Episodes 001-050

Episodes 151-200

Episodes 201-250

Episodes 251-300

Episode 201 - Stringtown

Stringtown was the definition of the northern limit of Butte. It was north of Walkerville and its northern “suburbs,” Butchertown and Seldom Seen (North Walkerville), in the trees west of Yankee Doodle Gulch and near today’s Moulton Reservoir Road.

Episode 202 - First Railroad

If Utah & Northern Railway president Charles Francis Adams had had his way, the first rails into Butte would never have happened. In 1881, Adams claimed pessimistically that “[Butte] will play out in a year. All mines do.”

Episode 203 - Luxfer Glass

Our history's in our trash. In Butte, some of that historic trash is right there on the surface. If you walk around the surviving mine dumps of Germania, south of the World Museum of Mining, you might see human stories in the broken glass and metal.

Episode 204 - Communist vs. Fascist

The Montana congressional election in 1938 was possibly the most overt clash of ideologies in state history, pitting two Butte men against each other.

Episode 207 - Silver Bow City

The first discoveries of gold in both placers and lodes in Butte were made in May and June, 1864, but it wasn’t until October, when fairly rich placers were discovered in Silver Bow Creek downstream that the first influx of prospectors really began.

Episode 208 - First Miners

William Allison and G.A. Humphreys are credited with being the first serious miners and first permanent residents of Baboon Gulch, the first given name in the place that came to be called Butte.

Episode 209 - Idaho Falls Connection

Idaho Falls, Idaho, has had a long connection to Butte’s history. A ferry across the Snake River in 1864 and Matt Taylor’s bridge in 1865 were both largely established to expedite travel to the Montana gold fields.

Episode 210 - Butte Colored Giants

It’s a vacant lot today, but the northwest corner of Silver and Main Streets holds plenty of history. The building that was built there in the 1890s initially held a carriage shop, with a restaurant in the northern part of the structure.

Episode 211 - Kwan Gong

The carved wooden statue of him in the Mai Wah Mercantile Collection, part of the loan from the Montana Heritage Commission, was a centerpiece of Chinese culture in Butte for many years.

Episode 212 - Paumie Dye House

In 1888, the southeast corner of Dakota and Galena Streets held a log cabin and some sheds. Dakota Street itself was “not improved,” and it didn’t even exist between Galena and Park.

Episode 213 - Granite Ghost Town

The first silver discovery near what became Granite, a few miles up in the hills above Philipsburg, was in 1865, but not until 1882, with $130,000 backing by St. Louis investors, was the greatest silver bonanza found and the town really began.

Episode 214 - 1925 Earthquakes

The last week of June 1925 was dominated in Butte newspapers by reports of earthquakes. The week began June 23 with the immense Gros Ventre landslide just east of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Episode 215 - Doc Holliday

When John Henry Holliday arrived in Butte in 1886 at age 34, he was already infamous enough that his indictment in Silver Bow County Court was captioned simply, “Territory of Montana versus Doc Holladay.”

Episode 216 - Williamsburg

The Colorado Smelter initially processed ore from the Nettie, Fredonia, and Selfrising claims, yielding a 60% copper matte with as much as 800 ounces of silver per ton that was shipped to Black Rock, Colorado, for additional processing.

Episode 217 - Bill Dunne

Bill Dunne was an early leader of the American Communist Party and one of the original editors of the predecessor to the Daily Worker, the party newspaper. But he cut his political teeth in Butte.

Episode 218 - Max Hebgen

When Hebgen Dam was completed in 1915, the reservoir it created on the Madison River just west of Yellowstone Park was the seventh largest in the world. The dam, the lake, and the 1959 earthquake that the dam survived all recall Max Hebgen of Butte.

Episode 219 - Water Company

Although various entrepreneurs had dug ditches to bring water to Butte’s placer operations in the 1860s and 1870s, it wasn’t until the population really began to grow and the town was incorporated in 1879 that anyone began to focus on providing a true domestic water supply.

Episode 220 - Deaconess Hospital

Butte’s exploding population in 1917 had many needs, and one was extra hospital space. In May 1917, promoting “Butte’s Greatest Need,” a campaign to raise $100,000 for the new Deaconess Hospital began.

Episode 221 - Kay Chinn

When Chin Sue Kee came to the United States and to Butte in 1912, the mere fact of her entry was just the first remarkable thing about her.

Episode 222 - Atlantic Bar

The German heritage of the proprietors was reflected in their wares: in 1911, the Atlantic boasted that it was the only house in Butte to carry imported Muenchner Hofbrau and Pilsner Buergerbrau.

Episode 223 - Al Capone

Historians have to be skeptical of anecdotal tales about famous people; they are the sorts of tales that make for great family “history” but may be storytelling far more than real history.

Episode 224 - Hotel de Mineral

“Having opened the above Hotel with the only Hotel accommodation for lodgers in Butte, we will be pleased to have the patronage of the public, and endeavor to give satisfaction in accommodation and rates.”

Episode 225 - Eugene V. Debs

When Eugene V. Debs first visited Butte on February 8, 1897, he was already a prominent labor union activist. He was a founder of the American Railway Union and was involved in the nationwide Pullman Strike in 1894.

Episode 226 - Street Names

Street names in the United States tend to be long-lived, but changes do happen. In Butte, some street name changes honored certain people, many were lost to mining developments, and some just changed.

