The Bidwell Brothers come to Butte

By Richard I. Gibson

Butte likes to say that every bad guy (and gal) that ever existed came to Butte and did something here. Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, Doc Holliday (he really was here), Attila the Hun. But in 1899, two of the most notorious international criminals of the 1870s did come to Butte. And they died.

In January and February, 1873, the Bank of England was bilked out of at least £500,000, and possibly as much as five million pounds. Brothers George and Austin Bidwell, together with two other Americans, Edwin Jones and forger George McDonnell, posed as wealthy investors and successfully passed check after forged check, until a simple error—lack of a date on the check—resulted in the scam’s unraveling.

The men fled, but were all captured with the help of Pinkerton detectives: Austin in Havana, Cuba; George in Scotland; McDonnell in New York; and Noyes in London. All were extradited, and security at the ensuing trial in London was extreme; the judge wore a gun, almost unprecedented at the time, fearing the possibility of a rescue attempt. The jury took but 15 minutes to convict after eight days of testimony from 90 witnesses in August 1873. A life sentence was handed to each member of the gang.

Fast forward 15 years. Pleading health problems, Austin and George were released in 1892 and 1887, respectively, and returned to America. They wrote books and made livings by touring the country giving lectures on the evils of crime. Thus, as promoters and book-sellers, the Bidwell brothers came to Butte in the late winter of 1899.

“From Wall Street to Newgate” was the title of the semi-autobiographical novel, a reference to London’s Newgate Prison (although George was in the infamous Dartmoor, in Devonshire). The Anaconda Standard reported that Austin intended to make his home in Montana, but within three weeks of their arrival, on March 8, 1899, Austin was suffering from pneumonia and died in his hotel room in the Mantle Block (upstairs at today’s Piccadilly Transportation Museum, but some reports indicate that the brothers were staying at the Butte Hotel). He was 52.

George, age 69, died March 26, reportedly in the same bed as his brother, of “a broken heart,” dispirited by his brother’s death, “friendless, alone and as is supposed, well nigh penniless,” according to the Anaconda Standard.

In a fine coincidence, the Bidwells’ book had recounted a fictional character associated with the Boss Tweed gang in New York. That character went to Butte where he died in “poverty and want.”

As a further fascinating footnote, George and Austin’s older brother, Benson (1835-1911) claimed to have invented the electrical trolley. His two 1907 books, including his remarkably titled autobiography Benson Bidwell: Inventor of the Trolley Car, Electric Fan and Cold Motor: History of Early Struggles and Later Successes: With Personal Reminiscences, Lectures, Essays and Letter, and a story approaching science fiction, The Flying Cows of Biloxi, both have minor cult followings. Whether Benson actually legally patented the electric trolley or not seems to be in dispute, albeit unlikely. Promotional scams seem to have run in the Bidwell family.

Sources: Image of the four criminals at top (1873) from The Penny Illustrated Paper of London via Victorian Calendar. Additional sources: Anaconda Standard newspapers for March 8-27, 1899; Benson Bidwell  ; The Bidwell Brothers  ; and CrimeCrack.com.

The first house in Butte

By Richard I. Gibson

It’s fairly common knowledge that the first home built in Butte was located on what is now East Quartz Street. For me, at least, that was all I knew.

But the special edition of The Butte Bystander newspaper for April 15, 1897, recounts stories of “old timers” and Butte history that is lost, including the sketch above of that first house.

Prospectors the Porter brothers, Dennis Leary and George W. Newkirk built the house and outbuildings in 1866. Their living quarters was the taller building at left, beyond the corral. Behind the house (to the right) stood their blacksmith shop; next to the right was a horse stable. They kept milk cows in the shed at right front. The view here looks west, so Quartz Street would be along the left side of the image.

The men established the Parrot claims with Joseph Ramsdell and built a small smelter (likely Butte’s first) on the lower reaches of Town Gulch (Dublin Gulch) not far from this house. They could not make the fire hot enough to get molten metal to flow, so the smelter failed. They tried again on Parrot Gulch, right below the mine, employing a windmill fan to create a draft in a crude blast furnace, using an 8-horsepower threshing machine as the driving source for the fan. That one failed as well. The Parrot and Ramsdell Parrot Mines would go on to become important excavations, both more than 1,000 feet deep, and other smelters would succeed.

The partners sold the buildings above in 1869, to become the core of the Girton House, an early hotel. This makes it easy to determine the precise location for this first house in Butte: East Quartz, between Main and Wyoming, on the north side of the street, just east of the alley that runs north to Copper Street. A parking lot today.

