JANUARY 2024 Ghost Towns and History of Montana Newsletter From The Montanian (Choteau), Aug. 20 1897 THE HAMILTON RANCH On a clear day, the sweeping views from here take in more that 400 square miles. Most of these lands look much as they have for centuries. Human travel routes haven't changed much either. Highway 278 mirrors very closely the course that Captain Clark and his crew took on their eastward trip in 1806- an "excellent road" in his words, that Native Americans had worn into the land over generations. At 7,460 feet above sea level, this mountain pass is one of the highest elevations travelled by members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Headquartered at the foot of this slope is the Hamilton Ranch. For generations the Hamilton Ranch was widely known as the Carroll Ranch- and it served as a vital link between the Big Hole and Beaverhead valleys. Its location at the base of this mountain pass made the ranch a perfect stopping point Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz for stagecoaches, cattle drives and virtually every other kind of traveler throughout the frontier era and beyond. For years the ranch housed a team of relief horses for the postal delivery service. Even after motor vehicles became common, bad weather could make the road impassable, forcing travelers to stop here. Family members recall that during the Great Depression no drifter was turned away hungry. Accessed via: montananewspapers.org
P a g e 2 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r The Carroll Ranch spanned four generations. In 1903, Frank and Ann Carroll traded their homestead in nearby Polaris for a homestead here. They lived in tents with their 8 children while constructing the first building, which they completed just in time for the winter of 1904. Over the years, the family acquired other homesteads, eventually expanding the ranch to encompass some 13,000 acres, from the northeast side of the pass all the way to Jackson. The Carroll family sold the ranchlands in the late 1950s, more than 100 years after their greatgrandparents immigrated from Ireland. Yet the family name endures- Big Hole Pass is still known locally as Carroll Hill. The Hamilton Ranch restored and still uses the original ranch house that the Carrolls built in 1903. Cowboys from other ranches would bunk at the Carroll Ranch when their cattle drives stopped for an overnight rest. Because cattle can lose about 1 percent of their body weight for every 10-15 miles of walking, it is important to the economics of ranching to take regular breaks when moving cattle to markets or to distant pastures. –Courtesy of Interpretive Sign at Site GOOD TIMES AHEAD Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz The year just passed has been a fruitful one for Zortman and the coming year is full of promise for the camp. During 1907 there was little evidence of great things; yet there was the steady progress toward permanency, which must be demonstrated before capital can be expected to invest in the country. Steady development work has progressed on many mining groups up to the point where of a certainty we know that we have the mines- dozens of them and the coming year will see some of these grow into the producing class. Indeed, it is only within the past year that the great Ruby mine has been exploited and the permanency and extent of her great ore bodies defined. The exploration company began the year with little in sight, but a few strokes of the pick under the direction of a competent mining man, and a veritable bonanza is exposed. There will be many more during 1908 and from and after February, the output of gold of the Little Rockies will equal, if not exceed the whole of the balance of Montana. Cripple Creek never was a greater camp and if this district was in Nevada, 100 miles from wood and water, Zortman would have had 5,000 population long ago. As it is, easy of access and in the heart of civilization, people have passed it up in order to penetrate the wilderness. – Little Rockies Miner (Zortman, MT), Jan. 9, 1908, accessed via www.montananewspapers.org Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz
P a g e 3 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r Montana lost a true legend, Ellen Baumler to cancer last month. She was unsurpassed in her skills as a historian and storyteller and her work will never be forgotten. She was not only an incredible mentor to me but also a true friend. We will miss her greatly but I will honor her by continuing to share her work and continuing to write and tell the stories that make us Big Sky proud. Here is Ellen’s piece on children in Montana’s mining camps. Children in Montana’s Mining Camps– by Ellen Baumler Montana’s mining camps provided children with unique childhood experiences and memories. Although they went to school like children elsewhere, they also witnessed the vices and violence of everyday life in Montana’s rough-and-tumble mining communities. Many were seasoned