Drumlummon views: the online journal of Montana arts & culture, volume 3, number 1 (Spring 2009) (2025)

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Front Cover Image: Lim Wor[...]H002710).

Drumlummon Institute is a proud member of

[[‘I [Hp]

Drumlummon Institute ‘[...]

THE ONLINE JOURNAL OF MONTANA ARTS & CULTURE

Editorrinr Cbief:[...]

Endowment for the Humanities.

The printed version of Coming Home was made possible

through the generous support of the National Park Service
Challenge Cost Share Pr[...]tion Oflcice and the Butte—Silver Bow Oflcice of

Community Development for their support a[...]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Honorable Pat Williams, Foreword 8[...]trial Undergirding
to the Vernacular Architecture ofof Investigation of
Sanitary Conditions in Mines, and of the
Conditions Under Which the Miners Live in
Sil[...]atty Dean, “Home Furnishings in the Mining City of
Butte” 177

Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, “Redeem[...]Wheeler House” 219

IMAGES &TALEs: A PORTFOLIO OF BUTTE 8c
ANACONDA ARTS 22 5

A. Roger Whit[...]

Ellen Baumler, “The End of the Line: Red—
Light Architecture and Culture i[...]aconda” 283

Patty Dean, “The Silver Bow Club of Butte:
Architectural Gem in the Mining
Metropolis[...]ony,” with contextual
essay, “Assyrian Colony of Butte,” by
BenjaminTrigona—Harany 337

B. “[...]in Silver Bow: Urban Indian
Poverty in the Shadow of the Richest
Hill on Earth,” by Nicholas[...]

of spinning gravel as they headed toward the adult
w[...]as to me the unfathomable fun,
mysteries, and joy of Butte’s nightlife.

Perhaps it was a child’s[...]ndustrial Mecca. I really
believed I lived in one of America’s largest and most
exciting cities. Einstein’s theory of relativity being
correct,l did.

The Butte of my childhood had many of the
characteristics expected of great metropolitan cities:
multiple languages, di[...]rs—

Heyoung Pat W illiams on the streets of Butte. Courtesy ofPat 8
Carol Williams.

includin[...]. Butte,
ironically, lacked one crucial attribute of a major urban

city—Butte’s population[...]

Decades earlier, of course, it had been one of the West’s
most populated cities, at nearly one[...]ed into the world and
its politics. It was a city of strong individuals, of thinking
intellectuals. In a state of wheat and cows, Butte was the
exception—a center of excitement and ferment.”

That round—the—cl[...]ck to a kid’s ribs: the
shift—changing scream of the mine whistles every eight
hours followed by the screech of the gallows frame’s
sheave wheels bringing worn[...]the next shift; the constantly clattering wheels
of the BASLP Railroad moving ore to the Anaconda
Smelter; the enticing odors from the back—alley kitchens
of the city’s restaurants—The Chequamegon, Green[...]r 4:00 a.m. from the corner bed in
our restaurant office on Park Street. The front doors
had been clo[...]s behind us and
then, by ritual, tightly hold one of my hands while Mom
held the other to protect me f[...]9405
and ’50s. I was enveloped by the Wurlitzer of it: the
newsboys and street vendors, the circus p[...]treet, the smoke, music,

and one—armed bandits of the downtown’s many bars—

the Cheery lounge,[...]with their open gambling and the inevitable
photo of FDR on each back bar wall.

I witnessed the heart[...]nd those down on their heels.
Butte, in the words ofof copper magnate William Clark’s

son Char[...]

the live music of Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Guy

Lombardo, Benn[...]sis, the green
lawns and gleaming white buildings of the Columbia
Gardens.

I attribute my belief in B[...]ates from the old county on the good ship
Cedritk of the White Star Line.”

Laying her Irish medicin[...]ed Butte and its international importance on
each of her grandchildren: “My Mommy saw Daddy
a[...]

Like the multi—layered levels of meaning and
linkages that characterize the interd[...]to tbe Hirtorie Built
Environment and Lana/reaper of Butte nndAnneonda,
Montana—to fruition.

The re[...]rring in Butte and Anaconda in
these final years of the twenty—first century’s first
decade. The successful creation of the nation’s largest
National Historic Landmark[...]ent, and the

Montana State Historic Preservation Office.

Coming Home also complements upcoming
pres[...]stival (2008—2010) in Butte, the
annual meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum
in Butte (June 2009), and the establishment of “The
Copperway: Mineyards to Smokestacks” tou[...]trict.

Special thanks are due to Maire O’Neill of
the Montana State University School of Architecture
and Rolene Schliesman of the Montana State
Historic Preservation Office.They were the first
to suggest the notion o[...]Drumlummon Viewr devoted to the built
environment of Butte and Anaconda, to coincide with
the national meeting of the VAF in Butte. We hope
that this special issue[...]ndscape alone . . .
[presented in] a rich variety of formats (poetry, essays,
photo essays, historical[...]warded by the
Montana State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO)
to the Butte—Silver Bow (BSB) Office ofCommunity
Development supplied critical fu[...]nd a grant from Humanities Montana,
an affiliate of the National Endowment for the
Humanities,[...]

A substantial portion of this issue contains
reprints or transcriptions of[...]mon Institute
editorial intern Angelina Martinez, of Carroll College,
for her care and diligence in tr[...]t and microfilm (as well as for her
proofreading of the entire issue). We are also deeply
grateful to[...]Morrow, Becca
Kohl, Tom Ferris, and J. M. Cooper of the Montana
Historical Society Photograph Archives; Lee Whitney
of the Butte—Silver Bow Public Archives; Delores
Cooney at the World Museum ofMining; and the
staffs of the Glenbow Archives in Calgary, Alberta
and of the K. Ross Toole Archives and Special
Collections at The University of Montana.

out to them on a continui[...]

Perhaps the most scrutinized and documented of
Montana’s cities, Butte and Anaconda possess st[...]rled, complex history aligns well with the vision of the
Drumlummon Institute, the publisher ofDrumlummon
Viewx, the online journal of Montana arts and culture:
“We see ever more clearly that the origins of these
[irrevocable] changes [in the American West[...]a cities: the Montana State
Historic Preservation Office, Butte—Silver Bow Local

Government, Prese[...]d
that, in addition to the regular online version of this
issue of Drumlummon Viewx, we are able to offer a
printed[...]Notice should also
be accorded to the completion of an epic endeavor
to expand the original Butte boundaries of the 1961
National Historic Landmark to encompass[...]and the Butte, Anaconda and Pacific
Railroad. As of 2005, this fourteen—year endeavor
became a real[...]lle National Historic Landmark
District—made up of nearly 10,000 acres containing
just over 6,000 contributing resources of national
significance—is the largest NHL in th[...]s volume’s guest editor as a
long—time member of the Vernacular Architecture
Forum (VAF), an inter[...]d
“to encourage[ing] the study and preservation of all
aspects of vernacular architecture and landscapes
through in[...]nd multidisciplinary
methods.” After many years of effort by a number of
VAF members with ties to Butte and Anaconda, we a[...]on’s conference is
convening in Butte this June of 2009.

In addition to the joy of collaborating on this

The title of this publication, Coming Home,
comes from Sister Joeann Daley’s hand—tinted multi—
frame etching of the 585—foot Anaconda Stackfl tower
that would[...]. And, like the word “home”
itself, the theme of “Coming Home” assumes many
meanings and contexts for these authors and artists.
For some of the contributors, Pat Williams, Edwin
Dobb,John M[...]ining
City is the much—beloved adopted hometown of their
early professional careers, a magical place that shaped
their intell[...]essay, Carroll Van
West delineates the landscape of power in southwest
Montana as manifested by two of the region’s
monuments, the Washoe Stack in Anaconda, the
sole survivor of a sprawling industrial complex,
detoxified and n[...]sion gobbled up Meaderville, Mcheen,
and sections of Dublin Gulch and Finntown—these
last two neighb[...]trial Undergirding to the Vernacular Architecture
of Butte and Anaconda” reminds us of the cities’ very
mimn dEtre, the mining industr[...]built

to support it. The mechanics and meanings of the gallus

frame, a dominant feature of the Butte skyscape whose
industrial tracery soars above clusters of hillside houses,
is lucidly explained by John Mih[...]onment shapes and informs an individual’s sense
of himself. A recent disclosure of Reynolds’ ethnicity (as
an African American) le[...]magnetism Butte has exerted on him over thousands
of miles and throughout the stages of his life. Pat
Williams’ foreword evokes perhaps a less complicated
but equally detailed picture of boyhood moments in
the metropolis of Butte with its dazzling landmarks
and teeming cro[...]“The Tuna Fish

Sandwich” posits the Montana of tourism brochures
against the Montana of his boyhood in his hometown—
smelter town of Anaconda while Dennice Scanlon’s
“Ballad for[...]onditions her underground miner father and scores of
others faced on a daily basis. Ron Fischer’s ha[...]existed above ground in Butte, too. For thousands of
new Butte residents, immigrants in particular, th[...]t rapid
growth coincided with the Progressive Era of the early
twentieth century when the idea emerged that the
morals and minds of citizenry could be improved by a
beautiful and clean city. The “Report of Investigation
of Sanitary Conditions in Mines, and. of the
Conditions Under Which the Miners Live in Sil[...]photographs the
inadequacies—or even absence—of infrastructure,
building codes, and planni[...]

As[...]ssays in this volume,
Butte was home to a variety of ethnic groups in

the early twentieth century, an[...]Spots In and About Butte,” highlight how a few of
these communities regarded Butte as their home.
Christopher W. Merritt provides a brief history of the
state’s Chinese for two of the “Qleer Spots” features,
one on Butte’s[...]garden
and “nursery.”The surprising presence of a so—ca.l_led
“Assyrian Colony” in Butte and the complexities
of Middle Eastern Christianity are revealed by
Benja[...]—Harany who identifies the colony
as comprised of members of an Arabic—speaking
Maronite population from Had[...]feature as the springboard for
telling the story of the nation’s first urban Indians.
Traveling on foot with dog and horse travois, these
refugees of Louis Riel’s rebellion in Canada fruitlessly
searched for a home throughout the cities and towns of
central Montana before settling in Butte for a time.
The concept of “home” in the public sphere is
addressed in e[...]om—
homes and social and/ or recreational clubs of a sort.
In “The End of the Line: Butte, Anaconda and the
Landscape of Prostitution,” Ellen Baumler details the
domestic appearance of these euphemistic “female
boarding house[...]

consumed by travelers at nearby hotels or tourist camps.

The images of Butte’s urban fabric as presented
by photograph[...]in the mid 19805,
offer a capsule visual history of the Smelter City and its

icons. Belying Anaconda[...]ter

Joeann’s prints present a visual cacophony of landmark
church steeples, bar signs, and houses.[...]closing; “The Bus No Longer Stops Here,” for
example, depicts a smelter worker, lunchbox in hand,
stan[...]her Roger
Whitacre presents straightforward views of the place
of the final coming—home, the cemeteries of Butte and
Anaconda.

Early twentieth—century essayist George Wesley
Davis wrote of Butte: “There is tragedy and romance
in the very look of the place and one’s breath comes
quickly.” We hope that the contents of this issue will
quicken the breath of readers for whom Butte and
Anaconda are we[...]

Many observers ofof the landscape itself. Those who
write talk about the ruggedness of the mountains, the
starkness of the plains, and the emptiness of endless space,
but they have few words for the interplay of buildings,
structures, and things within that env[...]arby national parks but typically ignore the rest of
the state’s architecture, except when they thro[...]elers close to the ground, the relative emptiness of
the space means that buildings, districts, and structures
have more prominence, begging for an explanation of
how and why they got there.

A part of the answer is easy. Certainly much
of the surviving historic architecture repeat[...]

of permanent Euro—American residents until the 186[...]ul, or St. Louis, or Detroit. But the larger
part of the answer is much more diffith to discern
today. In his recent study of Montana landscapes,
geographer William Wyckoff admits “how difficult

it is to make sense of the landscapes around us,”
especially since “[...]ay are sometimes bare, always selective fragments
of what happened in the place.”2 Nowhere is the
te[...]nd Anaconda are truly sights to see. A
generation of work from committed and gifted
preservationists,[...]e place, as
preservationists like to say. Decades of meaningful
preservation can take place here. Yet, the truth of Butte
and Anaconda’s past is far more difficult to see. The
success of preservation can obscure the realities of
unchecked industrial power on the western landsca[...]truction, exploitation:

you can choose the terms of the debate, as writers did
one hundred years ago. Past boosters chose the first
two words—for example, Henry C. Freeman’s A Brief
History ofButte, Mo[...]tte to be a
cultural and economic marvel, a model of development
for all of the Rockies.The mass media press was
dominated by similar declarations of community
stability, even beauty.3

Others who wr[...]is so ugly
indeed that it is near the perfection of ugliness.”5

Dashiell Hammett, who fictionalized Butte and
Anaconda, and probably a couple of other western
abodes, into the town Personville i[...](1929), wrote:

[The] city wasn’t pretty. Most of its builders
had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe the[...]o uniform

dinginess. The result was an ugly city of

the smelters’ stacks.”

Thankfully, the air[...]other environmental projects have
reclaimed some of the damaged land. Butte and Silver
Bow County in fact market themselves as part of
the state’s greater natural and recreational be[...]structures in particular remain to convey
a sense of historical reality, to remind anyone of what
building the West was actually about. Butte[...]andscape (the Berkeley Pit) or that great finger
of industrial capitalism (the Anaconda Stack) soaring
skyward, surrounded by its mounds of industrial waste.
Once burned into your eyes, the Pit and the Stack
remain part of whatever architectural understanding
you take awa[...]60 feet wide at the top with an interior
diameter of 75 feet. Few industrial structures anywhere

comp[...]only continued to grow
through the middle decades of the century; by the
19505, it had decided to take[...]hoods
in Butte in exchange for another generation of work.
The Berkeley Pit opened in 1955. By the end of its life,
almost thirty years later, the Pit had[...]eir mammoth machines dug
out fifty thousand tons of rock and ore.As one local
writer observed in 1988: “The Pit gave Butte an unique
position in the history of American cities: the only town
both created and t[...]it.”The Pit
eventually claimed the communities of Meaderville and
Mcheen along with portions of Finntown and Dublin
Gulch}

The Pit and the Stack are significant reminders
of how industrial power shaped the landscape of and
between Butte and Anaconda. Geographer Yi—Fu
Tuan observed that “as a consequence of the Industrial
Revolution, the scale of power was tipped in man’s favor.
He proc[...]

in the New World landscape of the twentieth century,
where new technology combi[...]st’s most
defining structures—corporate acts of will—that broke
forever the scale of the Montana landscape, leaving no
doubt that mode[...]t and creating in its stead huge machines
capable of plundering its treasures.

To those who worked th[...]d they look and see if
there was smoke coming out of that stack and if there was,
God was in his heave[...]he Atlantic Richfield Corporation, a later owner
of the Washoe works, announced the stacks closing an[...]e
stack was launched because, in the poetic words of local

union activist Tom Dickson:

ARCO save tha[...]n
Mcheen, I watched in my rearview mirror as tons of
huge boulders and dirt slammed into the side of the
multi—story building. It withstood the onsl[...]culture rearranged places and lives in the name

of order, prosperity, destruction, and revitalization.

26

‘ Ruth (luinn, Weaver of Dreamy
7be Life and Arcbitecture of Robert
C. Reamer (Bozeman, MT: Leslie
and Ruth (l[...]ntana’; Cbanging
Landuapej (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2006), xiv.

3 As historian Timothy F. LeCain
points out, these images of Butte
the Bountiful continued well into
the twent[...]F.Wertheim and Barbara

Bair (Norman: University of ‘°
Oklahoma Press, 2000), 433n.

Mary MacLane, 7be Story of Mary
MacLane [7y Herjef (Chicago:

Herbert S. Sto[...]alone and Richard P.

Roeder, Montana:A I-Iijtory of Two
Centurie; (Seattle: University of ”
Washington Press, 1976), 17; Carroll ‘2
V.[...]e Eye and the

Mind's Eye," in 7be Interpretation of
Ordinary Landjcapex: Geo grapb ital
ESSRJIE, ed.[...]niversity Press, 1979), 92.
Two excellent studies of the

mining culture in Butte and
Anaconda are Mar[...]and
Leixure in Butte, 1914741 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1997);
and Laurie Mercier,Ana£on[...]ture in
Montana} Smelter City (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2001).
Mercier, Anaconda, I.

Dic[...]ng Haul Trucks in
the Berkeley Pit: Reminiscences of a
Gritty Job," Montana 7be Magazine
of Wejtern I-Iijtory 56 (Winter 2006):

58.

Fredric L. Quivik

The rich built environments of Butte and Anaconda
sprang almost entirely from th[...]ilver
Bow Creek and the Butte hill. The discovery of placer
gold and then ores rich in silver and copp[...]operated at cross purposes.The built environments
of Butte and Anaconda resulted from the struggles
ov[...]would dominate. They exhibit
the frequent victory of those who would let mining
predominate, they exhi[...]es that community
builders were able to carve out of environments so
dominated by mining.‘

Two desc[...]mmunity

that could sustain human and other forms of life and
those interested in extracting wealth fr[...]community that had emerged in a sheltered portion
of the Butte hill. Prominent images in his description
include a stream and a sheltering grove of trees,
components of an environment that might appear
to welcome life:[...]utifully located on
an eminence near the junction of the left and right
branches of Silver Bow Creek, and close to a stately
grove of pine trees, beneath whose shelter has suddenly
co[...]ely small as yet,
but destined ere long to be one of the most flourishing
and prosperous in the territory of Montana.”3

Late in the year, another descripti[...]in the Montana Port, this time making no mention of
living things or the environmental features that[...]ry changed rapidly, and we were
soon in the heart of that celebrated formation
of quartz riven rock. Once upon a time, there[...]

J. Ross Browne, an agent reporting to t[...], gold-bearing quartz veins

are found also, many of which contain silver,
copper, antimony, arsenic,[...]ul. Ihe
ore, which is quite abundant, is composed of
oxides and carbonates in a concentrated form.
It[...]le wide and four or five
long, and show evidence of being deep and

permanent.7

Butte Rises as a Smo[...]ilver ore and to recover silver and
small amounts of gold by amalgamation. Most widely
credited for sp[...]em to extract gold. Farlin had taken some
samples of Butte quartz with him to Idaho, where he
worked i[...]le also learning more about

milling. From assays of those samples, he concluded

the Dexter.K One of Butte’s thirteen
surviving headframes still sta[...]Missoula Gulch, about
a half mile above the mouth of the
gulch on Silver Bow Creek. ByJune
1876, the D[...]using the Washoe
process, in which small amounts of

salt and copper sulfide were added to

that But[...]to refile a dozen mining claims under a revision of the mill operated successfully on ore from Farlin[...]t on January 1, 1875. when the mill treated a lot of ore from a difierent mine,
Those claims included the Asteroid, located on the the presence of antimony and lead caused poor recovery
southwest portion of the Butte hill. Farlin renamed it of silver and yielded excessive lead in the b[...]