In 1884, the Girton House (#17 in Bird's-Eye view at left, and including the two-story building above the word "Quartz") was just west of one of the early Miner’s Union Halls, which stood on the northwest corner of Quartz and Wyoming.

The building survived in 1891, as the Cotter House, successor to the Girton, but by 1897 the space was covered by waste rock from the Gold Hill mine, whose shaft stood just to the north, below the intersection of Pennsylvania and Copper Streets. There has not been a building on this spot since before 1897.

Sources: Butte Bystander, April 15, 1897, The Story of Butte; Sanborn maps.

"Welcome All To Hearth And Hall"

By Richard I. Gibson

(Click any image to enlarge)

A hundred years ago this spring and summer, the caretaker’s house at the Basin Creek Reservoir was constructed. Andrew F. Munroe was the engineer with the Butte Water Company in charge of the operation. His daily field notebook reveals the plans, sketches, and details of this custom project, as well as weather events and the occupants of the creek.

The work began in April, 1913, with the foundation laid out on April 29. By May 8, foundation forms were to have been started. The schedule called for frame up on May 23, and “shingles all on roof” May 24. The huge chimney would take two weeks to build, from May 31 to June 14. But with flooring in on June 21 and trim installed June 23, the work would be done in about two months.


Munroe’s drawings are true to the ultimate appearance of the house. Compare the sketch above to this recent photo by the Montana Standard. The house has been in the news lately because of the potential for demolition; once a caretaker no longer occupied it, it became a target for vandals. The city–county offered it for potential moving to another site, on a developer’s packet, and while one applicant proposed to restore it on site, and live in it to prevent further vandalism (which has been intense even in the past month), the proposals in 2012 were rejected and the city-county still owns the house and has not determined its fate.

Basin Creek Reservoir was developed to supply water to Butte’s growing demand in the early 20th Century. By the 1890s, Butte lacked enough water for its industrial needs and its large population, and as early as 1899 water was pumped over the continental divide from the Big Hole River, a process that continues today. The Basin Creek water source was for most of its history so pure that no filtration was required (one of only a handful of water sources in the nation to have that designation), but in recent years runoff, in part a result of forest loss through beetle kill, has contaminated the reservoir. Butte-Silver Bow is wrestling with potential needs to build a filtration plant there.

The park below the Basin Creek Dam, where the caretaker’s house is located, was for many years a recreational spot and destination for Butte’s residents, by most accounts second only to Columbia Gardens as a playground for an enjoyable outing. Map

Engineer Munroe, who drew the sketches shown here, roomed in 1913 at 133 West Broadway (the Morris Block) above what is now Wilhelm’s Floral Shop. He evidently found time to fish, although based on the note with the fish drawing, it might have been caught by George Corbett. All his drawings recall the enjoyment and professionalism of a house builder of 100 years ago.

Thanks to Mitzi Rossillon and Irene Scheidecker for discovering the notebook and providing access to it. Photos of notebook sketches by Richard Gibson; notebook in Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives collection.

A Christmas tragedy

Officer Tom O'Neill (left) and grocery store manager Frank Walsh (right).

By Richard I. Gibson

Thomas O’Neill was born in Butte November 14, 1898, and attended Parochial schools, graduating from Butte Central. He dropped out of Mt. St. Charles College (Carroll) in Helena to enlist in the marines in 1918, and following the armistice worked as a machinist for 16 years; for fun he played football for the Dublin Gulch and Centerville teams. In the summer of 1934 he joined the Butte police force.

Tom’s father, John P., was well known to Butte as “The Rimmer.” He was superintendent of the Anaconda, Neversweat, and St. Lawrence mines in the 1910s and 1920s, and drowned tragically at Boulder in 1924. His widow, Tom’s mother, was expecting Tom at her house for dinner about 4:30 Christmas Day, 1935, but he never arrived.

Jean Miller

Two more Christmas dinners were about to be served earlier that day, in apartments at the Merriam Block, 538 S. Main Street (a parking lot today, across from the Scandia Bar). The boardinghouse manager, Betty Clifford, was entertaining her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. & Mrs. Frank Walsh, and a friend of the Walsh’s, Bob Clark. Frank was assistant manager of the New Market and Safeway store on Harrison Avenue.  Next door, Florence Benevue was preparing dinner for her sister Jean Miller when William Henry Knight appeared at the door demanding to see Jean. Florence sent him away—knowing him to be an ex-con who had beaten Jean repeatedly in the past, though he was also a sometime resident in the house. He returned with a gun, while Florence was seeking help at the Clifford apartment. Frank Walsh ran across the street to the Scandia, where former policeman Harry Kinney and Walsh summoned the police.