travelers who had crossed the plains in covered wagons or spent days in cramped quarters aboard steamboats en route to the gold fields. In a preface to the reminiscence of Frances Gilbert Albright—whose father, Henry Gilbert, established one of the first breweries in Alder Gulch in 1864—University of Montana professor H. G. Merriam wrote: “It is interesting to learn what a child’s mind seizes upon and later recalls, especially if the childhood has been spent in a raw and rough community.”1 Children are the same no matter where they live, but because of their hardships and material deprivations, mining camp children experienced life more intensely. They also learned to make the most of their extraordinary circumstances. The author’s interest in this subject began with the preparation and publication of Mary “Mollie” Sheehan Ronan’s pioneer reminiscence, Girl From the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan, in 2003.2 Portions of Mary’s story so engaged and delighted students of all ages that it precipitated the author’s wider search for more recollections from pioneer children. Archival records, published accounts, and oral histories at the Montana Historical Society Research Center yielded numerous colorful and lively stories of Montana’s mining camps from a child’s perspective. Those reminiscences add an important and overlooked element to our understanding of mining culture. This article will discuss children’s impressions of their surroundings, the amusements they enjoyed, and the hardships and dangers they faced in some of Montana’s mining communities. On the Move Many families traveled by wagon to Montana’s gold fields in the mid-1860s. The Jonas Butts family left Independence, Missouri, wintered in Denver, and arrived at Virginia City, Montana, in the summer of 1864. Derinda Jane Butts was eight years old. The three Butts daughters were not used to luxuries anyway and were unaware of the deprivations others complained about. The family had no mishaps crossing the plains. Without the heavy responsibilities and worries that burdened their parents, Derinda Jane and her two sisters regarded the trip as a lark. Derinda Jane’s most vivid recollection was that of a lesson learned. The children had been repeatedly told to stay close by the wagons. One evening, heedless of the warnings, some of them ran up a hill away from camp. Suddenly they saw the dark form of an Indian moving stealthily from bush to bush. The children ran all the way back to camp and breathlessly described what
P a g e 4 they had seen. The “Indian” turned out to be one of the train’s own men, stripped to the waist, his skin rubbed with mud to darken his complexion. It was his way of teaching the children the danger of wandering too far.3 Montana’s early population moved with the gold rushes. Many Virginia City residents relocated to the camp at Last Chance Gulch, newly named Helena, drawn by fresh opportunities. Mollie Sheehan’s family moved to Helena in July 1865. One of her first memories there was of a camel train unloading goods. She got a ride on one of the strange creatures, an event she never forgot. The family’s log cabin at the foot of Broadway had a dirt floor, but was cozy and comfortable. In her recollection of those times, Mollie astutely noted that people were constantly coming and going, and that friendship, “like everything else in a mining camp, was in a constant state of flux and change.”4 First Impressions Like their parents, children recognized Montana’s primitive conditions, and their impressions mirrored those of adults. Five-year-old James Sanders, son of Wilbur and Harriet Sanders, crossed the plains with the Henry Edgerton family from Ohio to Montana in 1863. James heard the excited talk about the great gold camp at Bannack and of Montana’s golden gulches. Upon arriving at last at far-famed Bannack, however, James took one look at the ugly settlement, where the dirt was everywhere churned into mud and primitive cabins and tents straggled along Grasshopper Creek. He then expressed well what the adults probably thought but did not want to admit when he blurted out his disappointment, declaring, “I fink Bangup [sic] is a humbug.”5 Another child who reported early Montana’s rough circumstances was seven-year-old Homer Thomas. He wrote to his grandmother back in Illinois that the miners at Alder Gulch “dressed in old dirty & ragged clothes; they do not look nice, like at home.” Homer’s letter is well written and thought out, and in it he expressed his dislike for Montana’s remoteness. He especially missed apples and cider, and his grandmother’s cake. “ Well Grandmother,” he continued, “it is pretty near to Christmas time and I do not expect to get many things this year, for it is not like home, because Santa Claus do[es] not come out here to give children things, because he thinks the children too smart to come to this old place.”6 Frances Gilbert Albright was just a toddler when her large family came to Alder Gulch, where she would spend the rest of her life. Her earliest memories were more gentle. They included rides on a Newfoundland dog whose owner, her father’s partner, always had a sack of candy. She recalled lines of freight wagons in the muddy street that brought their groceries and glorious moonlight sleigh rides under piles of buffalo robes.7 Children caught the gold fever too. Ten-year old Mollie Sheehan’s family arrived at Bannack as the first rumors of a new strike at Alder Gulch began to circulate. Her father freighted the first load of goods to G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r Mary Ronan left a lively reminiscence of her life in Montana’s gold camps. (83-138, University of Montana, Missoula)