Episode 227 - California Saloon

The original one-story California was demolished June 10, 1905. The Anaconda Standard lamented, “With the tearing down of the California, to make way for a more modern building, Butte loses about the last of its real old historic landmarks.”

Episode 228 - Dairies

In 1918, Butte’s City Directory listed 23 dairies, but only 11 of them were in town. The others were a few miles out of Butte, listed as “5 miles west of city,” “2 miles north of Walkerville,” and similar addresses.

Episode 229 - Chinese Baptist Mission

Butte’s Chinese Baptist Mission was established in 1896 at 44 West Galena Street, and Mrs. Whitmore was the superintendent there in 1898.

Episode 230 - First National Bank

On February 6, 1877, with financing mostly by Davis, the Hauser Bank opened a Butte branch which became the First National Bank of Butte in 1881. The bank was housed in the building that still stands at 127 North Main Street.

Episode 231 - Mollie Walsh & Laundries

As Butte grew from a mining camp to a huge industrial metropolitan city, amenities grew to accommodate the needs and wants of a population with money to spend. Laundries popped up all over town, mostly operated by Chinese.

Episode 232 - Jacob Riis

When Jacob Riis came to Butte December 10, 1906, it is a measure of Butte’s importance as a stopping place for celebrities that he was here as part of a simple high school lecture series.

Episode 233 - Butte Public Library

Central School came down in 1893 and in 1894 that block was devoted in part to the new Butte Free Public Library at the southeast corner of Broadway and Academy.

Episode 234 - The Worlds Fair

Freshly admitted to statehood in 1889, Montana was eager to participate in the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the world’s fair commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492.

Episode 235 - Bridge To Nowhere

Out in the middle of the Warm Springs Ponds is a bridge completely surrounded by water, even on both ends. When the Morel Rainbow Arch Bridge was completed in 1914, it spanned Silver Bow Creek, connecting Anaconda to the Morel Station on the Milwaukee Railroad for automobile traffic.

Episode 236 - Mark Twain

The reports of Mark Twain holding forth in the Silver Bow Club next to the Silver Bow County Court House are much exaggerated. It wasn’t even built when he visited Butte in 1895.

Episode 237 - Lutey’s Market

Grocery stores dotted uptown Butte until the collapse of the economy from the 1960s to 1980s, and long before the growth of big box stores. The city directory lists 201 grocers in 1918, 101 in 1960, 35 in 1979 and 5 in 2003.

Episode 238 - Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

The Anaconda Standard called Elizabeth Gurley Flynn “the Joan of Arc of industrial unionism” during her week-long series of speeches in Butte in June 1909. The “girl orator” was 18 years old.

Episode 239 - Julius Levy

When Julius Levy died March 3, 1901, he was called “the most noted of all western gamblers.” “French” Levy, as he was known because of his birth at Engweiler, Alsace-Lorraine, France, supposedly “had all the money in Deer Lodge County.”

Episode 240 - Anselmo

The Anselmo headframe, an icon on the west side of Butte today, was just a trifle in its early days. Research by historian Mary McCormick shows that the central part of the Anselmo mine yard sits on the Trifle Lode, a claim located July 26, 1878, by Simon Hauswirth.

Episode 241 - Hum Fay

When Hum Fay married Miss Ah Yen of Spokane in Butte January 16, 1909, the small space in Hum’s home at Colorado and Mercury Streets meant that reporters covering the event stood in the doorway.

Episode 242 - Jail Riot

The day after St. Patrick’s Day in 1912 in Butte was probably even more raucous than the holiday itself. Walker’s Saloon, just east of the State Savings Bank at Park and Main (now the Metals Bank Building) was packed on Sunday night at about 6:45 when police officer Philip Prlja responded to a disturbance call.

Episode 243 - Inez Milholland

Inez Milholland Boissevain was a “spitfire,” a lawyer, a suffragist, and activist who came to Butte October 16, 1916. Montana women had had the vote since the election of 1914.

Episode 244 - Simon Jacobs

Simon Jacobs, born in Mississippi in 1862 a year before his father Henry fought for the Confederacy at the Siege of Vicksburg, came north with his parents to Montana’s gold fields by 1868. When he committed suicide May 6, 1895, Butte was plunged into mourning for its young city Treasurer.

Episode 245 - Cabbage Patch

Baboon Gulch, where miners William Allison and G. A. Humphreys settled in 1864, lay between what is now Mercury and Silver Streets just east of Wyoming Street. By 1891, the gulch had been leveled and filled in and was beginning to develop into a shanty town.

Episode 246 - Mountain View Church

In the fall of 1877 Van Orsdel and Riggin conducted Butte’s first Methodist services, at Loeber’s Hall, a brewery, dance hall, and meeting room on Broadway just east of Main Street, a location that later came to be known as the California Saloon.

Episode 247 - Margaret Theater

Opening night at the Margaret Theater in Anaconda, September 28, 1897, was the “Event of Events,” with all 1,246 seats filled by the glitterati of Butte and Anaconda.

Episode 248 - Black Patti

Matilda Sissieretta Jones brought her international fame to Butte on May 23, 1909, together with her troupe of performers, the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company.

Episode 249 - Murray Hospital

The two-story 35x35-foot building was constructed as a 9-room boarding house, but Dr. Thomas J. Murray converted it into his private hospital in partnership with Dr. Robert L. Gillespie.

Episode 250 - Big Hole Pump Station

A booming population and huge industrial demand meant that Butte needed imaginative solutions to the problem of water supply in semi-arid country, in headwaters country where the only rivers were small streams and creeks.