This episode exhibited[...]heir resultant smoke were to
the eventual success of mining ventures in Butte.

The return of spring weather in 1876 brought a
return of active mining and allowed several construction
pr[...]rosscut 200 feet from the shaft and struck
a vein of copper glance (chalcocite, or CuZS) four feet
wid[...]arks and two men
were able to hoist a ton or more of ore daily. He placed
ore containing 4.0 to 60 per[...]y rail to Baltimore for smelting."

As the Fourth of July in the United States’
centennial year appr[...]onvinced that it was truly embarking on a
new era of prosperity. Butte citizens decided to stage
an el[...]Warren, who had worked in
the county recorder’s office during Butte’s first boom.
Now a prominen[...]and within

a short time will be heard the music of a
hundred whistles of quartz mills—the horizon
will be clouded with the smoke of scores of

furnaces. . . .Take a view ofthe camp. For

[xii] of rich lodes; gold, silver, copper and lead
abound[...]st, if not the world. Virginia City
and the mines of Nevada, now producing
millions of precious metals, will be eclipsed.
All we need is transportation and works for
the reduction of our ores.To you of faint heart
and who feel discouraged, who for yea[...]ently and hard without a murmur,
we would say, be of good cheer, hold your
grip, for day is dawning. B[...]unity in the near bye-and-bye as you do
not dream of. The camp is now getting known
throughout the wor[...]our
isolation, a few weeks would see the capital of

the world seeking investment here. ‘3

Such boosterism was typical of many mining
camps in the nineteenth—century Ame[...]tte’s horizon was indeed clouded
with the smoke of scores offurnaces. Of even more
interest to those promoting Butte was the arrival of
the transcontinental railroads as well as ample c[...]lkerville. From Harry C. Freeman, A Brief History of
Butte, Montana, the World’s Greatest Mining Cam[...]00).

developed silver mills, the most successful of which
employed roasting furnaces to enable better recovery
of silver from the sulfide ores. The largest of the silver
mills were located in Walkerville, just north of Butte
and at the head of Missoula Gulch, which flows south
through what i[...]More importantly, Butte emerged as a major
source of copper. By 1887, Butte surpassed Michigan’s
Keweenah Peninsula to become the world’s greatest

supplier of copper, a distinction it would hold until
the end of World War 1.“ Butte attracted capital

the smoke emanating from Butte’s furnaces:

I must say that the ladies are very fond of
this smoky city, as it is sometimes called,
becau[...]ful complexion, and that is
the reason the ladies of Butte are renowned
wherever [xic] they go for the[...]eases. It has been believed by all
the physicians of Butte that the smoke that
sometimes prevails ther[...]d destroys the microbes that constitute the
germs ofof statehood, the

emanations from Butte’s furnaces were sparking

controversy. In 1885, a group of Butte women had
complained that the thick smoke f[...]e, most Butte
residents still saw smoke as a sign of prosperity.‘7 This
view may have helped Thomas Couch, one of the Butte
smelter managers, to more readily see benefits in the
clouds of smoke. In an 1889 letter to a corporate official
in Boston, Couch observed how helpful Butt[...]without hurting his eyes.“

The mixed blessing of smoke in the air was
described by one A. C. Snow in a letter to cousins in
Moscow, Idaho, shortly after his ar[...]r 1897. Snow had been a miner in the silver
mines of Aspen, Colorado. Like so many silver camps
in the[...]Arriving at 10:00 p.m., he immediately took stock of

the place:

I was much surprised for the[...]

the face of the earth, and if one is fond of
Boom business hurry bustle noise excitement
and crowds of people he can have it here to
his heart’s conte[...]to find the city building very rapidly and
some of the largest buildings I ever saw.

And the large amount of work going on in
the city and mines and smelters[...]flooded with job seekers,
Snow knew the manager of one of the mines and felt
confident he could find work. After describing other
aspects of the city, he returned to the theme of smoke:
“Butte City is situated on the south slope of a low flat
mountain. . . . [T]he mines are all in a bunch in the
north part of the city, the smelters are located all around
and[...]The country around looks
desolate on the account of the copper smoke killing all
vegetation.”

By J[...]utte

often drop below zero. These were just some of the
features of Butte: it offered good pay for anyone willing
to[...]st hardship,
especially for those not in the best of health. For
example, in early February 1898, a man named Murdock
McLe[...]y as the ACM, had by 1910
consolidated almost all of Butte’s several prosperous
mining companies int[...]ial
operation that featured an integrated network of mines
in Butte, the world’s largest nonf[...]

could dispose of their tailings.
The Colorado smelter—a
joint ve[...]to succeed in Butte. Located
along the south side of Silver
Bow Creek near the mouth of
Missoula Gulch, it went into
operation in 1879.[...]lish a smelter. Launched
by the Lewisohn Brothers
of New York City, who were
prominent brokers in glob[...]addition to being the mining where the east side of the Berkeley Pit is now. The

city known as the R[...]Bow Creek, where they had access to water and end of Texas Avenue, northeast of where the Civic

W. A. Cl[...]eduction Works along
Silver Bow Creek at the foot of Montana Street,
upstream of the Colorado smelter. In the late I88os,
Clark sold his Meaderville smelter to a group of New
York and Boston capitalists and acquired the[...], Bigelow and his associates
bought another group of Butte mines, established the
Butte & Boston Minin[...]from Meaderville. It began
operating in the fall of 1889.

The last major nineteenth—century smelte[...]na Ore Purchasing Company. The MOP was
a creature of F. Augustus Heinze, who would become
notorious for using the law of the apex as a means
for tapping veins of copper ore that other companies
believed belonged[...]s
to the veins. Heinze first fired the furnaces of his MOP
smelter in 1893.

Smelting was important[...]mining
center. Without smelting, only the richest of Butte’s
ores could have been shipped to smelters elsewhere and
still generated a profit; the costs of transporting the 95
percent or more of the ore that consisted of valueless
mineral would have been too great. A relatively high
percentage of Butte’s working population in the

ninet[...]

Of the people listed in the 1885 Butte City Directory

(nearly all of them men), more than II percent had
occupations i[...]ing contributed
significantly to the livelihoods of Butte families.

And then there are the environmental
consequences of smelting. More than any other facet

of the mining enterprise in Butte (before the advent

Butte 8 Boston smelter, Butte: Owned hy many of the same
investors who developed the Boston 8 Mon[...]k in 1889. From Harry
C. Freeman, A Brief History of Butte, Montana, the World’s
Greatest Min[...]

of open—pit mining at the Berkeley Fit in 1955, th[...]the mine waste and tailings that are stored north of the
Berkeley Fit in what was once a valley at the headwaters

of Silver Bow Creek. Gone from view are remnants of

Montana Ore Purchasing Company smelter, Butte: Developed
hy F Augustus Heinze 1893, the MOP was the last of the hig
nineteenth—century Butte smelters to op[...]ntil 1910. From Harry C. Freeman, A Brief History
of Butte, Montana, the World’s Greatest Min[...]

The community ofWalkerville, at the top of
the Butte hill, grew up around some of Butte’s most
important silver mines and mills. The small houses of
Walkerville accurately represent the typical dwel[...]he twentieth century, but the mine itself was
one of Butte’s important nineteenth—century silver
producers. Foundation remains of some of the silver
mills, including the Lexington mill, s[...]oric commercial district, is located at
the heart of the original townsite, platted in 1876.
Residenti[...]ed along Front
Street, which parallels the tracks of the Burlington
Northern, following the alignment of the tracks of the
first railroad to reach Butte in 1881.Those[...]with residential
neighborhoods both east and west of those two streets,
and with neighborhood retail developments along
some of the other major north—south streets, including
Montana and Main.”

Most of the mines were east and north of the

original townsite, so working—class neighb[...]ne
in 1882. From Harry G Freeman, A Brief History of Butte,
Montana, the World’s Greatest Min[...]

Perhaps the most well
known of these neighborhoods
was Meaderville, an
unincorporated community along
the creek due east of the original
townsite. Meaderville thrived
until the 1950s, when expansions
of the Berkeley Pit completely
subsumed it. East of the Front
Street center, a neighborhood of
working—class dwellings developed
along Second[...]ioleraoly. From Harry C. Freeman, A Brief
History of Butte, Montana, the World’s Greatest Mining Cam[...]l Co, 1900).

developed in those directions. Most of the working—
class neighborhoods on Butte’s east side have been
destroyed by expansion of the Berkeley Pit toward
Uptown Butte, but much of Centerville survives.
Centerville is the unincorporated area of the hill
between Butte and Walkerville. Mills and[...]e Parrot smelter.
Second Street survives, but all
of the blocks north anc. east of
it have also succumbed to the
Pit. Another little neig 1borhood
developed on the little 1ill just
south of the Colorado smelter
(the westernmost of the Butte
smelters). Called Williamsburg, it was namec. for

the first manager of the Colorado smelter. Being a
considerable distance from the Berkeley Pit, many of
the houses in Williamsburg survive. The neig 1borhoods

west of the original townsite were the greatest distance[...]mines and smelters, and many peop e in
Butte’s professional and commercial classes built their

houses[...]

modest as the miners’ cottages of the east side and
Centerville, but many others ar[...]ssive
mansions.

The commercial strip development of the
second half of the twentieth century occurred along
Harrison Avenue out on what Butte folks call the
Flats. Much of Harrison Avenue north of 1—90,
however, dates from the early twentieth c[...]Flats. Many retail buildings along the north
end of Harrison Avenue date from the 1910s and
1920s. On[...]building that
represents the political complexion of Butte during
the World War I era. The neighborhoods east and
west of Harrison feature some wonderful Craftsman
bungalo[...]lle, the east side, and the Mcheen
addition (east of Meaderville) were thus moved and
still exist on the Flats, often concentrated together in

neighborhoods of such houses.

Gagnon mine, Butte: Some mine; were rigbt in [be mith of

Butte} urbanfaorie. Ee Gagnon, wbieb xupp/ieol o[...]Courtbouxe. From Harry G Freeman, A Brief History of Butte,
Montana, the World’s Greatest Mining Cam[...]tes in Butte

Butte is located in a semiarid part of North
America, and Silver Bow Creek is quite a sm[...]chronic water
shortages. Moreover, after a decade of intense mining
and smelting, the hillsides near Butte were becoming
barren of trees, needed not only for mine timbers bu[...]

Great Falls, which afforded plenty of water plus ample
water power that could be genera[...]losed its two Butte smelters.
Despite the closure of the B&.M’s upper and
lower works, Butte in the[...]ve large copper

smelters from the southwest part of Butte upstream

to Meaderville—Colorado, Butte[...]and tailings.The two tables here
show the volumes of tailings (table 1) and sulfur (table
2) in[...]

the smelters, large volumes of tailings also washed
downstream, especially during spring runoff or heavy
rain, leading to large deposits of tailings along Silver
Bow Creek and the Clark For[...]ny tailings deposits have been remediated as part of
the Clark Fork Superfund Project, and the streams[...]but tailings are still
visible along some reaches of these streams.) The large
tailings piles n[...]

was in the form of sulfur dioxide.
As the Butte mines were extended
deeper into the earth, the arsenic
content of the ore increased, so
smelter smoke also discharged
increasing volumes of arsenic.
Butte’s thick smelter smoke

was thick[...]low—

cost method the smelters had

thin layers of tailings residue survived World War 11, used prior to the advent of roasting furnaces, which
the most visible of which was the Colorado tailings. discharged the smoke into the atmosphere through
All of the Butte tailings have been remediated under sta[...]operated by the B&lVl, lit some
prominent feature of the Butte landscape. fresh piles of ore. Citizens demonstrated outside city

Most of the sulfur discharged with the smoke hall,[...]

But as the volume of ore being treated in Butte

increased through the 18905, so did the volume of
smoke, despite improvements in the technologies f[...]ions that led to A.
C. Snow’s vivid description of Butte and to Murdock

at each of the works. Likewise, the smelter managers
expressed their inability to explain the source of the
smoke troubling the city, although R. D. Gran[...]its

own solution to the problem:

In these days of smoke and trouble when the
undertaker gives you a[...]oke and strengthen your
lungs. Old time residents of Butte who have
tried it say that beer gives bette[...]ke cleared.33

At the public meeting, a committee of five
was appointed to study solutions to the problem.
Representatives of the smelter companies generally
agreed that they[...]smoke and he did
not want to take this bread out of their mouths.”34
The Daily Inter Mountain edito[...]rs (and eliminate many payrolls), or
connect each of the smelters to a giant flue system and
c[...]

smelter grew to he t[...]ntil 1910. From Harry C.
Freeman, A Brief History of Butte, Montana, the World’s Greatest Mining Cam[...]no discomforts; so would be hades.”35

Remains of buildings at the Butte Reduction
Works are now go[...]s, the Butte Reduction Works
discharged thousands of tons of
tailings onto the banks of Silver
Bow Creek throughout its active
period of operation. During the early
years, smelter manage[...]ourage spring runoH in
the creek to erode as much of the
tailings as possible and make room
for more t[...]s and damaging
production.36

The first response of the Butte Reduction Works
was to build a p[...]

As mentioned earlier, all of the tailings deposits
at the Butte smelters—inc[...]orld
War II to recover copper. Nevertheless, much of the
slag—wall tailings impoundment survives and is visible

just west of Montana Street.

Other Metals Mined at Butte

Cop[...]ly mined and milled
silver until the silver crash of 1893. Thereafter, Butte
continued to produce large volumes of silver, but mainly
as a by—product of copper mining and smelting. Early
in the twentiet[...]luding the Timber Butte mill,
to the ACM. Remains of the Timber Butte mill are
still visible on the north slope of Timber Butte, south
of Butte. The large concrete ore bin structure of the
Timber Butte mill survives as the OX0 Foundation,
home of the late Bob Corbett, a much beloved
conce[...]

importance of the metal led the United States to work
closely w[...]Butte Reduction Works, now owned by
the ACM. Some of the richest manganese ores were
located relativel[...]g wall (B) in[ended
[o convey Mixxoulo Gulcb we;[ of [be [oilingx impoundrnen[i Tbe
mop olxo xbowx [be[...]er [be [oilingxpilei Cour[exy
Clerk and Recorder} office, Bu[[e—Sil‘verbow

of these ores through the Emma and Travona shafts
le[...]uildings that stood
above the mine workings. Most of the structural
damage occurred during the 1940s a[...]in the deed to the property that absolved
the ACM of responsibility for any damage caused

by subsiden[...]rance companies and to

fall into disrepair. Much of Butte’s surviving historic
working—class hous[...]eth century
had it not been for the consolidation ofof

Anaconda and are vixib/e from [be go/feourxe. 7Z[...]on openingr z‘o one oftbe reverberotoryfurnoeex of [be Upper
Work. Noz‘e flue on oil/xide[...]

these smelters needed considerable supplies of water

to operate their jigs and tables and to ca[...]water. What did
amaze all onlookers was the scale of the reduction
works he and the syndicate decided to build twenty—six
miles west of Butte on the north side of Warm Springs
Creek. When the new works opened, it had a capacity
of about five hundred tons per day, and constructio[...]in the United States was located in
the territory of Montana.“

Within a few years, production from Daly’s Butte
mines exceeded the capacity of the Anaconda smelter
and Daly began constructing[...]smelter became the Upper Works.
Combined capacity ofof the twentieth century, rather than remodeling
the[...]an entirely new reduction works on the south
side of Warm Springs Creek. The new works would be[...]

for smelting.

By the end of 1910, nearly all of the major copper
mines in Butte were owned and operated by the ACM
and most of the copper smelters had closed.The lone
exception was the Pittsmont smelter, the remains of
which are still barely visible (behind piles of mine
waste) east of the Clyde E. Weed concentrator along
the south edge of the Berkeley Pit. The Pittsmont
smelter remained independent of Anaconda until it

closed in the 19205.

Environmental Consequences qumelting utAnatandu
The transfer of nearly all copper smelting to
Anaconda had several consequences for the built
environment of the upper Clark Fork basin. Most
obviously, it led to the creation of a smelter city, where
workers who once would have[...]smelters now resided. It led to the construction of
three giant smelters, the remains of which are still
visible on the landscape. The sole structure surviving
from the third of those smelters, the Washoe smelter,
is the 585—foot stack. The rest of the Washoe smelter
was entirely demolished during[...]and Lower Works were
demolished at the beginning of the twentieth century,
leaving extensive foundation ruins in place. Perhaps

the most visible of those ruins are the large flues that

for the camps. One of the earliest of those livestock

Tailings deposit at Grant—K[...]nt—Kohrs historic site are a
fitting component of this unit of the National Park Service. The
owner of the ranch testyfed at the smoke and tailings tria[...]ns was the Grant Ranch, located on the north
side of the town of Deer Lodge. Conrad Kohrs bought
the ranch in the 1860s, and it became the basis of one
of Montana’s largest livestock enterprises.44 The Grant—
Kohrs Ranch is a unit of the National Park Service’s
national his[...]

other vegetables for residents of Butte and Anaconda in
addition to hay and grains.
When the Deer Lodge Valley farmers found
more of their livestock dying after the Washoe
smelter we[...]concluded that arsenical poisoning
was the cause of death. Farmers and veterinarians
alike believed that the source of arsenic killing the
livestock was the smoke from[...]tion, ACM engineers believed, was to
connect each of the four smelting departments by a
system of flues to a single giant flue running up the
hill south of the smelter to a three—hundred—foot stack
ato[...]uld be diluted to harmless
levels. The main trunk of the flue had a very large cross
section that was intended to slow the velocity of the
gases and allow fine solids (such as arsenic[...]m done
to livestock and had implemented a state—of—the—art
solution to prevent future damage.The ACM also
boasted of the commercial advantages of capturing the

flue dust so it could be resmelte[...]olved the problem, and they
continued to complain of ailing and dying livestock. In
1905, Fred Bliss,[...]ge Valley, filed suit in federal court on
behalf of his neighbors, who had organized as the Deer
Lodg[...]alley. The ensuing trial entailed fourteen months of
proceedings, a total of 237 witnesses, and some twenty—
five thousand pages of testimony. It was said to have
been the longest a[...]s lawyers
were able to marshal a broad assortment of farmers and
ranchers from the area to describe for the court the
extent of damages the Washoe’s smoke had caused. The
farm[...]was sores or ulcers that appeared in the nostrils
of horses. Cattle would scour (suffer from diarrhea)[...]iry cows quit giving milk. Animals’ breath gave of

what their owners described as the odor of garlic.47

Both sides in the litigation presented[...]contract to the federal
government—Robert Swain of Stanford University
and W. D. Harkins of the University of Montana—
completed some of the first field research in the case
during the summer of 1905. By installing testing
devices at the smelter, they tried to determine the
quantity of arsenic leaving the smelter’s stack. Swain
and[...]hoe
stack discharged forty—four thousand pounds of arsenic
across the environment daily. Daniel E. Salmon, a noted
veterinarian and founding chief of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Industry, testified on
the symptoms of arsenical poisoning exhibited by the
Deer Lodge V[...]rnment to supply experts from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture to assess the damage being
caused by the smelter. W. G. Weigle, of the U.S. Forest
Service, examined the effects of smelter smoke on
forestlands around the smelter. J K. Haywood, of the
USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry, assessed the chemical
effects of emissions from the smelter, including those
of sulfur dioxide on plant life and those of arsenic on
animal life. He also examined the effe[...]ms impregnated with tailings. The USDA’s Bureau
of Animal Industry also sent Robert J. Formad to the
Anaconda area to investigate the impacts of smelter
emissions on animal life.48

Smelter manager E. P. Mathewson enlisted his
own impressive team of experts. He asked Duncan
McEachran, a prominent C[...]to visit the Deer Lodge Valley during the
summer of 1905 to inspect livestock conditions and then
hel[...]re its technical case. McEachran
assembled a team of nationally regarded veterinary
experts, including[...]son, a Pennsylvania
State veterinarian and member of the faculty at
the University of Pennsylvania; Theobald Smith, of
Harvard University; and Veranus A. Moore, of Cornell
University. Interestingly, all three were graduates of
Cornell, and Smith and Moore had earlier worked f[...]Eachran and the ACM had asked Salmon to be
a part of the company’s veterinary team, but Salmon
declined.The ACM also presented such experts as F.
W. Traphagen, of the Colorado School of Mines, and
Harry Snyder, of the University of Minnesota, to offer
soil analyses suggesting that[...]ing a plant pathologist to

determine the effects of smelter smoke on vegetation,

Mathewson secured the services of Ralph W. Smith, of

the University of California at Berkeley.”