P a g e 5 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r These boys found work holding mule teams in Virginia City, Montana Territory, circa 1864. (Photograph by the Montana Picture Gallery, 965113, Montana Historical Society Research Center Photograph Archives, Helena.) Virginia City and returned to Bannack to retrieve his family. The Sheehans followed the trampled ground in the wake of stampeding miners. As the mule team panted up the last hill, the Sheehans stopped to let the animals rest. Mollie hopped down from the wagon, grabbed a stick, and wrote her name in the dirt, announcing, to her father’s amusement, “I stake my claim.”8 Life on the Urban Frontier Once settled at Virginia City, Mollie and her friend Carrie Crane roamed the countryside gathering wildflowers and edible goosefoot to sell to the boarding houses. They learned the names of plants and observed the wildlife. Mollie ignored the fancy ladies who lounged around smoking cigarettes. She knew they were different, but never questioned why they were not “good women.”9 Harriett Sanders, however, worried about the settlement’s influence on her two boys, James and Wilbur, and insisted that their house be built well out of town, out of earshot of the miners’ coarse vocabulary. Thomas Dimsdale, Montana Post editor and author of Montana’s first book, Vigilantes of Montana, complained about young hooligans in the streets and opened a school to help corral Virginia City’s youth.10 Mollie Sheehan attended Dimsdale’s school. She found its mild-mannered professor so preoccupied with his writing that she and her friend Carrie took advantage of him. They delighted in asking permission to be excused. The professor would wave them away and the girls would make their escape. They would run down the hillside to a corral below, take a few daring minutes to slide down the haystacks, then scurry back up the hill to slip into their seats unnoticed.11 Mollie saw the aftermath of two vigilante hangings at Alder Gulch, but it was the hangman’s tree at Helena that le ft her shivering. She arrived at school one day to find the boys clustered together, pointing down the hill. There she saw a man hanging on a branch, his head bruised and clothing in disarray. The man’s wrinkled, stiff boots made an impression she could never forget. Mollie heard that a Sunday school teacher took her students there to look at the dead man, to impress upon them that crime does not pay.12 As Helena matured into Montana’s capital city, its citizens consciously tried to shed its rough mining camp image. This applied to children as well, whose parents dressed them up for portraits. They played somber games of chess, put on pageants, and took ballroom dancing at Mrs. Sulgrove’s Academy. Many children who lived in Helena from the 1890s to the 1920s took these lessons. The Fligelman sisters recalled that Mrs. Sulgrove required every boy to wear one white glove, so that when he put his hand on the small of a girl’s back, it would not soil her dress.13 Elizabeth Farmer Smith le ft wonderful descriptions of her childhood in the mining camp at Garnet in the 1920s. Her father was an engineer and partner in the Pra-Fa-Po Mine Company. She and her mother and sister spent three summers at Garnet beginning when Elizabeth was ten. She and the other children had
P a g e 6 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r great fun sliding down the mine dumps on pieces of tin, riding in the empty ore cars as the men pushed them back into the mine to reload, and watching her father scrape the mercury tables at the end of the day. The balls of mercury would catch the gold, and when enough had accumulated, the blacksmith would retort it in a vat, leaving a blob of gold at the bottom. The summer’s highlight was a big dance on the Fourth of July. Adults spread cornmeal on the oak floor in the dance hall, and Elizabeth and the other children skated and slid on it to prepare the floor for dancing. Her family had a 1922 Buick that Elizabeth’s mother learned to drive, an unusual feat at that time of which the family was very proud. The horse-drawn stage to Bearmouth still operated, however, and three times a week it would bring the Farmers a gallon jug of sweet milk. By the time the stage reached Garnet, up the steep, log-lined