’s First Teacher

Porter conducted a school for seven students for three or four months during the winter of 1865-66. The school building was a log cabin on Broadway where the Butte Hotel was later built, the parking structure across from the old City Hall today.

Episode 100 - Donnell, Clark & Larabie

Donnell, Clark and Larabie’s bank, at the prominent southwest corner of Broadway and Main in Butte, was a branch of Robert Donnell’s Deer Lodge bank. The lot alone cost $1,400, a princely sum in April 1877 when the purchase was made.