The Anaconda Company[...].
After the lengthy proceedings and a long period of
deliberation, Judge Hunt ruled that there did app[...]Lodge Valley would suffer
more harm from closure of the smelter, and consequent
c osure ofthe Butte m[...]chnicality.52
The Bliss case would not be the end of legal

c 1allenges to the ACM and the smoke its W[...]unding national forest

resources. Roosevelt left office after the 1908 election,

and it took some t[...]al
action against the ACM. During the first year of the
Taft administration, the Department of Justice (DOJ)
continued working on the Anaconda a[...]nment experts also continued to
study the impacts of smelter smoke on the environment
surrounding Anac[...]James W. Freeman,
U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana, filed suit
against Anaconda in the Montana District Court of
the Ninth Circuit Court of the United States. The
suit sought to enjoin the[...]charged harmful smoke
and gases over the property of the United States.53
Unlike the Bliss case, in which the main concern of
the complainant was arsenic in the smelter smoke[...]y Eccleston, who
farmed about ten miles southeast of the smelter, noticed
that the timber on the hills south of the smelter was
sickly and dying. For example, an area known as the
McCune Cutting, wher[...]

Stanford s[...]t mere coincidence but are the inevitable
effects of which sulphur dioxide is the specific cause.”5[...]e field around Anaconda collecting
evidence. For example, forest supervisor P. S. Lovejoy
found in 1910 th[...]reas in 1907 and 1908. He
estimated that the cost of damage to trees from smelter
smoke was greater th[...]ing the damage.
It was therefore in the interests of all concerned for
the U.S. government to work wit[...]nd
technological means for eliminating the causes of injury
A joint effort would be possible under the auspices
of a “board of experts,” convened to examine various
technical[...]mend their adoption to
the ACM. During the course of negotiations, the two
parties had reached agreement on a variety of issues,

such as the composition of the board and what kinds

of technical remedies the ACM could be expected to
a[...]d on April
13,1911, Benjamin B. Thayer, president of the ACM,
and Attorney General George W. Wickersha[...]ates, signed an agreement
under which prosecution of the case would be
suspended as long as the ACM complied with the
terms of the agreement.“ The first paragraph of the

agreement stated:

[D]efendant Anaconda Copp[...]ution from its smelting
works at Anaconda, Mont., of all deleterious
fumes, particularly those contain[...]m such works
any fumes which are injurious to any of the

interests of the complainant.”

The agreement also stipulated that (I) a three—
man Board of Experts would be established to conduct

its own research and to oversee ACM investigation

of emissions from the smelter and of techniques and
processes the ACM could implement[...]d implement methods and equipment

that the Board of Experts recommended to move the
smelter toward co[...]he agreement; (3) the
ACM would pay for the costs of the Board of Experts
and of experts the Board might retain; and (4.) as long
as the ACM complied with the terms of the agreement,
the government would suspend its c[...]The agreement also named the first three members of
the board and stipulated how each member would be
replaced in case of resignation or deat .60 The Board

of Experts soon came to be known as the Anaconda
Smelter Smoke Commission.

Under the auspices of the Smoke Commission,
scientists and engineers, most of whom were employed
by the ACM, gained greater understanding of the
contents of smelter smoke, of the effects of those
contents on living things, and of methods that could be
used to remove the h[...]

Finding a market for all the sulfur[...]fur recovered from smoke into sulfuric
acid, some of which could be used for ore treatment
processes a[...]taining sulfur was relatively small in the region
of the country readily accessible from Anaconda.
Con[...]ew technologies implemented at
the recommendation of the Smoke Commission ended
up recovering less than 10 percent of the sulfur content
of the smoke; the remainder continued to be discharg[...]Cottrell
electrostatic precipitators at the base of the stack

to recover more dust from the smoke st[...]truction
would cost more than $2 million. Because of materials
shortages caused by US. involvement in[...]s allowed the ACM to recover more
than 85 percent of the total dust and fume in the smoke,
including about 94. percent of the copper, 78 percent
of the lead, and 80 percent of the arsenic. In 1923, the
ACM recovered $1,130,000 worth of materials from
flue dust collected by the electrostatic precipitators and
related equipment. About $700,000 of that amount
represented the gross value of the arsenic recovered.To
recover those materials,[...]the arsenic, and so forth, yielding a net
profit of more than $400,000.This figure represented 17

percent of the cost of installing the stack, treaters, and

Frustrated that a decade
of threatened litigation and of
research and development by
the Smoke Commission[...]rell devised a new plan, one
that would use terms of the 1922 Act to Consolidate
National Forest Lands[...]t boundaries
resulting from the irregular pattern of homestead
entries, railroad land grants, a[...]

By early 1924., the U.S. Forest Servic[...]dressed by
other entities, such as the Department of the Interior,
the Department of Justice, and the Smoke Commission,
before any exc[...]Forest Service and the
ACM negotiated the details of the first land exchange,
featuring 22,000 acres of damaged lands. From
then through 1936, the United[...]ich the government
deeded more than 110,000 acres of damaged lands near
the smelter to the company in return for a like area of

healthy forestlands elsewhere in Montana."4

Mea[...]M

implemented selective flotation, a new method of
concentrating ores at the smelter that resulted i[...]e tailings
ponds. This greatly reduced the volume of sulfur being
discharged in the smoke and began to[...]er damage to property, battles we
would now think of as environmental battles (people
in the early twentieth century did not yet conceive of
an abstraction called the environment that merite[...]did, however, recognize through a
long tradition of common law that property merited
protection). The[...]—90, one can still see tailings along the banks
of Silver Bow Creek. On the south side of Montana
Highway 1 lies grazing land once owned by members

of the Deer Lodge Farmers Association, farmer[...]

Bow Creek were almo;t entirely lined witb broad bed; of tailing; from Butte to tbe Warm
Spring; Pond; Tbe[...]tive
agriculture could take place
under the plume of the stack.
Northwest of Opportunity lies

a vast expanse, nearly six square
miles in area, that is the site of
the Opportunity Ponds, a set of
siX impoundments that the ACM
used to store tailings from the
1910s onward. This is the area
where much of the contaminated
materials from Butte, from the
s[...]own dam near Missoula

are being disposed as part of the
Superfund remediation.

Getting closer to

of the highway is the community of Opportunity, a Anaconda, just west of the road to Wisdom and the
model community develo[...]live on tailings in the 1950s before construction of the Clyde

land that would allow them to produce some of their E.Weed concentrator in Butte obviate[...]

less advanced than those of the Washoe smelter, the

tailings and slag they d[...]rings Creek, the golf course was built as a
means of managing the materials in situ so that they
would not contaminate surface or ground waters. Large
piles of black slag in the midst of the golf course are
leftovers from the Old Works; the traps at the golf
course consist of granulated slag hauled over from

the slag pile a[...]ural heritages,
but to fully appreciate the kinds of built environments
the builders and residents in those cities of the

Montana copper industry were trying to achie[...]building their own surroundings. The
environments of Butte and Anaconda were characterized
both by maj[...]w people may have thought that
smoke was a symbol of prosperity, but for many it was
much more than a symbol—it was a source of hardship,

and of ill health, for people as well as for other living

of the built environments of Butte and Anaconda.

Several scholars have written

about the struggles by residents

of Butte and Anaconda to create
communities in the midst of an
environment dominated by a
powerful industrial[...]ndLeiiure in Butte,
191471941 (Urbana: University ofof Illinois Press,
200I); John Mihelich, “The Richest
Hill on Earth: An Ethnographic
Account of Industrial Capitalism,
Religion & Community in Bu[...]sons from
Environmental History,”IA: He
journal of tbe Sotiety for Induitrial
Artbeology 26 (2000): 58—60.

Letter to the editor from Butte City,
Montana Poit,January 7, I865, copied
in William J. Wilcox, “His Record

of Anaconda,” typescript, ca. I934,
folders 22 and[...]In cases where the citation is to
Wilcox's copies of early newspapers
rather than to the original, it[...]ort, December 9, I865
(from Wilcox, “His Record of
Anaconda”).

Although detailed citations are
given throughout, much of this early
history of Butte is drawn from the
author's PhD dissertation[...]“Smoke and Tailings:

An Environmental History of
Copper Smelting Technologies in
Montana, I880—I930” (University of
Pennsylvania, I998).

Michael P. Malone, He Battl[...]I98I), 8—I0; Kate Hammond Fogarty,
“A History of Butte, Montana,”
(undated, unpublished m[...]

The prevalence of Chinese miners in
worked-over areas is nicely ana[...]River

Mining in the West,”Montana

He Magazine of Wextern Hixtory 46
(Autumn I996): I4—29.

J. Ross Browne, Report on tbe

Mineral Rexourtex of tbe State;

and Territoriex Wext of tbe

Rotky Mountainx, Executive

Document No. 202, U.S. House

of Representatives, Second

Session, 40th Congress,[...]une 3, I876, 3; Charles
S. Warren, “The Romance of
Butte,” speech delivered July 4, I876,
reprinte[...]for Butte, I5—I7; ‘3
Ralph 1. Smith, Hixtory of tbe Early ‘4
Reduttion Plant; of Butte, Montana

(Butte: Montana School ofMines,[...]-wext, April I8, I876, 3.

Warren, “The Romance of Butte,”5;

Butte Miner, June 8, I876, 3; June I[...]Battle for Butte, I7. ‘8
Warren, “The Romance of Butte,”6.

For a detailed history of the

development of Butte's silver mills,

see Qlivik, “Smoke and T[...]Frontier, I640—I893,” He
Spetulatoruffournal of Butte and
Soutb-wext Montana Hixtory I
(Summer I9[...]titutional
Convention, in Proteedingx and
Debate; of tbe Conxtitutional
Convention 1889 (Helena: State[...]. Malone and
Richard B. Roeder, Montana'A
Hixtory of Two Centuriex (Seattle:
University ofWashi[...]

Malcolm J. Rohrb ough, Ax[...]to Mr. & Mrs.

Major & Ella C. and Capt. Geo
8., letter dated October II, I897, ‘7
private collection of Lon Johnson,
Columbia Falls, MT.

A. C. Snow to Mr. 8L Mrs. Major
& Ella C. and Capt. Geo S., letter,
October II, I897.

A. C. Snow to Ella Collins, letter
datedJanuary I9, I898, private
collection of Lon Johnson,
Columbia Falls, MT.

Daily InterMaun[...]mitz, “The World's
Largest Industrial Companies of

I9I2,” Buxinexx Hixtary 37 (I995): 87.

For a detailed history of the

development ofof Crafi/tt’x

Butte City Direttary (Butte: Daily[...]:

An Architectural and Historical 3‘
Inventory of the National Landmark
District,”unpublished rep[...]I997,
pp. C-46, C-86, C-I09, C-I43, C-I72.
A copy of the “Expert Report”

is available in the library ofof the
weight of the materials smelted was
sulfur, even though records from the
period indicate that more than 34
percent of the materials smelted was
sulfur.

The best account of this early smoke
controversy in Butte is M[...]

the United States, Ninth District, 4‘
District of Montana, RG-2I,

National Archives, Seattle Branc[...]s Inc. in ‘3
Butte conducted a thorough survey

of structures in the Subsidence

Zone and reported o[...]osson,Ana[onda, 46—52.

For an overview history of the
Anaconda smelters, see Qlivik,
“Smoke and T[...]e's He Battle for Butte

provides a good overview of the
Amalgamated consolidation, but for
the most t[...]e
Arsenic in the Air? Anaconda versus
the Farmers of Deer Lodge Valley,”
Montana He Magazine ofWeIte[...]areer
ofDr. D. E. Salmon,” Montana

He Magazine of Wextern Hixtory 57
(Spring 2007): 39—40.

MacMi[...]ony at trial,
U.S. Circuit Court for the District of
Montana, Fred] Blixx ‘v. tbe Waxboe
Copper Comp[...]reafter
Blixx ‘v. Waxboe), 2:64I—736, Records
of the Anaconda Copper Mining
Company, MC-I69[...]

to Veranus A. Moore, letter dated

January 2, I906; D. McEachran to
D. E. Salmon, letter dated January
2, I906; E. P. Mathewson to D.

E. Salmon, letter dated January 2,
I906; Duncan McEachran to E. P.
Mathewson, letter dated January
27, I906; all in file 4, box 445,
Records of the Anaconda Copper
Mining Company (hereafter “[...]CM Records;
E. P. Mathewson to Prof. R. W.
Smith, letter dated February 24,
I906, file 4, box 445, ACM Records;
E. P. Mathewson to Prof. Ralph E.
Smith, letter dated March 6, I906,
file 4, box 445, ACM Records.

On the uses of the balancing
doctrine by U.S. courts in the late[...]es, see Christine Rosen,
“Differing Perceptions of the Value

of Pollution Abatement across Time

up to the filing of the suit against 55
the ACM, see MacMillan, “Th[...]omplaint filed by

the U.S. in the Circuit Court of

the United States, Ninth Circuit,
District of Montana, United State; ‘v.
Anatonda CopperMinin[...]rical Files (Folded), entry

II2, General Records of the U.S.
Department ofJustice (hereafter
“DOJ”), RG-60, National Archives,
College Park, MD.

All of these observations are from

aflfidavits by Dee[...]in, and J. P.
Mitchell, “Report on the Effects

of Smelter Smoke on Vegetation

and the Conditions ofthe

National Forests in the Vicinity of
Anaconda, Montana” (unpublished 57
report prepa[...]0, box 84b, General Files

Prior to I954, Records of the

U.S. Bureau ofMines (hereafter
“BOM”), R[...]The conclusion quoted here is

from the last page of the section on

botanical investigations. The sec[...]nclusions describing
evidence ofwidespread levels of
sulfur high enough to harm plant
life and ofarsen[...]I), box 84b, General
Files Prior to I954, Records of the
U.S. Bureau ofMines, RG-70.

See, for example, the correspondence
between Attorney General
Wickersham and the ACM's

Kelley during the closing days of
negotiations: C. F. Kelley to the
Attorney General, letter dated
March 9, I9II, and Attorney General
to C. F. Kelley, letter dated March
30, I9II, box 886, Do].

For a general discussion of

the negotiations between the
government and the ACM following
filing of the suit, culminating in

the I9II agreeme[...]

the temperature that December morning, but it was
one of those sunny, frigid, windy Butte winter days. I[...]frame.Joe and I climbed the five or six flights of
stairs (about six stairs each) that went straight up the
vertical legs of the frame. The steps led to a deck used
historica[...]northwest leg, where it joined with the long line of
steps and rail that tracked up the angled length of the
northwest leg to the top deck of the frame. Once across
the catwalk, Joe, leading[...]ced a similar sensation on his first
trip up one of the frames. I just wanted to get up to

th[...]

trip after all. He explained how some of the veteran
ironworkers would drape their arms over the railings
and kick their feet up in front of them on the railings
and slide to the bottom. With a little care to loosen the
grip of their hands as they slid over the rivets holding
the side posts of the rail to the steps, they made a quick
and easy[...]I saw Tommy Holter, a former ropeman, make half

of this move. He laid his shoulders across the rails[...]s behind him, carefully
placing one foot in front of the other on the descending
steps. He reached the[...]and wheels,
and he knew the ropes.

I spent much of my fieldwork listening to men
talk about the process of mining, their work, and their
lives in Butte. Nea[...]e ARCO retirees’ club, where members
spent much of their time recounting their experiences

o[...]

in the offices in various capacities for the Anaconda

Copper Mining Company. In the process of writing
about mining in Butte, including the content that fills
most of this article, I asked several of the men to review
my writings, which they did and approved.

An understanding of life in Butte firmly rests
on knowing a good dea[...]Rose
Mihelich, an assessment echoed in the minds of nearly
everyone I spoke with during my research o[...]lthough the actual miners were the heart and soul
of the mining operations—John T. Shea, a ropeman
o[...]lectively worked the mines. Based on
the practice of underground industrial copper mining,
the miners and, in turn, the rest of the folks working
and living in the city carved a culture, a way of life, and
a heritage on Butte Hill—repre[...]

ore, in the cradle of the Northern Rockies. Mining
copper, even from ri[...]fate ofButte as the
community embraced the nature of copper and became

intertwined with world markets:

Western miners who are in the habit of
mining only for gold and silver have been
accusto[...]commercial metal,
and the world will have no more of it than it

can use}

Copper was a commercial met[...]ngly important both to industry and to daily life
of people all over the industrial world as they adop[...]al—intensive operations. The backs

(and lungs) of immigrants offered the labor for mining

the copper, but the gallus frames that lifted the ore
out of the earth were the backbone of the extraction
process.