grade that reminded Elizabeth of corduroy, the jug had been jostled so much that there was always butter at the top.14 Freedom and Adventure Children usually had more freedom in Montana’s mining camps than they might have enjoyed under different circumstances. While myriad duties kept their parents always busy, children made up their own games and devised ways to keep themselves entertained. Mollie Sheehan and her friend, Carrie Crane, enjoyed the unique privilege of cleaning miners’ sluice boxes at the end of the day, until Mollie’s father discovered this activity and forbid it. While miners would have shot any man caught around their sluice boxes, the little girls amused the men and so they allowed them to keep for themselves small amounts of gold that they laboriously dug out of crevices in the sluices. Mollie and Carrie brought their hairbrushes and straws, or “blowers,” brushed out the gold caught in crevices in the wooden troughs, blew it into piles, and scooped it into their buckskin pokes. One day, one of those generous miners, Peter Ronan, poured a bucketful of muddy water down his sluice box, unaware that the girls were down at the bottom. Mollie’s new bonnet was ruined, but that is how she met the miner who later became her husband.15 Young boys in the mining camps could always find work, if their parents would allow it, cleaning up the saloons and hurdy-gurdy houses. They pocketed the loose dust inevitably spilled on the dance floor. Sometimes they found jobs in the liveries and stables, where there was always work to be done, or by holding mules while freighters unloaded. In the mid-1870s, Virginia City was still a rough camp. When Sister Irene McGrath—one of three Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, who opened a miners’ hospital at Virginia City—gathered youngsters to teach catechism classes, parents expressed gratitude to her for getting their children off the streets, even if only for an hour or two. Sister Irene herself, a novice, was barely eighteen.16 Boys in Garnet, where Elizabeth Farmer spent her summers in the 1920s, played mean tricks on Frank Davey, whose many properties and businesses included the general store. Mr. Davey guarded his merchan
P a g e 7 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r dise to a fault, and the boys would order candy which Mr. Davey kept behind a glass case. When he plunked the sack on the counter, the boys would snatch it away, put down rocks instead of money, and run away. Mr. Davey threatened to tell their parents. Once the boys found a three-piece suit like Mr. Davey always wore, stuffed it with straw, and hung the effigy on the hotel’s Flagpole. The ultimate insult was that Mr. Davey also owned the hotel.17 Smoking has universal appeal to children, and most experiment with it at one time or another. Mining camp children, boys and girls, were no different. Six-year-old Eileen Yeager and her sister Mary made up a creative game called “Bill and Bob.” They collected chewed up cigar stubs from behind the livery. Each child had a cigar box which she filled with the old stogies. They had made a sidewalk of scrap wood in the backyard and, beginning at opposite ends, they sauntered toward each other dressed in their dad’s old hats. They met in the middle, and took turns. Eileen would say, “Hello Bill.” Mary answered, “Hello, Bob.” They had a set dialogue, and after a bit, Eileen would say: “Would you like a cigar?” With that, she opened her cigar box and each took a stogie, lit it up, and sauntered down the sidewalk puffing away. Then they would switch roles and do it again. One day, however, Mary forgot and inhaled. She keeled over, and Eileen ran into the house and announced dramatically: “Mama, Mary is dead!” Their mother rushed out to find Mary violently ill. She called the doctor who immediately asked Eileen: “What have you been smoking?” Eileen produced the box of damp, chewed cigar butts. This time her mother keeled over. Eileen didn’t understand why her mother had fainted, but the spankings had a lasting influence. Neither girl ever took up smoking again.18 Butte, the mining camp that became a corporate-controlled, urban industrial center and cultural melting pot in the middle of remote Montana, was as unique for its children as it was an anomaly in other respects. Copper king William A. Clark’s gi ft to the community was Columbia Gardens, an amusement park which boasted one of the nation’s first Ferris wheels and a spectacular roller coaster. Children especially loved it. Young A sea of miners surrounds one little girl at the Bluebird Mine in Jefferson County, Montana, circa 1900. (Lot 26 Box 2 F4, Montana Historical Society Research Center Photograph Archives, Helena.) Please share this newsletter with a friend! If you aren’t already on our mailing list, you can join by sending an email with MAILING LIST in the subject line to ghosttownsofmontana@gmail.com You’ll receive this monthly digital newsletter and our quarterly digital magazine for FREE!