Tom O’Neill and James Mooney responded to the police call. When they arrived at the Merriam Block, they found Mrs. Benevue shot and Knight gone to his room at the rear of the building. O’Neill, Mooney, Walsh, and Kinney charged his room, to be met with gunshots. O’Neill was killed instantly; Walsh died from his wounds later that night. Mooney was badly hurt but survived, and the shots aimed at Kinney missed him.

Knight fled. Using stolen vehicles and on foot he made his way up the Madison River where he killed Floyd Woods, a ranch caretaker, then worked his way through Ennis and eventually back to Butte on December 27 after an attempt to reach a hideout in the hills above Anaconda failed because of heavy snowdrifts. He went to a house at 11 S. Oklahoma (parking lot of the WET building on East Park today), where lived Knight’s acquaintance, James Gilligan, who worked for Knight six years earlier, at the Montana Cafe. Gilligan was gone to work for the WPA on the Thompson Park project when Knight arrived. He held Hazel Gilligan and her children, age 5 and 2, hostage all day until James returned home. Then, somewhat inexplicably, he allowed the family to take the children next door, where they promptly called police.

A tear-gas barrage cornered Knight in the house, and assistant police chief Jack Duggan shot him down in the house when he assailed the police with a hail of bullets.

Knight had also killed deputy sheriff Tom Meahan near Seattle six weeks earlier. He had bragged to Jean Miller about that murder, and it was speculated that one reason for the Christmas Day encounter was Knight’s fear that Miller might implicate him in that death; Knight was also believed to be addicted to narcotics.

Tom O’Neill was living at 22 N. Main Street when these events occurred, in an apartment upstairs in the 3-story building south of the BS Café-Rookwood Speakeasy, with the Ley’s Jeweler Ghost Sign. His mother’s home at 417 N. Wyoming (corner of Copper) is also still there; she probably moved to that location after her husband John “The Rimmer” died—before that, they lived in the last house up the Anaconda Road, a stone’s throw from the Anaconda Mine itself. Frank Walsh, age 24, and his wife lived at 2401 Harvard Avenue, another house that still stands. Officer Mooney’s home, at 919 S. Utah, a half block above St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, is still there as well. Even the duplex at 633 S. Main, where Harry Kinney lived, is still standing. But the sites of the most deadly action, 538 S. Main and 11 S. Oklahoma, are gone.

Officer O’Neill’s portrait is part of the collection of plaques honoring fallen officers, in Dan Hollis’s collection, which can be seen in the City Jail on an Old Butte Historical Adventures walking tour.

Sources: City Directories, Sanborn maps, Montana Standard newspapers Dec. 26-28, 1935.

What was there? Park and Main

By Richard I. Gibson

In the wake of the news that NorthWestern Energy may build a new, large building on the northeast corner of Park and Main, I thought it might be interesting to address what was there.

People who lived in Butte in 1973 will probably remember the huge fire that consumed the Medical Arts Building on July 23. That building (seen in the post-card view above) had dominated the corner since it was finished in 1892.  We also know it as the Owsley Block, for William Owsley who had it built, but technically it was Owsley Block #3. Owsley #2 is the building housing Trimbo’s Pizza today, and Owsley #1 stands to the east of #2, originally the Hoffman Hotel.

Early occupants of Owsley Block #3 included Leys’ jewelry store on the ground floor, and the Butte Business College on the top (fifth) floor. Owsley’s fortune – which also undoubtedly helped him win two elections as Butte’s Mayor, in 1882 and 1884 – was based on his livery business, started in 1874, when Butte was near its low point in terms of population and economy.

Precisely when Owsley obtained the corner lot at Park and Main is not known, but by 1884 he had a massive building there, not brick as his later Owsley Block would be, but a two-story wood frame complex that housed not only his huge livery stable, but also a grocery store, saloon, and lodging house, with a tiny cigar store exactly on the corner. The eastern portion was a two-story hay loft, with stalls for horses on both the ground floor and in the basement below.