As Butte rapidly develop[...], the community reflected the nature
and routine of the work in the underground mines.
The mines ran[...]hutdowns caused by a decrease in the
market price of copper, by strikes or accidents, or by
the need to conduct maintenance. The vital parts of
the city, including its bars and restaurants, rem[...]blishment in Butte entailed breaking the lock out
of the front door—there was no need for the door
ever to be locked if the bar never closed. In periods of
peak production, three shifts a day of men “went down”
the shafts into the mines and returned to the surface
coming ofof my

work with Joe, John,John T., and Tommy; of all the
stories the people of Butte shared with me; and of the
central practical and enduring symbolic importance

of the gallus frames as they stood sentry over both

the production of copper and the crafting of life on
Butte Hill. Significantly, and silently,[...]tell, many still stand. I hope to
share something of what was passed to me about how
gallus frames worked, about the experience of working
with them, about the men who did the work, and about
why they still punctuate the landscape of the Richest
Hill on Earth, the Mining City, Butte[...]s honestly.

He F mme

The sole practical purpose of the gallus frame was
to provide leverage for pulling and lowering loads into
and out of the underground mine. Concrete footings
anchored[...]legs bolted
to the footings rose from the corners ofof the frames varied as did the material used in

their construction. Massive lengths of wood formed the
earlier and smaller frames. Large[...]ger solid steel “1” beam frames replaced
some of the latticework structures.The larger steel frame[...]frame was essentially a massive pulley
consisting of the frame holding a set of wheels at the
top, each strung with a cable, desi[...]ed to lower and raise men and material in and
out of the mine. Two “main” hoist cables each passed[...]en—eighths. You
could change a cable in any one of the mines. But the
ones at the Con and the Kelly were the longest because
the Con was so deep.” One end of the cable wound
around the massive drum of the hoist housed in the
“engine room,” which[...]he situation) that were
attached to the other end of the cable.The cage, used
to haul men and m[...]

In multiple ways, the gallus frame dep[...]ach cable. The cables
strung over the main wheels of the gallus frame
each traveled through corresponding, side—by—side
compartments of the shaft. They wound around
separate but paralle[...]formed a large
cylinder split in half. The halves of the cylinder could
rotate independent of each other, but, in normal
operating mode, the cylinder rotated as a unit in
either direction. On one half of the cylinder, the
cable was wound over the top; o[...]s wrapped in opposite
directions around the drums of the hoist,
and when both drums were engaged, the[...]ed up,
counterbalancing to some degree the weight
of each other. If the rotation of the hoist
drum reversed, so did the direction of each cable. One
engineer explained the counterbalance principle of the
hoist: “When the rope on one drum would com[...]Re
Riebext Hill on Earth: An Etbnagrapbie Account of
Inalmtrial Capitalixm, Religion, 8 Communi[...]

in a lot of guys up there.

The weight of the empty skip, and the cable
itself, traveling down the shaft aided the hoist with the
weight of the loaded skip coming to the surface. During
nor[...]ne direction or the other. Any
prolonged stoppage of the wheels caused concern.

A third, smaller whee[...]eeded in
the mine during the shift. Finally, some of the deeper
mines, such as the Mountain Consolidat[...]o
the 4400. But then they had another on the
4000 of the Con, they had a hoist, an engine
room and eve[...]ne . . . and then the rock from the
bottom levels of the mine were hoisted up

to that.

Steel[...]

the length of the shaft. The shoes were short, three—sided
sq[...]with the two protruding sides hugging
either side of the hardwood guides (about six by eight
inches times the length of the shaft) standing vertically
on the walls of the shaft compartments. The sides of the
cages were also equipped with mechanisms call[...]open by the tension on the cable from
the weight of the cage or skip. In the event of a loss of
tension, or “slack,” in the cable—for example, if the cable
broke—the dogs quickly closed and[...]place, preventing it from
plunging to the bottom ofof the day hauling rock. For lowering and
raising me[...]r,” took only about five minutes. At the
start of a shift, the cages lowered the new workers to
the[...]cages hung
from one cable, and six men, two rows of three front to
back, squeezed in each cage when t[...]ite the process when raising the shift at the end of
the day. Lowering the shift, twenty—four men at[...]lowest level and worked its way up.

For the bulk of the day, the men underground
loaded the skip with[...]built adjacent to the gallus frames. Near the end
of the shift, the skips again were swapped for the c[...]. At
changeover, the cages were run to the bottom of both
compartments to “sweep” the shaft. Sweeping cleared
the shaft of any chunks of ore that may have lodged in
the shaft after falling from the skips during the daylong

process of hoisting ore.

Me People

The primary task of underground mining was
to extract ore from the gr[...]y a gallus
frame. Despite the often cited triumph of technology
in industrial production, people were central in the
process. In the case of the gallus frame, men at both
ends of the machine controlled the cables through a
challenging and complicated coordination of efforts.
On the surface, the hoisting engi[...]

On the other end of the cable, men underground,
usually designated as[...]a particular
pattern. Based on his interpretation of the bell code, the
engineer moved the hoist, rais[...]engineer who remembered pulling ore from a
number of mines, described the code for hoisting ore:
“Wh[...]ou want,
and you come up with it.”

The process of moving men and ore tested
patience, resolve, and[...]mining in general entailed a significant
amount of trust, but this was nowhere more apparent
than in[...]cables
were marked and the engineers had the aid ofof training and experience,

to control the cages an[...]ay in and day out. Frank
described the challenges ofof that on there, that damn hoist could barely take[...]and
cages, the engineer also regulated the speed of the cable.
The engineer moved the skips at[...]

The company kept a “tally” of how many skips
came to the surface each day, whic[...]lled a “stool
pigeon,” tracked every movement of the hoist through
the day and counted the dumpings ofof rock in
that skip.”

Because the engineer never[...]ropriate distance to the surface. Once to the top
of the mine, the skips dumped automatically into the[...]who continually kept in mind the depth and speed
of his skips, made an error. It was not unheard offo[...]l the skip, or even the cages, right
over the top of the gallus frame. “They call that “hitting
the wheel,” Frank remembered. “On the end of that
rope, that’s a lot of weight, the weight of the loaded
skip and the cable itself. If that ever got away from you,
you could never stop it. . . . A lot of guys hit the wheel.
My dad used to say, “Hell,[...]lenging
because men’s lives, rather than a load of ore, hung at
the end of the cable. The cages were hung two, four,[...]

Ray described in detail a typical process of lowering the
shift. The station tender got on the[...]ntury.

Pbotogmpber unknown. Courtexy War/d Mmeum of Mining,
Bufle ( WMM1025)

precautions so the ca[...]shift, and,
as Ray explained, one time the safety officers, or the
Safety First crew, “threw the ma[...][laughs].

As this story reflects, the pressures of time and
efficiency expectations provided, or ne[...]gineers exercised their
freedom to vary the speed of the cages. As one miner
explained, some engineers would “really give you a ride.”

Ray, of course, said (chuckling) that he never did that

Each trip down the shaft also carried the
possibility of “going into the woods,” a phrase referring
to a wreck in the shaft. In the case of a wreck, the cage
became lodged or tangled in the[...]known as the “woods.” On
one occasion, a crew of craftsmen, traveling down the
mines to fi[...]

Joe recalled his experience of heading down
the shaft at the Mountain Consolidat[...]xplained how his dad

taught him the ins and outs of mining and described
what happened when, after collecting his first paycheck,
his dad took him to one of the numerous bars in Butte.
As they “bellied up[...]’t so bad,”
when, in fact, he was very scared of his first ride in the
cage. One of the least understood, if not one ofthe
potentially most destructive, of these expressions of
masculinity was the thorough integration of drinking
into Butte life along with the central r[...]neighborhoods.The workers on the Hill spent
much of their life in dangerous manual labor making
a liv[...]men until they gathered, on the way
home, at one of the numerous neighborhood drinking
establishments[...]their lunch
“buckets” on the bar, buy a shot of whiskey and a beer
for a dime, and rehash[...]

One responsibility of the ropemen involved
getting the wrecks out of “the woods.” In each engine
room, a visible sign reminded engineers that, in the
case of “slack cable in the shaft, shut down and call
t[...]ing strict
union proscriptions governing the type of work each
craftsman could do, they worked in “composite crews”
consisting of two ironworkers, two boilermakers, and

a machini[...]came down
that night, and [chuckles], the foreman of
the mine come over to our boss and he said,
“do[...]was only one flagpole.”

John T. was also part of the crew mentioned

above that went into t[...]

to repa[...]ent to pick up the food was not
Catholic.the rest of us damn near killed him!

They worked all day tha[...]the afternoon without eating.

With the strength of their steel and a design to
withstand decades of use, gallus frames carried a sense
of permanence, and some have indeed endured decades
of winters in Butte. However, ropemen knew well the

capricious nature of mining and disassembled and

moved many fr[...]

In the era when the community of Butte beat

to the rhythm of the underground mines, the daily

cadence set by the wheels and whistles and work of
the gallus frames provided residents with a sense of
comfort, routine, security, and meaning. The whis[...]e room blew at regular intervals, marking
the end of the shifts.The wheels turned around the
clock, lo[...]ing bins on surface.They
churned out the material of the sometimes grueling
work of mining and of labor’s tenuous relationship
with the company.[...]ighborhoods
where people lived. In the early days of Butte, before
automobiles, people lived in the shadow ofof irony, after the constricting snake. Some in Butt[...]ke, at times, coiled more tightly
around the body of a miner than around any prey in
the Amazon[...]

While the headframes provided only one of
the images that dominated social life in Butte, Butte’s
life oriented around the gallus frames because of the
centrality of copper mining. Lit with lights at night,
they sho[...]llus frames could
one make passage from the world of the sun to access
the vast underground labyrinth of danger, riches,
camaraderie, and mystique. Underground was a man’s
world, an adult world, a world of labor. It was also,
as nearly all who ever took t[...]a shift as a “greenhorn” will attest, a world of
humility, albeit punctuated with a Butte—sized dose of
bravado.

The gallus frames signaled both prosperity
and the enduring struggle of life for the working
community. If the wheels ato[...]mes
turned, life was in order—at least in terms of how
order was established in Butte. Any time the[...]ed only for accidents, work stoppages,
or the end of an era. Each case threw the rhythm and

Facing Pa[...]1917. Photographer unknown. Courtexy War/d Mmeum of
Mining, Butte.

balance of the community out oforder and often led
to human[...]t ones that
left, I always remember a good friend of mine
went by in his truck and, he called me on th[...]t necessarily “better” in the underground era of
Butte, but many who remember the old order have a

story to tellflnd they are fond of telling stories. The

In 1986, Montana Resources took over the
mining properties from ARCO and sold some of the
underground mines, including the gallus frame[...]working, in another sense,
for future generations of Butte residents as well as
for those interested i[...]s any chance he
gets—not just for the enjoyment of telling them but
also because they represent a community, a generation,
and a way of life. He thinks that we need to remember
from whe[...]hen I got on that
committee and we got the people of Butte
behind us. And we got the governor and

the[...]nt, if not
profound, presence in Butte.The relics of the history
of industrial copper production still have a sense of
permanence, and they preserve something of the

essence of the community. My uncle continued:

They salvaged that whole shop out of there, Note: The Ray Calkins Memorial Research Fe[...]ion

1H t CS6 mlnCS. IS IS W at ma 8 utte, t C

_ of the word in Butte. The word is pronounced “gall[...]_ ll f t b t 2 Unnamed miner, “The Copper Mines of Butte, Montana—

P ace 6 1 . Crap Iron S[...]

Dale Martin

In the fall of 1914., another day begins in Anaconda,
Montana. T[...]utte hill to nearly pure copper, and on a
variety of supporting activities, including a railway.

Grea[...],
is ready consuming the unprecedented quantities ofof the roundhouse and
repair shops, the switchyards and industrial spurs, and

the general offices. A part of the Anaconda Copper

Mining Company (ACM), the BA[...]o hauls away the
copper anodes and other products of the smelter. In
smaller quantities, it also carri[...]d Butte as well as
the railway junction community of Rocker, three miles
west of Butte, and track maintenance bases along the
line[...]o the smelter. Across town, on the
northwest edge of Anaconda, are the railways primary

facilities fo[...]ves and cars}

77.22 Shops

The functional layout of structures, equipment, and
activities at the BA8LP’s West Anaconda shops resembles
that of thousands of railway operating terminals around
the wor[...]

more than one hundred work[...]Spokane, Washington.

The BA8LP’s shops consist of four large buildings,
many smaller buildings and structures, a dense array
of tracks, and many locomotives, cars, and track—[...]aiting repair or their next
service.3

The center of visible activity is the brick and wood
roundhouse, a semicircular (five eighths of a circle)
building internally divided into twenty[...]idge that
spins on a center bearing in the middle of a circular pit.
In the roundhouse stalls, locomot[...]Sboverx, Butte &Anaconda Revisited: An

Overview of Early—day Mining and Smelting in Montana (Bafl[...]nd Geology, 1991). Uxed bypermixxion.

north half of the brick machine shop building, with its
distinctive roof monitors, just west of the roundhouse.
In the south half, workers use va[...]the brick boiler and blacksmith
shop, just south of the machine shop, workers maintain
the steam loco[...]electric power.
Boilermakers tend to the demands of the firebox and
boiler, in which an inch or less of steel separates fire and
exhaust from boiling wa[...]cars.

The people who repair the railcars do much of
their work outdoors, tending to the brakes, wheel[...]re—fighting hose cart, with five hundred feet of hose.

Most recently, in May 2007, a Florida—based
owner of railway short lines, Patriot Rail Corporation,
pu[...]press, a seasonal tourist
train that offers views of, among other sights, miles
of “impacted soils” along Silver Bow Creek. Through
decades of changes, the roundhouse, repair shops, and
many a[...], and
they now house Patriot Rail’s maintenance of its twelve
locomotives and other rolling stock.“

Most of the hundreds of railway shops that
existed in the United States b[...]tures and activities. This loss is due
to decades ofof some railroads,

and to contemporary rail[...]

Anaconda is the site of a rare example of a surviving,
working, largely unaltered railway s[...]splayed in the Anselmo
mine yard on the west side of Butte. Repainted and
paired with an auxiliary tra[...]er, the former railway switchyard town

just west of Butte, remains active in the transportation

econ[...]s a building just
across the street, to the south of the BA&.P roundhouse
and shops. The large brick streetcar barn was the last
major remnant of the Anaconda’s street railway system.
Until the[...]milling continues in Butte.
Locomotives and cars of the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific
Railway, maintaine[...](Milwaukee, WI: Kalmbach, I974),
206.

Histories of the BA&P include
Charles V. Mutschler, Wired/or[...]e Good,”
Train; 23 (July I963): I6—28.

A map of the shops is in Shovers
et al., Butte andAnatonda[...]Also useful are the Sanborn
fire insurance maps of Anaconda,

available online, in black and white

only, without the color coding of
building materials.

Mutschler, W ired for[...]

“Report of Investigation of Sanitary
Conditiom in Mines, and of the Condition;
Under Which the Miners Live in Sil[...]ciety board member, E. E. MacGilvra, took receipt
of a photograph album, described in the accompanying
letter as: “a typical, turn of the century, common black
photograph album (11" X 15" size). It contains 86 pages of
text and 66 pages of photographs (one or two per page)”
In early twe[...]Pica type, its flimsy title page
read: “Report of Investigation of Sanitary Conditions in
Mines, and of the Conditions Under Which the Miners
Live in Sil[...]particular,
have been utilized by a wide variety of researchers.
Sometimes the most precious treasure[...]undertaken to determine, if possible, the source

of the high death rate form Tuberculosis in Silver[...]y Street (Dago
Village).

Bow County.” The text of the typewritten report is
now digitized and onlin[...]entdm.oclc.org/u?/
p267301coll2,776. A case study of Progressive Era
public health methodology, the report describes and

quantifies a variety of factors believed to influence

a population of 50,000 people. Examining a wide
variety of the built environment, sections of the report
and accompanying photographs documente[...]ace, i.e. built environment, combined with a
lack of education, were responsible for concentrations of
tuberculosis in specific sections of the city.

Although the report’s intent was to[...]ulness extends well
beyond. One remarkable aspect of the photographs is
that their prospect is not the[...]as secondary neighborhoods. Indeed,
a quick scan of early twentieth—century Butte city
directory ad[...]dump and crematory by 1906 for the

incineration of dead dogs and other animals, the

facilities were[...]e
look to photographs as we look to other sources of
information about the past—letters, diaries, ne[...]ilt environment in this
electronic reconstruction of the album.The captions
under the photograp[...]

Pboz‘o No 86‘ Sbo'wx back yard of 1100 Block on Ean‘ Broadway X Mow; [be o[...]

Pboz‘o Na 94‘ Rear of145 Em! LaP/m‘z‘e Szfl Greg! deal offi/z‘b around, [My plate ix imanitmy

Pboz‘o Na 99‘ Anotber view of
20 ONei/ Sireez‘, Center‘vi/la

Pboz‘o Na 123‘ Rear of Wax! LaP/m‘z‘e Sireez‘, Center‘vi/la

Russians; the[...]ks, the Polacks, the Italians, the

Germans . . . of the varied occupations, as many in number

as the[...]caveats in mind, I believe “Anaconda” is one of
the best—and most interesting—literary portraits of the

built environment ofa once mighty industrial[...]for
the clerk to go through the familiar routine of making
out a time card, he continued grumbling to[...]Crumbling ever since the
clerk in the employment office downtown had given
him a work card for the S[...]the bar he’d had
built as an exact reproduction of the Hoffman House

in New York. The Stack![...]

processes. He wasn’t concerne[...]

It was true that precautions had been taken to
eliminate the danger of electrocution and that men
were rarely killed. Bu[...]n
something had gone wrong. He remembered stories
of the smell of burning flesh, of the blue hole where
the juice had passed through a man’s feet on out of
his body, of rigid forms toppling from the cat walk.
He realiz[...]d tawdry
after the violent, threatening spectacle of the hot
metal.

It was the same with dumpi[...]

As h[...]ore from the Butte mines, he
stopped on a landing of the stairway to “take five” and
look back. B[...]rpose. They were built
that way to take advantage of gravity. Raw ore was
dumped in at the top and wan[...]fierent processes,
to the smelters at the bottom of the hill. Here the
treated ore was fused and turn[...]ts
iron claws a big ore car, fresh from the mines of Butte.
He saw it pick it up and turn it up[...]

Inside the roasters the furnaces w[...]calcine
to the smelting departments at the bottom of the
mountain.