P a g e 8 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r mining camp ruffians and the children of prominent mine officials rubbed elbows on the streetcars that took them all to the gardens each week for Children’s Day. Children by the hundreds enjoyed free rides and entertainment, and at the end of the day picked huge bouquets of pansies to take home to their mothers. -Ellen Baumler -Be sure to catch next month’s newsletter for the rest of the story! Ellen Baumler was an award-winning author and Montana historian. A master at linking history with modern-day supernatural events, Ellen's true stories have delighted audiences across the state. The legacy she left behind will be felt for generations to come and we are in debt to her for sharing her extensive knowledge of Montana history in such an entertaining manner. To view and purchase Ellen’s books, visit: http:// ellenbaumler.blogspot.com/p/my-books.html Notes: 1. H. G. Merriam (ed.), Way Out West: Recollections and Tales (Norman, OK, 1969), 187. 2. Margaret Ronan, Girl From the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan As told to Margaret Ronan [Ellen Baumler, ed.] (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2003). When I began teaching Montana History in 1996, I was trying to find ways to engage my college students in the subject. The students found portions of Mary’s story fascinating and their enthusiasm led me to edit the manuscript. This firsthand reminiscence includes a well-loved chapter on childhood in Virginia City, Montana, and was a journalist for the WILLA Literary Award for Memoir or Essay in 2004. 3. Butts family reminiscence, “The Forgotten Pioneers” (unpublished manuscript in possession of the author), 3. 4. Ronan, Girl From the Gulches, 60. 5. W. F. Sanders II, and Robert T. Taylor (eds.), Biscuits and Badmen: The Sanders’ Story in Their Own Words (Butte, MT: Editorial Review Press, 1983), 25. 6. Homer Thomas to Isabella Thomas, 17 Dec. 1864, Small Collection 837, Montana Historical Society Research Center Archives, Helena, MT. 7. Merriam, Way Out West, 188. 8. Ronan, Girl From the Gulches, 32-3. 9. Ronan, Girl From the Gulches, 32-3. 10. Sanders and Taylor, Biscuits and Badmen, 27. 11. Ronan, Girl From the Gulches, 38-9. 12. Ronan, Girl From the Gulches, 55-6. Vigilante justice seems to make a curious, indelible imprint on a community and continues to make an impression on today’s children. The last vigilante use of Helena’s Hangman’s Tree was the double execution of Arthur Compton and Joseph Wilson, for attempted murder, in 1870. that grisly photo hung in the hall of nearby Jefferson Elementary School until a few years ago. 13. Susan Leaphart (ed.), “Frieda and Belle Fligelman: A Frontier-City Girlhood in the 1890s,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 32 (Aug. 1982): 87. 14. Elizabeth Farmer Smith, reminiscence, vertical le on Garnet, MT, Montana Historical Society Research Center, Helena. 15. Ronan, Girl From the Gulches, 36-7. 16. Sister Julia Gilmore, S.C.L., We Came North: Centennial Story of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth (St. Meinrad, IN: ?, 1961), 46-8, 295. 17. Don Miller, “Garnet’s Day in the Sun is Done but Restoration Bringing Back Some Life,” Great Falls (MT) Tribune, n.d., vertical File on Garnet, Montana Historical Society Research Center, Helena. 18. Madison County History Association, Pioneer Trails and Trials: Madison County, 1863-1920 (Virginia City?: The Association, 1976), 780. My/Donor Information: SUBSCRIBE TO THE GHOST TOWNS AND HISTORY OF MONTANA NEWSLETTER! Renewal? Y/N Send a Gift to: NAME____________________________________ NAME___________________________________ ADDRESS__________________________________ ADDRESS_________________________________ CITY______________________________________ CITY_____________________________________ STATE__________________ZIP________________STATE_________________ ZIP________________ Yearly subscriptions are $19.95 (published monthly). Please make checks payable to Ghost Towns & History of MT, LLC and send with this clipping to P.O. Box 126, Warm Springs, MT 59756
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