His eyes dwelt on the smelters with a mixture of
respect and hatred.The blackened buildings with their
giant stacks looked like the charred remains of a forest
fire. Down there was the hot metal; wit[...]to the reverberatory furnaces along with

charges of dust and unroasted concentrates. He could

hear the roar of the gas used for fuel. From the door ofof molten copper when they
tapped the furnaces, and[...]up the
Hill towards the Big Stack. Nearly a mile of smaller
flues from the various furnaces were con[...]t up and up and up, overpoweringly. He found the

office and gave his time card to the boss.

“Go o[...]will tell you what to do.”

He entered the door of the shack, a tiny one—
room affair, and found a fellow stretched on a bench,
reading a copy of Water}: Story. It was Mickey
O’Brien, an old fr[...]t guy we saw down town that
looked as if the side of his face was eaten offby

cancer?”

“Yeah?”[...]went to a cupboard from where he took
a big roll of cheesecloth, clothes and other gear. “We’re
d[...]w you how to
wrap up.”

He tore offa large hunk of cheesecloth and
wrapped it around the rust[...]

Arabs and members of the Foreign Legion
wear on the desert. He took another piece

of cloth and wrapped it around the rustler’s
face[...]ck and a smaller piece was
placed over the bridge of the nose, connecting
the mask and cap so that only the eyes peered
out.

The rustler now pulled on a pair of
rubber boots that reached his knees. Then he
got into a pair of woolen coveralls that hung
to his ankles, and but[...]eyes, nose and mouth.

Lastly, he drew on a pair of gauntlet
gloves and over them a pair of canvas sleeves
that reached from his wrists to a[...]is elbows. When he had finished dressing
no part of him was exposed. Mickey, while
dressing li[...]

“When you pull the lever,” Mickey[...]Mickey added.

“I seen cars standing half full of water when it’s been
rainin’. And I seen that[...]he
silence interspersed with the soft phut—phut of the
dropping dust was frightening. He wish[...]

It’s fitting that Reynolds, in his effort to detail the
workings of the Anaconda Reduction Works—more
commonly call[...]y working
in the Stack. Whether you’re a native of Anaconda or
have only passed it driving down 1—90, the Stack likely

looms large in your memory of the town. Yet, while
folks with widely divergent[...]oot landmark, which is the
single remaining piece of the once massive Anaconda
Reduction Works, is the last vestige of an industrial
past that saw thousands of locals employed in good
jobs. The continuing presence of the Stack in Anaconda,
after the rest of the Reduction Works was torn down
following the p[...]he early 19805, prompts,
for this group, memories of better times, of America’s
industrial might, and of the vibrant immigrant culture
that once character[...]sudden job loss, and corporations’ abandonment
of small—town America.4 A third cohort, made up of the
men and the few women that worked at the Anac[...]believe such an
approach can reveal another layer of how the built

environment shapes our live[...]

The contrast between the built environment of the
downtown employment office and that of the smelter
is perhaps not as obvious as that between the worlds of
labor and leisure. Yet, in regard to the human geography
of the smelter both before and during World War II, the
white—collar labor that characterized the employment
ofof
context in relation to the employment office. The desire
to claim status over bosses emer[...]e
white—collar men who worked in the employment office
and other supervisory sites had power to influence the
material realities of smeltermen’s daily lives. Recall the
protagonis[...]g]rumbling ever since the clerk
in the employment office downtown had given him
a work card for the S[...]roughout the U.S. labor movement
in the last half of the 18005 and the first half of the
Igoos—cherished a sense of themselves as “independent”
working men who s[...], when working—class men perceived the
exercise of power by white—collar men as unfair, they
react[...]control and by their own superiority
in the realm of masculinity. Steve Meyer’s study of the

auto factories, for example, shows that this effort could

had a clear spat[...]ty did not specifically reference

the geography of the plant, insiders still saw the

built environment of the plant as compartmentalized
along these lines.[...]onda’s bars (a worker space) and the
employment office (a bosses’ space) show, even outside
the facility. Many of the battles between employees
and employers were[...]aphor in describing these as fights over control of
the “shopfloor.” In a plant the size of the Anaconda
Reduction Works, there were far more[...]“shopfloors” where production occurred. Each of these
places witnessed interactions that helped define the
meaning of the surrounding built environment for
insiders.[...]ort story does not mention it, any
smelter worker of the time would have encountered a

managem[...]

When Reynolds submitted “Anaconda” to
the editor of Men at Work in the middle of1941, the
timekeeper at his window and the watchma[...]te symbolized administrative oversight and a form of
white—collar masculinity that drew status throu[...]s regarding wartime labor. As early as the
summer of 194.2, production workers at all three of
the ACM’s major Montana copper facilities exhib[...]Although workers were never keen about the lack
of trust implied by the use of watchmen, prior to World
War II, management had traditionally appointed “old
employees of the plant” to these security positions as a
rew[...]ir service on production jobs. In the first
year of the war, however, with government demands
for gre[...]he watchmen force
grew and came to be constituted of a mix of younger
and older workers.” Initially, it seeme[...]d homefront guards.‘5 In addition, the
presence of older men amid the watchmen diminished
the apparent abilities and masculine status of these
security forces. Furthermore, once early fears of a
Japanese invasion subsided, the contribution of those
forces to the war effort appeared qu[...]

Reynold[...]” very much fits within the
New Deal tradition of contemplating the industrial
process, as indicate[...]bars called grizzlies. He could hear the crashing
of rocks, too big to pass through the bars. He could[...]the
machines dominate the man. However, like much of the

proletarian fiction of the era, “Anaconda” also continues

His eyes dwelt on the smelters with a
mixture of respect and hatred. The blackened
buildings with their giant stacks looked like
the charred remains of a forest fire. Down
there was the hot metal; with[...]nto the reverberatory furnaces
along with charges of dust and unroasted
concentrates. He could hear the roar of the
gas used for fuel. From the door of each
furnace came a wild red glow like the blood-

shot eye ofa Cyclops.

For the author, the “mixture ofof workers and also reinforce the lack of predictability
regarding the jobs that smeltermen[...]treaters and dumping flue
cust share the traits of danger and dirt, as the last third
of the story shows, with working the hot metal. For
t1e protagonist, a lifelong Anacondan and veteran of
several stints in the smelter, the treaters recall “stories
of the smell of burning flesh, of the blue hole where
t1e juice had passed through a man’s feet on out of his
body, of rigid forms toppling from the cat walk.” Yet,
t[...]d tawdry after the violent,
t1reatening spectacle of the hot metal.”
If the treaters come up wanting[...]dumping flue dust
was seemingly even less worthy of masculine status.
It “didn’t bring violent death, but there was always
t1e chance of getting burned.” Apparently worse than

burns w[...]clearly
ties masculine status to the particulars of this job, the

narrator remarks: “There[...]

The “tawdry” danger associated with the built
environment of the treaters and the “humiliating” sores
and[...]s.”
However, as I implied earlier, the profile of the workers
first associated with the Stack could have also been the
source of the places low status. Since the ACM first
began employing large numbers of workers at the end
of the nineteenth century, Anglo and Irish workers i[...]idered,
by the pseudo—scientific race theories of the day, as
not fully white. Thus, in Butte, Serb[...]nda, a similar process occurred. The
most obvious example involved the small number of
black workers at the smelter. African Americans,[...]melter, but in so doing
they reinforced how areas of the smelter gained the
reputation, often through[...]cific status.

Surprisingly, the racial heritage of Edward
Reynolds and his family provides one of the best
windows onto the arbitrary operation of race in
Anaconda. Both of Reynolds’s parents held prominent
places in the[...]ty years and
served for a period as the President of the Anaconda
Smelterman’s Union. Reynold[...]

and charming personality the friendship of all with
whom she came in contact.” Marie Reyno[...]Roxborough, and although her Montana
Certificate of Death listed her as “White,” her family
appea[...]black.
Her sister Cornelia was a prominent member of the
“Sisters of the Mysterious Ten . . . A Negro Order”
based i[...]states across the
U.S. during the first decades of the twentieth century,
this made Edward and his s[...]so
warmly while they marginalized other families of color
remains a mystery, but there is no question[...]ommunity, they influenced
the spatial dimensions of identity formation in complex
and even contradict[...]lds family story obviously underscores

the power of local context, but to buttress my argument
here l[...]ns change dramatically.
In this case, and in that of ethnic workers and black
workers, context again h[...]sect.

I want to conclude by raising the question of the
other, perhaps overlooked, ways that space, place, and
time influence the meaning of built environments for
particular audiences.22 Us[...]for instance, an awareness by
Anacondans not just of their immediate surroundings
and current context but also of an expansive geography
and deeper history. The protagonist alludes to both
aspects of this broader perspective when he notes that
he wa[...]the bar he’d had built as an exact reproduction
of the Hoffman House in New York.”The histo[...]

We should be equally unsurprised about
the geographic side of the cosmopolitan nature, to
paraphrase Mark Twain’s evaluation, of these workers.24
If we judge by the protagonist,[...]ntioned New York and owned plants in every
region of the United States as well as overseas in places
like Chile. The wide—ranging locals of the International
Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers also
connected An[...]e world. Perhaps most importantly,

the residents of these three towns felt a keen historical
and spat[...]to their immigrant homeland

as well as to those of their friends—whether it was
Ireland, England,[...]Serbia, Croatia,
Finland, Mexico, Lebanon, or any of the other nations
that sent workers to Montana’[...]many other approaches we
could take to the nexus of issues raised by reading
“Anaconda” with land[...]th an effort to understand the
complex topography of meaning that overlays the built
environment of any work site, I believe that weighing
the influence of historical and spatial affiliations like
those n[...]rovides a productive framework for
any evaluation of how people experience the landscape

and built en[...]ds ofU.S.

Work Projects Administration,

Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C. Reynolds submitted the[...]'s Work.”That
story is available in the Library of
Congress holdings. It, along with his
“s[...]

Dominated Our Lives,"Montana 'Ibe
Magazine of Wejtern I-Iijtory (Spring
1988): 40—57. The Sta[...]ture in
Montana} Smelter City (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2001);
Donald MacMillan, Smoke Wa[...]n, 1997).

There were, and are, different

levels of outsiderness, of course.

While the smelter was still in
operation[...]not live in
Anaconda, also had a different sense
of the place, whereas white—collar
tourists who sa[...]in oral histories
ofAnaconda and Butte. See, for
example, OH 484, Perle Watters,
interviewed by Laurie Mer[...]an Cigar Factoriex, 190071919
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1987); Ruth Milkman, Gender at
Work: 'Ibe Dynamics of]ol7 Segregation
by Sex during World WarII (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, I987);
Mary Blewett, “Manhood and the
Market: The Politics of Gender and
Class among the Textile Workers

of Fall River, Massachusetts,
I870—I880,” in Lab[...]go’i Patkingbouiei, 1904754
(Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, I997). My interest in and
understanding of space and place
and its relationship to subjectiv[...]oor leisure for workers, see

Lisa Fine, He Story ofof Illinois Press, I997).
On the material and psychological
privileges of masculinity, see Simone
de Beauvoir, Setond Sex ([...]keri’ Control
inAmerita: Studiei in tbe Hiitory of
Work, Tetbnology, andLabor Struggle;
(New York: C[...]: The Aggressive and
Confrontational Shop Culture of
US. Auto Workers during World
War II,”]ournal of Sotial Hiitory 36,
no. I (Fall 2002): I25-47.

Meyer, “Rough Manhood.” One
example of such a confrontation
occurred on May I6, I[...]

watch force, like the rest of the

copper production facilities in the
area, th[...]and watchmen, whom the military
deputized as part of its Civilian
Auxiliary Military Police force. Later
in the war, the status of the special
watchmen became even further
eroded,[...]to
substantially trim the watch force
“in view of the present acute labor
shortage,” indicating that their work
was now clearly less valued than that
of the men on the production lines.
Just a few month[...]positions with their
masculine pride intact. All of the
watchmen had maintained their
seniority in th[...], upon
their dismissal from the watch force,
each of the men received a letter of
commendation. But it is diflficult to
tell whet[...]ly
as they were forced to give up

such trappings of masculinity as
“riot guns,” military designations,
and “the wearing of arm bands
denoting that they are members

of the Auxiliary Military Police.”
Memorand[...]

On the question of home front

versus frontline soldiering, see 2°
chapter 7 of my forthcoming study
(under contract with University of
Chicago Press) ofMontana's copper
communities dur[...]Marie R. Reynolds,”
Certificate ofDeath, State of
Montana Bureau of Vital Statistics,
June 29, I929; “Anaconda Woma[...]ntb,
T-we/ftb, 77)irteentb, and Fourteentb
Cenxux of tbe United Statex, feferon
County, Kentutky, Orle[...]ry oftbe United
Brotberx ofFriendxbip and Sixterx of
tbe Myxterioux Ten (Louisville, KY:
Bradley and G[...]ritan
Mining To-wn, 187571925 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, I989);
ch. I and ch. 5 of my book in

progress; Pat Kearney, Butte Voitex:

There are, of course, other ways
this story highlights the buil[...]the timekeeper's window

to the Stack reminds us of how
intimately landscape shapes

built environmen[...]mally take a

bus.The protagonist's experience 23
of the site shifts as he climbs up

the road: “The[...]pose. They were built that

way to take advantage of gravity."

This description suggests that

something as mundane as the pitch

of the ground shapes the plant's

defining features and its reptilian

representation in the eyes of its
workers.

Emmons, Butte Irijb; Murphy,
Mining[...]im an

tbe Nartbern Frontier (Seattle:
University of Washington Press,
1981).

George Everett ([...]

of the Butte commercial district gave way to a more
substantial, permanent architecture of stone and brick.
The sense of permanence reflected in the masonry banks,
retai[...]he new multifamily residences
along the perimeter of the Central Business District.
The two—story, b[...]olution to a serious housing
shortage at the turn of the century and expressed a
building form transla[...]n
other industrial cities during the last decades of the
nineteenth century. During the 1870s and 1880[...]migrants crowded into the eastern
seaboard cities of New York and Boston, where they
found work in fac[...]ly, the only
available housing for these millions of new Americans
was the tenement, a dwelling divide[...]ions in large
American cities and the development of an interurban
transportation system spawned the creation of suburban
residential areas just outside th[...]

Bottom: Figure 2. Anotber example of a brick
duplex plan promoted by William Raofloro[...]were provided by housing speculators in
the form of three—decker wooden flats
and two—story bric[...]elements from the
more elaborate Victorian homes of the
period, and they provided the tenant
with an aura of upward mobility as well
as the amenities of more space, light, air,
and a reprieve from the claustrophobic
atmosphere of the inner city.

Ironically, the industrializatio[...]in the city also contributed to the
accouterments of suburban life: modern
plumbing features, s[...]

Ac[...]ere
shaped by several factors, including the size of lots, the
high price of land close to the factories and streetcar
lines, the popular architectural styles of the day, and the
ideas of conservative entrepreneurs reluctant to make
risk[...], and skilled artisans, tended to repeat
a couple of successful styles. In 1916,]ohn Ihler, field
secretary of the National Housing Association, studied
housing[...]s. The deep, narrow floorplan

matched the shape of the lots, and the parlor and kitchen

were located along one side of the duplex, with the two
bedrooms along the other[...]rs would eventually influence the style and
form of multifamily dwellings in Butte.“

Bufle’s Tr[...]sing purpose: to unearth
the wealth in the depths of the hill.7

Although this description of Butte was written
in 194.9, it also accurately de[...]ask Butte’s industrial character. The trappings
of industrialism appeared in Butte with the advent
of silver mining in the 1870s and the arrival of the

railroad in 1881. With the railroad c[...]

building materials, the promise of capital investment,
and the cultural baggage containing the memory of an
eastern urban landscape—all of which when combined
would create a modern metropolis at the foot of the
Continental Divide.

By 1883, the expansion of the copper mining
industry caused a great demand for skilled and
unskilled wage laborers. Large numbers of newly
arrived immigrants from Ireland and Cornwal[...]ses
and boardinghouses on the north and east side of the
Central Business District, within walking distance
of the mines. The largest boardinghouse, the Mullin[...]Centerville (an unincorporated
neighborhood north of the Central Business District
along Main S[...]

The rapid expansion of copper mining and ore

in trade, domestic, and personal service, professional

jobs, public service, and a large clerical contingent.
Coincident with the exponential growth of the mining
in Butte came a tremendous demand for goods and
services, and those employed in this facet of the
economy also needed housing. This growing middle—
class group of small business owners, retail clerks,
secretaries[...]aftspeople
sought housing within walking distance of work,
especially dwellings that oHered the modern amenities
of electric lights, running water, and central heat.[...]lexes and
fourplexes close to the service centers of the local
economy (an area bounded on the west by[...]t (see figure 6).The
most distinguishing feature of this form remained the
bay, projecting the full height of the building on either
side of the entry, and its flat roof with Victori[...]

A slight variation of that form comes with
a double bay—fronted flat,[...]Occasionally, a porch, extending the
full height of the building, framed the entry. The
floor[...]

adjacent to a series of connected rooms.
This form appears most predominantly

south of the Central Business District,

an area occupied[...]le qwanerS, Builders, and
Tenants

An examination of the Butte city
directories and U.S. census record[...]ho
built, owned, and lived in the growing
numbers of duplexes and fourplexes
built during Butte’s tr[...]Galena Street (600—900)
within walking distance of the business
district. Between 1906 and 1913, nin[...], a contractor (73 6—746 West
Galena). Only one of these men, Plumley,

The list of residents over time
included car salesmen, miners, a reporter,
a clerk of the district court, a bank
cashier, and Butte’s[...]andsome
duplex at 704 West Galena during a
period of unusual labor unrest in Butte
(see figure 17). A[...]this
complex was rented by Frank Bigelow,
editor of the labor newspaper, the Free
Lame. The largest of the buildings
at 910—916 West Galena (forty—f[...]nd for middle—
class housing during this period of
booming copper production made

construction of these multifamily

Carpenters and buildin[...]ted the Butte

brick duplexes and fourplexes. For example, Charles

the city’s emergence as a copper mining center, and
established an office with Thomas Jeffries and Fred
Gutelius at 25[...]9 and during
the next twenty years built a number of brick walkup
fourplexes south of Park Street on West Silver
Street (64.2—64.4. W[...]ho lived at 621 South Idaho, constructed
a number of porch—fronted flats in an effort to
“provide[...]nd
apartments.”

The question remains, however, of where these
familiar Butte building forms came from. Some are
reminiscent of brick duplexes and fourplexes found in
published plan books from the first several decades of
the twentieth century. William A. Radford, a Chicago
architect and co—owner of the Radford Millworks in

Oshkosh, Wisconsin, published a collection of more
than three hundred designs for houses, bunga[...]dford’r Portfolio ofPlom. Radford offered a
set of working blueprints for $10, guiding the builder
through every detail of these wooden and brick designs.
In the introducti[...]rationale for
investing in a flat: “The trend of modern investments
is toward income property It h[...]exterior design elements and interior
floorplans of these two Radford brick flats can be seen
in several of the Butte duplexes. Both the Butte flats
and the[...]ly
one thousand square feet at a constructed cost of between
$4,000 and $5,000 (see figure 19). 7773 HousingBook—a
book of floorplans for apartments for one, two, four, six,
and nine families, published by William P. Comstock of
New York in 1919—depicts a fourplex from Bridge[...]te
(see figures 20—21). While the exact origin of the fourplex
design in Butte remains a mys[...]

extimuz‘ed e05! of$15, 000‘

Figure 21. A detailed floorplan of Comstock3 fourplex pictured in Fig. 20.

needed goods and services, which were provided by

thousands of clerks, managers, and professionals. At
the same time, thousands of women expanded their
occupational choices beyond[...]sing, and
domestic work into the commercial world of sales

and secretarial work. These battalions of middle—class
men and women demanded more modern[...]plex and fourplex met
their needs. The high value of land within the original
Butte townsite helped promote the development

of multifamily housing on the narrow city lots. The
proximity of these lots to the Central Business District
and t[...]walking or riding distance.“

In the mill towns of Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, ethnicity and occ[...]e,
but in Butte, a person’s nationality or line of work
rarely mattered. The neighborhoods where we[...]us
played a central role in defining the tenants of these
fourplexes on West Galena Street in 1910 and 1930. For
example, the fourplex at 738—746 West Galena in 1910
ho[...]paper, a clothing merchant,
the assistant manager of the electric light company, a
lawyer, and a depar[...]ng

in 1930 was home to a mine engineer, a School of Mines

Although the popularity of the duplex and
fourplex continued through the second decade of the
twentieth century, after 1906 apartmen[...]

With Butte’s dominance of the world copper
market in the 1890s, the newly formed city took on
the urban industrial character of eastern cities like
Providence and Pittsburgh. A convergence of mass—
produced building materials, appliances,[...]growing middle class familiar with the amenities
of life found east of the Mississippi River created a
cityscape unique[...]Butte looked nothing like its neighboring

cities of Missoula, Bozeman, and Helena, and the

Figure 24.11 reprexen[a[i‘ve example of [be elaineporeb—fronted

duplex, a form [ba[ ap[...]w York, 1949); Patricia Raub,

“Another Pattern of Urban Living:
Multifamily Housing in Providence,[...]90): 7—12.

Mary Murphy, “Report on a Survey

of Historic Architecture on Butte's

Statex, Vol IV, Population, 19[...]

Home Furnixbings in the Mining City of
Butte
Patty Dean

Note: A version of this article first appeared in Paci c

Nortb'wex[...]ion.

In the very early twentieth century, scores of Butte,
Montana, residents remade their old homes or created
new ones through the purchase of furniture and
household goods on credit from thei[...]department store. The buying habits and decisions
of some of the residents of this copper mining
city—designated a National H[...]ops, and the saloons.‘
Attracting large numbers of Irish, English, and Canadian
immigrants, Butte’[...], reaching 39,165 by 1910, with nearly 33 percent
of its population foreign—born whites. Close to 97 percent
of the mile—high city’s working population was m[...].
Few studies have peered into the domestic
lives of workers, but home was one of the very few
contexts where they could exert auto[...]To analyze with any certainty what the
interiors of Butte workers’ homes were like, however,

is to immediately encounter a problem of evidence or,

Butte} rapid population growtb a[...]Helena (PAc 98—57).

to be more precise, a lack of conventional historical
evidence. City directorie[...]edules may be
used to locate the street addresses of workers’ houses.
However, only some of these homes can be found
intact, or even extant, because of eminent domain and
the mid—twentieth—century[...]ic neighborhoods.

But stored within the archives of the Montana
Historical Society, in the records of the Hennessy
Company, which operated for n[...]

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Hennessy’s
was like oth[...]y’s resembled industrial expositions, with,
for example, demonstrations of lace making by visiting
young Irish women and an exhibit of Navajo rugs from

the Crystal Rock Reservation [s[...]tore.”
Frorn Harry C. Freeman, A Brieyr History of Butte, Montana, tbe
World 3 Greatest Mining Camp[...]Co., 1900).

The store also marketed “souvenirs of the Butte Mines,”
which included copper inkwell[...]oehorns.5

Butte residents were in the mainstream of
American commerce as a result of the city’s extensive
freight train servi[...]

Like other department stores of the era,

Hennessy’s ensured that customers knew of its stock

that expanded column—w[...]sements to
full—size pages. Clear illustrations of products and
eye—catching graphics and typeface[...]newspapers conveyed and cultivated the
“vision of the good life and paradise” to all potential
co[...]from the national furniture
manufacturing center of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The store also distributed the fashionable mission—
style furniture of the L. and J. G. Stickley Furniture
Company of Fayetteville, New York as well as dining
room and office furniture from the Johnson Chair
Company of Chicago.

The company found quick success in its[...]partment. In 1907—1908, an addition to
the rear of its main building extended the third floor
furni[...]ms “from Main Street
through to the further end of the new annex . . . a
depth ofof its “Easy—
Payment Plan” advertisements was[...]woman with
limited means . . . to the realization of a pleasant home
without paying [the] exorbitant c[...]s charge.”9 Over the next three years, hundreds
of Butte residents took advantage of the plan and
improved their home environments.

W[...]nnessy’s invitation? To
gather a representation of the customers, the author
selected eighty—eight credit customers through a
systematic random sampling of credit purchases
made from December 1909 through[...]mposition, and other information
on seventy—two of these credit customers. Additional
information on all eighty—eight of the customers
was gleaned from various editions of the Butte City
Direttory.

This combination of evidence from the Hennessy
ledgers, census data,[...]be anticipated, about 60 percent—fifty—three of the
sampled eighty—eight credit customers—held some
type of position in the city’s dominant copper mining

industry. Of these fifty—three, thirty—six were miners

This sampling ofofOf the seventy—one customers traceable in
census r[...]married men comprised an

overwhelming 73 percent of the selected credit

credit clientele indicated a[...]ly more prosperous than most Butte
residents. For example, 4.3 percent of the “Easy Payment
Plan” customers owned their[...]rcent
higher than for other Butte residents. Some ofof such communal living arrangements.

The ledgers’ significance lies in the detailed

picture they provide of the homes of Hennessy’s

The nineteenth—century concept of the home as
a physical and spiritual refuge from[...]into the twentieth
century. Within the four walls of home, a woman
or man could yield to the very human impulse of
self—expression and exert some semblance of control.
Social critics and reformers linked the morally minded
home to the continuance and vitality of an American
democracy.‘3

Writing for the natio[...]“ugliest town
on earth,” indicating its lack of suitable homes, a
consequence of its mining camp development and
mentality.” Thr[...]e departure from the old “mining camp’
status of the community with its large lodging and

boardin[...]ere. . . .
Today Butte is rapidly becoming a city of homes.”‘5

What were the first household items purchased
when lodgers left the hazards of the boardinghouse
and set up their own homes? Nearly 4.3 percent ofall of
the credit customers’ initial acquisitions were[...]ed
“unveiled at marriage as an emotional symbol of future
family happiness.” It was a common pract[...]transforming the
bed into a setting for the cycle of life: conception, birth,
illness, and death. Appr[...]ere an individual’s
self—expression and sense of gender identity could be
best realized.

The purc[...]ed in the Hennessy ledgers
underscore the primacy of the bedroom in the working—
class home. In earl[...]s with twenty—

three other men, more than half of them copper

Perhaps such autonomy within[...]

The oak wardrobe purchases of two miners,
one who emigrated from Ireland in 190[...]from Serbia in spring 1910, provide two
examples of the special status case furniture held for
workin[...]erbian was single, and his wardrobe was

only one of dozens of furniture and household items he

purchased within a span of a few days at Hennessy’s to
create his home.

A[...]ced the consumer choices
for these customers. For example, their residences
may not have had closets. Nor i[...]used to store
clothing rather than outerwear, for example, it may
have been placed in the bedroom, provided[...]Serbian’s $25 wardrobe was
described as “one of the largest, roomy kind with hat
shelf above” a[...]95 at
Hennessy’swccounted for nearly 75 percent of case
furniture purchases. Commonly composed of two small
drawers on top and two full—width one[...]a more costly wax finish.

Miners selected nine of the ten golden oak
dressers in this analysis, but[...]ass patrons could afford Hennessy’s four
models of mahogany dressers, given the generous price

range of $31 to $95. Miners purchased three of the less

But Sower’s purchase of mahogany furniture
was the exception, not the rule, because the golden
oak finish was the typical choice of the masses for its
modest cost. (In fact, it appe[...]ompany’s
1908 retail catalogue.)“The majority of the furniture
products acquired by Hennessy’s c[...]s.

Although Hennessy’s offered a greater range of
furniture woods and finishes than Sears, Roebuck[...]tions were distant seconds to golden oak for most of
the credit customers. Some of the fumed oak furniture
retailed at Hennessy’s was manufactured by L. and J. G.
Stickley of Fayetteville, New York, the famed Arts and
Crafts[...]have been restricted to the store’s U.S.—born
professional and managerial customers, whose tastes
were more current—for example, a Montana—born
dentist, an Anaconda Copper Min[...]rs were for use
by the whole family, other pieces ofof drawers, the
chiffonier stood about five[...]

After their initial purchases of bedroom and case
furniture, many Hennessy’s cus[...]er rooms in the home. Ideas about
specific rooms of the home, particularly the role of the
parlor, were changing. In the mid—nineteent[...]and floor and window coverings}3 Interior
plans of the early twentieth century—especially

those s[...]e square
footage to hold infrequently used pieces of fumiture.
There was no room for a parlor a[...]

Com[...]As social worker Margaret Byington’s 1910 study
of households in the Carnegie mill town ofof locality?”

The concept of the suite itself —whether for
parlor, dining ro[...]ed oak, an expensive finish that appealed to
few of the credit customers, was the only multipart
suite Hennessy’s spotlighted in its advertisements of
this period. This suggests that only those who co[...]which as late as 1908 still
oHered an assortment ofof which converted to beds) were used to render
comf[...]designated
for social calls and conversation. One of the least
expensive but largest pieces of upholstered furniture, the
couch, had been a popu[...]umen
and refinement. Given the space limitations of many
Butte homes of this period and the fact that no other
lar[...]

piece of furniture; its imposing presence and ability to

transform any room—regardless of scale or function—
into a suitably furnished living room no doubt appealed
also to customers of limited resources. Six of the eight
couches acquired by credit customers furnished the
homes of miners. Most of these customers were in

their twenties and had b[...]Once again, miner James Knox is a representative
example. He spent $22.50 for his couch,which probably
had[...]er upholstery options, with the difierent grades of
leather available on both a $4.0 couch and a $20[...]” couches, associated with the health
benefits of brass and iron beds. By day, the steel cou[...]

A Butte bookkeeper bought one of the higher—
end davenos for $90, while newlyweds Ben and Rose

Isaac, who rented one of four flats in a walk—up, selected

Annie K/iek, [be wife ofoui—of—work miner Fred
K/iek, brougbt a $55grapbopbone[...]recordings.“ The phonograph
was a popular piece of modern technology in Butte
living rooms. Invented[...]pensable home appliance. According to one history
of the time: “By 1915, Americans were spending $60[...]ed “Something New” inquired,
“Can you think of anything that would be more
appreciated than a handsome Columbia graphophone?”
the families of miners Fred Klick and Joe Wynne
apparently[...]

Similarly, neither the unemployment of
Louisiana—born Joe Wynne nor that of his adult
stepson roommate impeded their purchase of a $25
phonograph and twelve records on Christmas Eve 1909.
Shortly after the first of the year in 1910, he returned
this phonograph to[...]odel. The phonograph was advertised as “a means
of entertaining your friends and neighbors” and of
providing amusement for young children.35Wynne’[...]nnessy’s ledgers present an
insightful overview of the types of furniture Butte
workers preferred for their homes[...]re also useful in

comparing the home furnishings of a range of Butte

residents. For example, they illuminate the similarities
and differences between the credit purchases of the
following Hennessy’s customers: an unmarrie[...]beds—were among the very first purchases
each of these four customers made. The newly arrived
Serb[...]ble bed, this
mantel bed was probably constructed of quartersawn
oak and measured six feet high and fo[...]bly manufactured by the Welch
Folding Bed Company of Grand Rapids, an eighteen—
by forty—eight—i[...]vich shared
with his male relatives, the illusion of a mantel lent
validity to the room’s dual purposes of living room
and bedroom.The mantel also compensated for the

probable absence of “the hearthstone.. .the foundation

az‘ [be rear of an adjacenz‘ rexidenee [o [bix backyard[...]

stone of democracy.”37

The rocker was a ubiquitous feat[...]four customers

discussed here purchased a total of nine rockers

ranging in price from $4.75 to $32.[...]latform rocker form,
encouraged a less formal way of sitting and
had slowly made its way into moderately
priced parlor suites of the 1880s and

1890s. Miners Herz and Rafalovich
purchased a total of five rockers: the first
made of unidentified materials, one in
wicker (a materia[...]for any room
in the house or for the porchw), one of
quarter—sawn oak with reversible velour
cushion[...]opted
for a $32.50 leather rocker and two rockers
of golden oak finish for $8.50 and $12.50,
while He[...]z, Andrews, and Golden also

purchased quantities of floor coverings, including

In addition to linoleum, Hen[...]ugs were among the
other rug types selected. Some of Hennessy’s tapestry
rugs, such as the $2[...]

of Rafalovich’s rug noted it was “the finest 10[...].50
and $35, respectively. Axminster—weave rugs of this era
were more similar to the moquette carpet[...]s a quest for stability and
permanence, the lives of these four customers following
their furniture pu[...]nt city directories, and
there are no indications of where they went or why they
left—whether together or separately—or what the final
disposition of their furniture might have been.

Bank cle[...]

indifference.”

As bizarre as this episode may[...]tation early—twentieth—
century Americans had of the home’s ability to redeem
and elevate.

No single formula can adequately render the
complexities of the home, its furnishings, and the larger
worlds[...]ving identity, family,
and stability in the midst of a grimy industrial city high
in the Northe[...]

‘2 Cohen, “Embellishing a Life of ‘8 Elizabeth Collins Cromley, “A ‘7 Grier,[...]tandard, April 30, 1911.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Hixtory ofSparex and Ser‘vitex, 3‘ Grie[...]ing the Ugliest 2° Cohen, “Embellishing a Life ofof 2‘ Searx, Roel7utk and Company, 1908, Home, 189[...]and Karal Ann Marling (Knoxville,

‘7 A survey of day wages in Butte, Maker, ed.Joseph J. Schroeder[...]y an assistant professor rpt, Chicago, 1969). 73.
of mining at the School ofMines ‘3 Katherine C. Gr[...]1910. Town on Earth,” 316.
the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania ‘5 Margaret F. Byington, Ho[...]

Butte City Di[...]

In the article “R[...]Earth,” first published in the June 1907 issue of
the Craftrman, Helen Fitzgerald Sanders argued th[...]took this mission not only as a

prominent member of Butte society and the daughter—
in—law of prominent Montana attorney (and former
vigilante) Wilbur Fisk Sanders but as a prolific writer
of poetry and prose on Montana and the West. Her
int[...]ral resources and conservation efforts. Like many
of her peers among western writers and artists, she[...]tive American cultures.2
Other American followers of the Arts and Crafts
movement also shared these in[...]th a receptive audience for her work in the
pages of the Craftrman, Gustav Stickley’s journal of the
arts, culture, and political economy.

Thanks[...]many Americans envisioned Butte as a place
worthy of its own circle in Dante’s Inferno. Lye
magazine had even nominated Butte for the title of
“meanest city in the United States.”3 Subscribers to the
Craftrman may have already read of Butte in another
prominent American Arts and Craf[...]s title recalls Hubbard’s 1903
characterization of Butte as “the ugliest city on earth.”4[...]

“Redeeming the Ugliest Town on Earth”
concluded a series of four essays Sanders published
on Butte and the Cr[...]1905 and 1917,
Sanders was a frequent contributor of poetry, fiction,
and essays on Montana and the West; she also managed
the Mont/3131’s northwest office in Butte. Sanders began
writing about Butte[...]Mont/T7131 with the
August 1906 article, “Work of the Woman’s Relief
Committee of Butte for San Francisco,” an account
of the fund—raising campaign she organized for
ear[...]ing asserted Butte women’s claim to the
virtues of empathy and generosity, Sanders addressed

the ca[...]em Butte’s landscape. In “Butte—

The Heart of the Copper Industry,” which appeared in
the Ove[...]6 issue, Sanders
first retold the familiar story of Butte’s early days and
the struggle for control of its rich copper deposits;
she then turned to a favorable account of the Butte
Mine Workers Union and “the down—trodden of other
lands” who flocked to Butte despite “the dark stories
of the unfair town, and its reputed resemblance to t[...]tself.” Sanders claimed that, since the removal
of smelting operations to Anaconda in 1903, the smok[...]y pleasing
and relevant for the built environment of Butte.
She found it “assuredly refreshing to tu[...]iodicals, setting forth the infamy and
debauchery of strike and mob and voicing the doctrine
of discontent,” to Stickley’s assertion of the dignity of
work and the worker, which resonated with her own
appreciation of Butte’s organized miners and patchwork
of ethnic groups. She lauded Stickley for envisioning
a “democratic art” that would “fill the needs of the

American people sanely and with honesty of purpose”

shown in her essay followed specific[...]abinetry, strong structural furniture, and
planes of subdued color. These elements, Craftsman
advocates believed, fused into an atmosphere of warmth
and restfulness that would promote harmony[...]stic sphere.The Longley living
room and hall, for example, captured what Stickley later
described as the “typical Craftsman division between
the two rooms by means of heavy square posts and
panels open at top.” Along with the dining room, these
rooms constituted the heart of a Craftsman home,
nourished the soul of the family, and welcomed visitors
into their tranquil life.‘5

For those lacking the salutary influence of a
Craftsman home, Sanders reported, manual[...]

of the urban middle class, depended on rather than
s[...]sequently, over the past century, the
reputations of Gustav Stickley and the American Arts
and Crafts[...]and flowed as
scholars have exposed the blinders of class, race, and
ethnicity that limited their vis[...]sman movement could be so compelling.
For readers of the Cmflrman, the possibility of Butte’s
redemption gave hope that their own cities might
transcend the degradations of industrial capitalism. For
its Butte adherents, t[...]time to reshape a corrupt mining camp into a
city of moral homes and honest citizens striving for the[...]oI): v—viii; Gustav
Stickley, “The Influence of
Material Things,” Cmflxmmz I,
no. 3 (January I902): v—vi; Gustav

Stickley, “The Craftsman Idea of

the Kind of Home Environment
That Would Result from More
Natural Standards of Life and
Work,” Cmflxmmz Home; (New
Yor[...]

Brown, for the Boston Museum

of Fine Arts, I987), II4—I7; Leslie
Greene Bowman,[...]tion with William H.
Bertsche (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, I957). Many thanks
go to Patty De[...]also Ray Stannard
Baker, “Butte City: Greatest of

the Camps,” Century Illuxtrated
Magazine 45, n[...]uary
I904): 37—46; C. P. Connolly, “The
Story of Montana,” 1, MtClure’x
Magazine 27, no. 4 (Au[...]ary I906): 58.
Hubbard attributed the “subject

of virtue” quotation to an article

by Sam Gordon[...]to
Hubbard's lecture.

Harold Just, “The Story of the

Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, “The
C[...]o William

Morris, Stickley made these the

basis of his design aesthetic; see

“An Argument for Sim[...]ative
Arts and Material Culture,”
Uni‘verxity of W ixranxin Digital
Cal/ettia n5, http://digicoll.[...]ed Herself from
Ugliness—An Artist's Revelation
of the Beauty ofof Stickley's
Craftsman designs. See [Ray
Stubblebin[...]ity with
the “Craftsman Clapboard House:
Series of I906” design, which
Stickley published i[...]

Negative assessments of Stickley's
Craftsman movement, and ofof Chicago Press, 1980);
and T.J.Jackson Lears, No Place

of Grace'A ntimodernijm and tbe
Tranformation[...]

of misfortune, Butte, having attained the maximum of
ugliness, had at least gained a point from which[...]and since Butte could not move downward, it must
of necessity climb up.

The ugliness of Butte was the direct result of
artificial conditions. Nature had clad the mountains
upon which the city rests with pine grove and thicket
of fern; she had erected about it noble peaks, robed[...]e haze and shining with the perennial
benediction of the snow. Within the memory of
living men the site of Butte had borne the columned
canopy of the forest, the rush of clear streams, the
gay patchwork of grass, bitter—root and the myriad
mountain flowers. But the hand of man had turned
vandal here, and in ruthless quest of copper, shafts were
sunk, smelters arose, clouds of sulphur smoke killed the
last bud and sprig, and[...]bore a
startling likeness to Dante 5 description of the out—lying
regions of Purgatory The huge boulders thrown from

Cr[...]ate caims
and wastes was the ever—present stain of the smoke. If,
perchance, a traveller entered the town in the shades of
evening over the Continental Divide, the similarity to
the scenes of Dante need not end with the approach

to Purgatory, for beneath, swimming in a pabitating
sea of smoke which filled the bowl of the valey with
opal waves, lay the likeness of the Inferno itself. There
tall chimneys were capped with points of flame; long,

lurid, crawling streams of molten slag burnec. the heavy

darkness into a crimson glow, and, occasionaly, a bright

flare of red light, when the slag was dumped, completed

a scene of picturesque horror.

The town itself, in the impartial light of day,
presented a less diabolical but more monotonous
appearance. Row upon row of ugly little houses and
a few even uglier large ones told eloquently of the
status of the place. Had a stranger, ignorant of his
environment, been set down in Butte, he would[...]shaft—houses and smokestacks, and the multitude
of cheap, unlovely houses that crouched beneath,
just the character of the town in which he stood; he
would have seen in[...]s the reason for its
being and the mastering idea of its people; in the rows

of cottages and tenements indifierence to comfort

and beauty. These were not homes; they were the
capital of the landlord. If architecture, or the lack of
architecture, ever spoke, it was here, and its la[...]istakable.

In this prevailing ugliness the story of Butte
was told. The fame of the copper mines spread across
the seas, around the world, and poor and adventurous
fortune—seekers of all lands flocked here as had the
earlier Argonauts to the golden shores of California.
They came, lured hither by the hope of wealth, to
stay a little while, then pass on to p[...]years and then,—there was the cherished vision of
a far—away Elysium called Home. First the log c[...]and in a few
cases, by gaudily expensive mansions of mushroom
millionaires. There was a certain rugged[...]trical and unreasonable forms were
seen the worst of many styles and the best of none.
Every square foot within the walls of a house was
crowded with people. The custom of renting rooms
was general and the town supported a surprising
number of small boardinghouses. A homely sage

has s[...]

The moral eHect was self—evident. What wonder
that the children of Butte, especially the boys, were
notoriously bad?[...]d little
hearts, with never a flower nor a spear of grass to look
upon, should be turned from the bea[...]und is the
barren street: who do not know the joy of growing
things and the ever wonderful growing of the seed into
the plant! Not only the children felt the contamination
of perverted environment. The treasure was too vast[...]ted, and from greed, the mastering evil,—
greed of the same type that would rob us of Niagara
Falls and our greatest natural possession[...]bribery and political debauchery soiled the name of the
state. It was as if the hungry throats of the dark shafts
were never satisfied; that they were usurers of the most

relentless sort, demanding compound int[...]e
consumed by their tunnels and drifts; the honor of men
sank in their depths and not infrequently a h[...]crashing rocks, an awful sacrifice
on the altar of Mammon. And over all, the cloud of
smoke hung heavily, hiding the blue sky, the moun[...]he pall drifted thick and dark overhead,
the bell of the cathedral tolled with appalling frequency
and victim after victim of pneumonia was taken down
the winding way to the barren graveyard in the “flat.” It

is of record that one of these grim processions of death

In spite of such disadvantages the camp grew
into a city, and as thousands of people flocked to its
mines, these conditions became unbearable. First, the
old practice of roasting ore in heaps upon the ground
was prohibi[...]by one the smelters were shut
down and the output of the mines sent to the great
Washoe Smelter at Ana[...]to warm the blood
and made possible the existence of a city worthy of the
name. Little by little, people came to unders[...]ncrete reality and not a tradition.
The discovery of enormous ore bodies extending for
miles across the “flat” up the scarred sides of the Rocky
Mountains assured the future of Butte’s resources past
the life of the present generation, and somehow those
poor to[...]ile and then pass
on, found themselves at the end of years, still toiling
with the dream of home farther away, and a yearning
instead for som[...]ow. They had
forgotten to live during that period of oblivion, and they
were waking, as after a long,[...]soil
which gave them forth again in diverse forms of plant
life, so the germ of a new idea planted in the public
mind took root and grew, and the fruit of it was the
craftsman movement. It could not have[...]iled from the
beautiful took it up with the vigor of enthusiasm and
it was not long before its results[...]terial
form. The fiIst definite move was up out of the gulches
to the slopes commanding a sweeping view of the

undulating hills that rise into the lofty heights of the

the craftsman rear porch be more happily illustr[...]he mountains draw about
themselves such mysteries of purple and rose, it is a
never—ceasing joy to sit and watch the peaks grow dim in
the sanctuary of the night.

The interiors of these houses carry out the
craftsman scheme and t[...]to make it what we will.

Thus far the betterment of Butte has been a
matter of individual rather than organized efiofi;[...]

ca[...]Sunday during summer, and to see the congestion of
that pleasure ground itself, to realize how the toilers in
the mines long for the healthy recreation of the great
out—of—doors.There is space enough around Butte to
giv[...]be forever calling men forth to receive the gift of repose
and joy that lies within their sheltering[...]ancement. It came as a blessing
to the idle hands of children who, hitherto, had used
their energy mis[...]knowing no better vent for
their native endowment of animal spirits. These were
the children of the streets whom we saw awhile ago the
objects of the truant oflcicer’s vigilance, who commonly[...], there to learn by association the final
lesson of crime. As a rule these children were bright and
t[...]ill do more to keep him
in school than a regiment of truant oflcicers. Manual
training furnished this impetus of interest to children
who did not care for[...]

past to be sanguine of the fruit of the days to come.We

7Z3 Barker bome’x dining room.

must earn the beautiful by the toil of our hands and the
love of our hearts, but if we must labor for that which
i[...]return, still,
as time passes, over the dun sweep of the hills a faint,
yellow—green may be seen, the footfall of the spring,
elusive and fleeting, born of the shower and blighted by
the wind. It is scarce[...]be greater
heritage for us than the little patch of garden at our

door. Even now, the seeker,[...]

In the redemption of the ugliest town on earth
the philosophy of the whole CRAFTSMAN idea, material
and spiritual,[...]sed through
difierent stages from the crude camp of log cabins
to the cheaply built city of rented houses and showy
mansions, it has awakened[...]ion. Simplicity is selection; it is the
rejection of useless and encumbering fallacies in order
that w[...]and leading us, through
the suflcicient doctrine of “better work, better art and
a better and more reasonable way of living,” out of the
smoke into the sunshine, out of the gulches to the hills,
out of earth’s depths upward toward Heaven. . . .

Yes[...]ald Sanderx,from [befrom‘ixpieee [a ber History of

Montana (1913) Courtexy Manama I-Iixz‘o[...]

Burton Kendall Wheeler was one of Montana’s

most independent minded and national[...]progressive Butte
lawyer living in a neighborhood of industrial laborers
and railroad workers.

Wheele[...]esinger
Jr, Wheeler became “the most formidable of the
Senate radicals.”2 During the buildup to Wo[...]r, a
safe blower, Butte madams, and the union men of the
Butte mines. Wheeler felt at home in the bustling,
cacophonous landscape of the mining city and
identified with Butte’s wo[...]n. It is a honeycombed
hill throwing up a network of trestles, railroad
tracks, bunkers, transmission[...]there was something inspiring to
me in the sight of the miners’ neat one-story
houses. Many of them did their own painting
and plumbing a[...]

Wheeler was elected to the Montana House of
Representatives in 1910. In Helena, he stood up to the
influence of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company,
allying himse[...]ppointed

U.S. attorney for Montana and held that office from
1913 to 1918. His tenure spanned the era of Butte’s
greatest political upheaval as unionist[...]sts
gained influence and challenged the dominion of the
copper companies. Wheeler’s steadfast refusal to charge
Industrial Workers of the World organizer Frank Little
with espionage during the politically charged summer
of 1917 was controversial and courageous. It was a time
of “mass hysteria” that ultimately led to Little[...]his campaign against the
concentration and abuse of government power.

By the 19205, Wheeler was a pr[...]na. Although he lost election to the governor’s
office in 1920, he was elected in 1922 to represent[...]robe, which exposed the corruption and
influence of big oil in President Warren G. Harding’s[...]

in later years:

The neighborhood was made up of railroad
men, small merchants, and workers with
modest incomes; l was the only professional
among them. My choice of living there after
I could afford an expensive re[...]btedly was worth extra votes every time
I ran for office. But in truth this was not my
motive in refu[...]es.
There was no pretension and there was plenty

of merriment.”

Built in 1897 for $975, in many ways the Wheeler
house was typical of the thousands of dwellings built

in Butte’s heyday. Its origina[...]adian
warehouse worker, and the house at the time of Wheeler’s
purchase was a simple Victorian worke[...]y]

The Burton K. Wheeler House bears the imprint
of the growing Wheeler family. By 1916, the four—r[...]ont porch, giving the house
an overall appearance of an early—twentieth—century
middle—class dwe[...]ince first settled, there was
much intermingling of working and professional classes,
and the trappings of heavy industry were mixed freely
into the city’[...]b sites.The Burton K. Wheeler
property is typical of such homes, standing within a

working-class South Butte neighborhood. The[...]hape his thinking
during his time in Butte, a way of thinking that
accompanied him onto the national s[...]toric Landmark,
reflecting the humble background of Montana’s

Controversial senator.

‘ Burton K[...]y afT-wa Centurier,
rev. ed. (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, I99I), 3I2.
Wheeler, Yan[...]

Left: Everybody Out, This is the End of the Line, 1985,

aching col/age, 15 x 20 '[...]

Left: Layers of Texture, December 24, 2005, dégita/pbomgm[...]

(This essay is a slightly modified version of a talk given at the
Montana Historical Society on[...]ink. Even more,
he liked to talk. And unlike many of the strangers I
meet in bars, he actually had som[...]m.

Dan had worked in the mines, at least a dozen
of them, but he didn’t consider himself a miner. H[...]than to recite for friends his favorite
passages of prose and poetry. And nothing surprised me
more t[...], an unfound door; ofa stone, a leaf, a door.
And of all the forgotten faces . . . Naked and alone we[...]t is, until we discovered the
comfort and company of the well—honed, well—timed
word.

Dan lived i[...]feet and
entirely surrounding the chair are piles of books and
magazines. I’m reading to him: Heaney, Milosz,Yeats,
Joyce. Dan, of course, doesn’t rely on a text, delivering
Baud[...]e. My favorite occasions were when he recited one
of his own poems, all of which were attempts to give
voice to something es[...]stened closely.

Dan died a couple years ago. One of the last
times I saw him was a few months after the attacks
of September 11th. “What’re ya reading th[...]

his wal[...]no addiction. It was instead the source and locus of my
alienation, my rebellion. I bridled against th[...]y authority, small—
mindedness, and petty vices of the priests and nuns,
the full repugnancy of which was amply evident by the
time I turned twelve.I also found oppressive the much—
touted clannishness of my Irish relatives. Victims and
perpetrators alike conspired in hypocritical tales about
the importance of family loyalty and tradition, tales
that masked generations of cruelty, alcoholism, sexual
abuse and vindictiveness, ignorance and greed, a soul—
deadening form of social conservatism.

Then there’s the relentless self—mythologizing of
Butte.The place that billed itself as wide open,[...]lessly corrupt, prejudiced,
and deeply suspicious of outsiders. And I can’t overlook
the nondomestic violence, which was as much a part

of life aboveground as was danger underground. Here’s
another form of homegrown ugliness (like prostitution,
cronyism,[...]een
sanitized in what might be called the Romance of
Butte. But there was nothing romantic—nor unusu[...]ped Danny, in
revenge for Danny having beaten one of them the
previous weekend. Their weapons were bro[...]occasion.
And they were merciless. Covering most of the top of
Danny’s head, which had been shaved in the emergency
room, was aT—shaped pattern of stitches. Maybe a
hundred of them, probably more. His upper front teeth
had be[...]but still bleeding through his bandages,
instead of at home? To protect his mother, who went to
her g[...]y, pretending—that
her son never touched a drop of whiskey, never raised
his hand in anger.

By the way, Danny later died of gangrene, after

Admittedly, what I’ve just said represents
half a lifetime of surveying the past, distilling and
recombining an[...]in bound for exotic,
faraway Phoenix and the home of a former girlfriend,
whom I’d neglected to tell[...]h the blessing—if not the full

understanding—of my parents.

“Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?” wrote[...]lly after
I moved back East. Also being something of a self—
mythologizer, I used to say that the ur[...]its claim on me but
never quite letting Butte out of sight, out of mind.

The last thing I wanted to admit, of course, was
that by virtue of circumstance and character defect I’d
been cast[...]l, since my teens I had been hard about the task

of composing the Romance of Eddie, which in fact owed

I would be the inventor of my own identity. Instead of
finding meaning, I would make meaning—unbounde[...]r religious convention, untamed by the
strictures of family, neighborhood, community. If I had
any forebears of note, they were forebears I chose—not
my mother[...]Greenwich Village,
living out the defining myth of the West. The very
picture of unconscious irony and contradiction. A self—
made caricature navigating the urban wilderness of
Manhattan with the aid of a rearview mirror.

Head East, young man, that you may know the
singular pleasure of discovering the West . . . on your
own terms. And[...]ct I realize that the
accidental re—enchantment of the West in general,
and Butte in particular, had[...]consider what I was trying in vain to
forget. One of them took place in Buffalo. At that
time, the lat[...]ue collar, though unskilled. And all reminiscent

of Butte. In the multiethnic, working—class soul of one

of America’s landmark industrial cities, I detecte[...]tion. And maybe because it was only a
reflection of the place, instead of the place itself, I was
for the first time not r[...]away, but also struggling to survive
the decline of its major industry, I felt very much at
home—and precisely because it possessed so much of
what was best about home.

Another moment—rather, series of moments—
that’s worth mentioning took place i[...]st Village, the Corner
Bistro. The Bistro was one of those ideal New York
bars that functioned as both neighborhood joint and
word—of—mouth retreat for writers, musicians, artists,[...]e, harmonious, and often
entertaining confluence of low and high culture. In
short, bohemia, the plac[...]be for me The
Old Country. Among the other charms of the Bistro
was its jukebox, which featured[...]

up to the influence of the past, it had been a largely
urban past, on an[...]One day I found
myself thumbing through the pages of 7773 Amerimm,
Robert Frank’s somber black—and—white portrait of the
US. during the 19505. Page 61 in particular c[...]draped before a concrete ledge beyond which rows of
stark frame houses and brick duplexes recede into[...]ion.

Perhaps,I thought, it’s the theatricality of the

an underground mine. From the shaft, or very nea[...]once
fully grasped are unforgettable.This was one of them,
and more—for me, much more.This particula[...].” Incredibly, I had been

staring at a picture of my hometown, the place where

I passed the first eighteen years of my life, but without
realizing it, not consciously, at any rate. Frank had
stopped in Butte toward the end of his groundbreaking
cross—country trip, and in that out—of—the—way place

he found plenty of the postwar desolation he had
encountered elsewhe[...]stalled cars; a vacant luncheonette; an idle post office;
and this, the eastern, increasingly industrialized part
of Butte as it once looked from a room in the Finlen[...]idewalks, frame
houses and brick buildings—most of the Eastside
neighborhoods had been torn down or[...]ammoth excavation that inaugurated the last
stage of large—scale mineral extraction in Summit Valley.

That twofold sense of loss became the framework
for my return: I was on[...]ade me, a place that in some measure—the
extent of which I was intent on finding out—no longer
ex[...]ook, a documentary film, notes for plays,
scraps of novels. For the first time, my life and my life’s

work would merge; what I’d made of myself would be

of ruthless gangsters, bloodthirsty murderers, rapac[...]Anaconda
Company.

What I’m calling the Romance of Butte is of
a piece with a larger effort under way in the Wes[...]a literary conference in Missoula
called “Sense of Place” thirty—five years ago. Since then,
th[...]t another one. Here’s one thing you can
be sure of: so much impassioned talk by so many bright
peopl[...]history and culture are
celebrated in the absence of a critical perspective, such
endeavors, however w[...]le. Let’s
drug ourselves with nostalgia instead of facing the
messy, provisional, ever—problematic[...]that refuses to fit neatly within the confines of

conventional narrative.

One of the characteristics that distinguishes my[...]

rebellious urge to laugh in the face of death? But let’s
not forget that Danny was a monster, a man of violence,

a selfish, ignorant drunkard who aban[...]e, and
maybe you get a little closer to the truth of Butte.
What I’ve just described is, of course, the Mining
City version of the modernist dilemma. Though
it’s been around[...]thers but by none so
provocatively as the efforts of Leslie Fiedler, the
brilliant literary critic who[...]for the End,” Fiedler addressed the
limitations of regional literature. His case study was
Jewish Am[...], but his analysis
applies to all localized forms of writing that are self—
congratulatory, defensiv[...]andon falsification and

sentimentality in favor of treating not the

special virtues, be they real o[...]h, but also because their desire
for universality of theme and appeal leads
them to begin tearing down from within the
walls of a cultural ghetto, which, it turns out,
has meant[...], to my fellow writers in Montana, I say:
instead of composing odes to our cultural ghettos or,
more likely, to the restoration of those ghettos, let’s tear
down what remains of the walls. Being seen by some
as traitors is a sm[...]out that Dan Price was right about the
magnetism of Butte. And in more ways than one. For

starters, the sulfurous soil of home is laced with arsenic,

My Grandfather’s Hands

When I think of hands, my grandfather rocks
on the back porch wit[...]crock, pork slabs hooked

through the ribs, wisps of cinnamon

stick and watermelon rind, mash

beneat[...]er’s house

on Park, its number hard

multiples of four, where I recognize need

compounds the past,[...]st night

when pepper moths brush the creamy bowl
of his pipe and he rocks to the flapping

of the screen door. I’m too full to know

all brew[...]oards and sent them south
spinning with the taste of long

full days. I watched them all

through catechism, stories of saints

brushed clean by the wings of grace.

When they reached the town’s edg[...]

to the kingdom of light.” At night

their tin cups clattered bene[...]swaying in flight.

The Difference in Elfects of Temperature Depending
on Geographical Location East or West of the
Continental Divide: A Letter

I had a mind to begin by scraping April
from the[...]words wear thin for clouds

in season, the sting of long drives home.

At fifty—two hundred[...]

of asparagus, early beets. Mine demands
something ha[...]s one house at a time boards up,

another promise of work falls through, ground
that’s left overlaps its people and keeps

them from the boundary of their dreams.

It weighs my mind to write this wa[...]can sow and leave with fewer words.

And the best letter brief, seasonal as wheat
or old town affairs. One[...]tire

waiting for odors to sweeten

the kitchen, of tales I know

by heart—one princess turned to s[...]another locked

away in a tower, all those years of gold

let down. Outside legends flounder[...]

steps to be swept up in a moment

of soil and stubble to his cheek, the hard
set lips,[...]ble

for years, a single bulb shining

on a plate of golden hot rolls.

Ballad For A Butte Miner

4[...]The war raged for air in ’22 from the stench

of Black Rock silt. Turned despair by ’34 w[...]

of easy ways back. It must have paid panning[...]

Manus Dugan
Ron Fischer

When a sudden gust of hot air blasted him, Manus
Dugan sensed that some[...]the mine. The wet timbers receding into the dark of the
crosscut seemed thin and fragile. Old worries[...]feet underground, particularly from
the direction of the elevator shaft. In the dark silence,
Manus co[...]ing her swollen belly, her face
grimacing because of a cramp. Desperation made him
walk faster. Day af[...]the ore trains rumbling over the sunlit
hillsides of Butte, the day bright against the skein of
green window shade. Sometimes she cried softly an[...]ir

against his face until he drifted into dreams of the mine
and its black tunnels.

“Let the other[...]ad red cheeks on winter
days that put you in mind of the petals on a moss rose.
Her bright eyes could[...]as it hammered hole after hole. After six months of
straight time, she married him. It was the[...]

He could hear the faraway cracks of explosion
and the dull thunder of fire. His neck muscles
tightened. He looked at the shell of smoke and
imagined bright gold flames bursting the dry timbers
of the shaft into ribbons of black ash. The whole shaft,
a tower of dry beams and planks half a mile long,
was explod[...]re balls leaping higher and
higher, the long well of liquid blackness roaring with
its immolation, and[...]rd with
white—hot embers, spewing a black cloud of soot into
the sky.

In the distance, he heard som[...]r air and cough. “Faronl” He called the
names of the miners he had just left. “Faron! AnselyI
Fa[...]he
stooped over and kept his face in that margin of clear

air left between the smoke and the ground.[...]rm
around his head and breathed through the crook of
his denim jacket. His carbide light was so dim it[...]imself
down. His cheek lay against the warm steel of the tram
rail. His eye caught the sequin of his carbide flame
reflecting off the worn steel. The mine rock looked gray
against the feeble g ow of carbide. No one coughed
anymore. The air was hot[...]od.
Had the man torn 1is own throat to get a gulp of
good air? Manus bolted for clear air. He tripped[...]uddenly his carbide lamp opened like a small
hand of light against the rock and receding timbers.
When[...]ot. Life suddenly seemed to repeat itself.
A drop of water fell from the rough ceiling above hi[...]

He met a crowd of miners who had also felt
the rush of hot air and were making for the shaft. Bill
Lucas[...]henever he saw Leonard,
Manus saw another version of himself, the man Manus
was afraid he would become[...]blasted and

mucked out years ago.The rich veins of compassion

traded for whiskey and the empty pock[...]n’t panic. He couldn’t let the whole
mountain ofof here.”

“What the hell?” Leonard shouted. “We can’t
climb a half mile out of here.” Bill Lucas didn’t smile
anymore. Spiro[...]As they walked, Manus

made out the smudged faces of John McGarry, Spiro
Bezersich, Krist Popov[...]

up Leonard’s way of walking, high—headed, like he was
some kind of wonder man who knew how to break a
dollar’s more worth of ore than any other miner, how
to wash all the dust out ofhis blood with a couple of
beers and hang on a little harder to those ringle[...]easy, bars where the silver
dollars squeezed out of your hand like mercury, and
girls who slid under[...]unched up as everyone
waited for the fellow ahead of him to climb high
enough so the miner’s heels w[...]idn’t go that deep. No one there had any
chance of getting out. All he had to do now was open

his p[...]y—four hundred, Manus followed the
miners ahead of him down the crosscut and toward the
next[...]

“Come down,[...]ard and squinted
into the heights. He saw billows of gas. Behind him
men in the stope coughed. Leonard[...]y Shea, and a few others pushed
through the crush of men to get beside Leonard and
get at the ladder.

“No one goes up,”Manus said.The whites of
Leonard’s eyes bulged and Shea set his jaw fir[...]“NoI”Manus made a fist. “We hole up. All of us,
in a blind drift.”

“The twenty—four se[...]and Ned Heston repeated his words
and headed out of the manway. Motes of dust rained
through the dim light. Everyone else[...]four seventeen.”

Manus believed in his chances of living when he
could keep moving. Al Cobb, a shor[...]his
oversized left ear stuck out like the handle of a coffee
cup, led them toward the twenty—four s[...]hen
everyone stopped, they were facing forty feet of a dead
drift.

“What we do?”Jovick asked.

“For Chrissake. Bulkheads. Two of them. Here
and there. Them posts and laggings. Pu[...]pulled out a pocket knife and cut into
the canvas of a vent. “We can use this to line it.” La
Montague started ripping more of it down. Cobb took
a hammer left in the dr[...]

“Take a couple pieces of pipe.”

With the two walls shaping up, Bill Luc[...]t Leonard was there, shoveling rock and dirt out

of the drift and packing it into a mound against the[...]rds from
the drift set walls. Manus saved a piece of canvas to
make a flap for a crawl space between[...]saliva
together to spit the pasty, sweet dust out of his mouth.

When the walls were finished, he and Cobb
waited in the six feet of space between the makeshift
bulkheads, plugging holes when they saw wisps of gray
smoke seeping through. Where the wall met th[...]here Manus and Cobb sat. There
were twenty—nine of them. They ripped their shirts,
handed up trouser[...]at’s enough.”They settled back, like two
rows of bats, their backs against the rock wall. Their
naked flesh seemed white as talc in the pale glow of

candlelight.

“Take this, for later.”Manus gave Cobb a second
length of pipe afterward. Cobb cocked his head, his
protrud[...]palm was black with dirt.

Manus felt the weight of his watch and his
nipper’s pad touching his che[...]e took his watch out. Hours
became the ballooning of men’s shadows on the rock
wall, the dank smell of wet earth mingling with burnt
wax, the jab of a sharp rock against his back until the
nerve twitched, the burning down of a candle until it
sputtered and got replaced before dying out, the shuffle
of men who took turns at watching the first[...]

He dug a[...]umbled a tune to himself.
Henry Fowler had a pack of cards and started a game
with Mike Spihr and Atha[...]hich to fear

more, the gas or the slow poisoning of the big chamber

by every man whose breathing stole another fresh gulp
of oxygen and who exhaled poison.

Away from the oth[...]is partner, Steve
Gozdenica, looked at the smudge of white paper Manus
held in the dark chamber and lo[...]rday?”

“That’s right.”Twenty—one hours of waiting
had passed. Leonard lay on his sid[...]

The pings wore into them. Far off in the m[...]rouser pocket, Manus had just two remaining stubs
of the candles he had collected. He decided that whe[...]eir
last hope for light. He wondered whether news ofof
clinks, he hurled the rock against the pip[...]

“Close it up[...]shoved a pipe
beneath the wall. Fumes flowed out of the pipe, even
though its end was on the ground.[...]is open hands lay in
his lap, palms up. The white of them showed in the
dimness. His face seemed sunk,[...]like sails and driving across the
vast open space of a valley—no walls, not even the rank
smell of his own breath flowing back to him. After a
whil[...]long,
wheezing for a breath, roasting in the heat of the
crosscut, a man became so thirsty his lips st[...]the keg passed from man to
man, the wooden thumps of hands touching its barrel
sounded.

When t[...]

eonfia/ea/ myfearx to anyone.

The whittle of his pencil sounded on the coarse
paper. No one sl[...]yn, Mary, Rachel. Manus heard only the thin
sound of resignation roll through their throats. He
thought of stockyard cattle. Leonard stood up. His
dark shad[...]Dugan stop us.”

“You’re choosin’ for all of us if you break that
wall, Leonard.”

“And ju[...]hat yet.”
Manus had the pipe poking up in front of him, ready
to use it on any man who made for the[...]’s head open. The big
miner fell hard, the side of his face sticky with blood.
Manus didn’t whack[...]rd away from the
bulkhead.The fight was gone out of Leonard.

“I don’t want them to hear a[...]

the names of women, the blurt of their voices stabbed

the blackness like sudden l[...]anymore.

Men pawed the ground to stir oxygen out of the
dirt. Manus could hear the scrapes of their clawing.
He did it too, scraped a trench to[...],
hoping the hollow spot might catch him one gulp of
breath to relieve the tightness. It was slow suff[...]burtr my beart

to be taken from you.
777inb not of me,

A few women were wandering t[...]

I headed for the cage rig[...]ofhere.” Which we did because the boy got sight of
a water keg by the station and a powerful urge wa[...]out what the smoke meant. That was
the beginning of trouble. By the time the hoistman
finally got sc[...]thers and brought them up
two by two.Twenty—six of them! For the first time,

the numbers[...]

Or maybe it’s the sheepherders you[...]e new age
women who run with wolves, on accident, of course.

Or maybe it’s the stockmen shooting at brucellosis—
infected buffalo.

Of course, the story isn’t always about men
with r[...]? Don’t Go Camping. You can bet that after one

of these attacks, local newspapers will run an artic[...], or maybe you’ve got a calendar
with a picture of Yellowstone Falls on it, tumbling white
water cas[...]ines. You got to know this: that’s not the part of
Montana I’m from. I’m from a place called Ana[...]ll the
dirt off the hillsides, flushed every bit of ground down
their sluices that settled all the gold and silver out of
it. Imagine it, the hills of Anaconda, piles of boulders,
dry as bone, empty as the moon.[...]

There is a mountain of black slag. If you think
rmelter sounds bad, say[...]en the gold and silver and copper is scrubbed out of
the rock. A mountain of mica waste. There’s no fish in
the streams aro[...]h, not even
a water spider. To get the copper out of the rock, they
soaked the ore in water. The coppe[...]and Butte is bad water,
lethal. One time a flock of 262 Canadian snow geese
landed in the big lake that was once the Berkeley Pit.
All of them died. The Silents oft/.773 Lambr ain’t not[...]sit at table with Dad and listen to the
smacking of his lips and the chewing sounds he made
with his[...]wn on his hands and knees, and dig
dandelions out of the lawn, and everyday at one—
thirty, h[...]

During the depres[...]d Mom didn’t marry until 194.5. All those years
of the depression, he was a hobo, a man who rode the[...]he had been all over
this country, from the woods of Portland, Maine, to the
grapevines of Monterey, California. Just like the song
that Woo[...], but you see, the hills around Anaconda was full of
these miners’ shacks that those Californians bu[...]man going there to see the falls
up close instead of on his wall calendar, well, this fella
stopped an[...]l found the man’s corpse. His heart was cut out of
him, and all his fingers and thumbs were missing[...]re from California,
driving the man’s car. Both of them had the man’s
fingers in their pockets. T[...].

I read the news about an escaped convict, one

of the guys who were serving life sentences for eating

what I am telling you, all of it. I put that newspaper

in the garbage can that[...]age can lid back on the barrel.
It made the sound of rusted metal clapping against
rusted metal, and I caught sight of someone walking up
the alley, just a blur of a green pant leg.

The End of the Line: Butte, Anaconda, and

the Landrcape of Prostitution
Ellen Baumler

First Came the Miners
At the bottom of the dingy basement stairway, rooms
open to either side of a tunnel—like corridor. At the
far end, a door once gave access to a flight of stairs up
to the street level. These are no ordin[...]ed. The cold stone foundation
forms the back wall of each room, and they all share
one peculiarity tha[...]s across the West, is
the architectural signature of prostitution. Cribs, or
“oflcices,” like these in the basement of the Dumas
Hotel were common in the red—light districts of Butte
and Anaconda, Montana. Such areas, limited[...]districts. Today,
there are no surviving remnants of this important
business in Anaconda, but on the streets of Butte,
surprising elements remain if you know whe[...]oomtowns, both Butte and
Anaconda drew the ladies of the line at the first signs
of settlement. A bawdy gold rush ballad recounts thi[...]he line.”

It applied to the silver mining camp of Butte in the
1870s and to the smeltertown of Anaconda in the early
1880s, both of which had significant populations of
single men. The first “ladies of the line” who drifted
into Butte in the 1870s worked along Park Street, then
the heart of the camp. Miners were not particular
about the company they kept, and these women were
simply part of the community. But when solid business
blo[...]

Sanborn map of Anaconda, Montana.

there in one—room wooden cribs that lined both sides
of the street. Dance halls, saloons, and gambling jo[...]us
parlor houses, numerous brothels, and hundreds of cribs,
thereby earning its comparison with the much larger
red—light districts ofof the saloon. Other

suspect buildings spread out across the north side of

In most western towns, Chinese settlemen[...]rgest in Montana, spread out on the opposite
side of Main Street to the west along West Mercury.
Prost[...]methods and cures for venereal
diseases, neither of which were readily available
from the mainstream[...]pium administered under supervision, to the point
of overdose, induced spontaneous abortion. For these[...]ere
was no clear fault. On November 30, 1889, for example,
the Anatonda Standard reported that madam Belle[...]ground. Expensive parlor
furniture and two trunks of belongings were all that
survived. Because Belle employed a Chinese servant,
officials assumed that the fire was his fault.

By[...]d with Anaconda’s women in domestic
and laundry services. Women in mining towns and
elsewhere had few business opportunities. This was
especially true of Anaconda, where women were
even more limited to operating boardinghouses and

providing laundry services. Because Anaconda was a

edition offlmuary 19, 1902.

company town, other private en[...]t easy to establish
and maintain.

The appearance of Anaconda’s brick brothels
parallels the pattern[...]ishments were
evenly spaced along the

north side of the street. The
fancier the house was, the

less it resembled a house of
prostitution. The Windsor and
the Dumas, for example, had
no telltale rows of doors and
windows, since the women
who worked there had no need
to solicit; the madam did that
kind of work for them. These
high—class houses resemble[...]ging houses in urban
areas during the second half of the nineteenth century
were common, particularly[...]r respectable or not, were often viewed as places
of prostitution] Lodging house architecture of the

Victorian era dictated the separation of common and

Although Florence Clark genero[...]d
her employees. She operated her house in a kind of
partnership with saloon keeper William L. McLaugh[...]sionally helped Florence handle her legal issues, of
which she had a few. In 1908, a police officer heard that
one of the Monogram’s women inmates wished to leave
but was being held against her will.The officer found a
seventeen—year—old at the house[...]ed the girl to prevent her leaving,
whereupon the officer punched the irate madam and
knocked her unc[...]the way she ran her
business underscores the lack of economic opportunity
women often experienced work[...]years, their debts mounting every month. When
the ofof bondage.”"

A Shift in Clientele

Times changed with the onset of the twentieth
century. Butte’s most glamorous h[...]Washington, D.C.; Marcus Daly died; and the
days of the copper kings were over. Outside investors
and[...]ntrolled mining interests.
Friends and associates of the copper kings no longer
came to Butte or Anaco[...]Helena
businessman Anton Holter erected a series of brick
cribs on Mercury Street, opposite the parlor houses. U.S.
senator Lee Mantle was a later owner of this building,
emphasizing the point that red—l[...]lly
between $2 and $5 per shift. The architecture of the Blue
Range—as it is known today for[...]

arrangement. This well—preserved example of brick cribs
recalls the era when scantily clad wo[...]rings, and chopsticks. The women showed no trace
of modesty, leaning out of their windows and calling
out “the vilest kind of language imaginable to people
passing on the stre[...]m South Wyoming to Main Street through
the center of the block, where the least—favored women
of the tenderloin lived and worked in ramshackle cab[...]darkened doorways a few steps from the back door
of every parlor house. Butte’s public women called[...]etail. Such
press bolstered the unsavory elements of the Mining
City’s reputation and served as a ca[...]Ee Blue Range crib; are a rare xur‘vi‘ving example oftbe door—
window—door—window arrangement[...]tracks cut through the
undeveloped north portion of Anaconda’s tenderloin.
The jail moved to city h[...]rs embarrassment, and a high board
fence in front of the cribs quickly cut 0H the passengers’

views of the seedy area. By 1900, however, a city