The northeast corner of the complex, on the alley, held a carriage house and wash room and dressing rooms for drivers. In 1890, the city fire department’s hose cart and 450-foot hose were kept there—to be relocated soon to the new (1890) city hall and fire station a block north on Broadway. Immediately north of the original Owsley complex, but taken up by the new Owsley Block in 1888-92 was another building that contained the Variety Theater, the Telephone Company, and a tin shop in 1884.

Resources: Lost Butte, Montana, by Richard I. Gibson (The History Press, 2012); Sanborn Maps; City Directories; post card view in Dick Gibson's collection.

Butte’s second deadliest mine disaster

Pennsylvania Mine on southeast flank of the Butte Hill, about 1900.
The headframe is enclosed in the large building at center.
The east end of Park Street is just beyond the long building (ore bin) at right center.

By Richard I. Gibson

Twenty-one men were killed February 14, 1916, in a fire at the Pennsylvania Mine. The Pennsylvania stood at the eastern ends of Broadway and Park Streets, where Parrot Street intersected. That location is within the Berkeley Pit today, about 1,000 feet directly in front of the viewing stand on the rim, as you look across the pit.

In 1916 the Pennsylvania was one of the major mines, with at least 41 separate structures on the site, ranging from an ice house to the two-story, 40-foot-long change house or dry. The mine was established by 1887 by “Sheriff Lloyd, his brother, and the Harris boys” (Butte Miner, Nov. 28, 1888) and sold in early 1888 to the Boston & Montana Company, with the Lewisohn Brothers of New York among the principals. By 1899, the B & M was part of the Amalgamated (Anaconda) and the stage was set for one of the main battles in the War of the Copper Kings.

Amalgamated owed the Pennsylvania and the nearby Michael Davitt, but Augustus Heinze controlled the Rarus, immediately to the northeast. On December 28, 1899, Judge Clancy had decided the Pennsylvania vein was owned by Heinze’s Montana Ore Purchasing Company, setting up additional lawsuits. Ultimately, the Pennsylvania became the scene of some of the actual underground warfare as well as legal wrangling, until 1906 when most of Heinze’s properties were acquired by the Anaconda. See The Battle for Butte for more of this story.

click to enlarge

On February 14, 1916, 220 men were in the Pennsylvania Mine when the fire broke out, probably on the 1200 level near a ventilating fan at an air-shaft station, at about 9:00 p.m. The ultimate cause was never known with certainty. It might have started from an abandoned miner’s candle, or from an electrical short. 195 men were hoisted from the mine within 30 minutes. Five others escaped through the Tramway Mine, whose shaft was nearly a half-mile from the Pennsylvania, and one got out through the Mountain View. Nineteen men were unaccounted for, and were later found suffocated on the 300 level. Two rescuers, wearing Draeger breathing apparatus, also died, probably because the devices were insufficiently charged with oxygen.

The fire was not fully extinguished until April 5. Concrete bulkheads were constructed to protect interconnected mines from the smoke, and extensive mining work was necessary to control the blaze.

Draeger breathing apparatus

Following the Pennsylvania Mine disaster, the Anaconda Company instituted many safety improvements, including installing 2-inch sprinkler lines on all shaft collars, and establishing a new “all out of the mine” signal—nine flashes of all lights, repeated three times, followed by the signal for the level where the danger was located.

Resources: The Battle For Butte, by Michael Malone (U. of Washington Press, 2006, especially pages 144, 168, 172, 179-81); The Underground Battle of the Miners, by C.P. Connolly, McClure’s Magazine, May 1907; The Pennsylvania Mine Fire Butte, Mont., by C.E. Nighman and R.S. Foster, Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, vol. 57, 1918 (source of underground mine map). Nighman was the Fireboss and Foster was the Safety Engineer for the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. Photo of miner with Draeger apparatus at a Pennsylvania coal mine, from Library of Congress, Lewis Hine, photographer, January 1911. Surface photo from A Brief History of Butte, by Harry Freeman, 1900. Post-card view circa 1905.

Iconography in Butte

Stained Glass window in Butte City Hall, 24 East Broadway.

By Richard I. Gibson

Yesterday on a walking tour, an observant student from Glendive, Montana, asked me about the significance of the Star of David in the stained glass in the 1890 City Hall (24 East Broadway). My answer was that it was not religious, but simply a popular geometric design. But the question spurred this inquiry into some iconic designs in historic Butte buildings.

Our buildings have a vast array of icons, from simple and complex artistic designs to emblems identifying a business, a building, or the year one or the other was established. The hexagram in the City Hall’s central upper window reflects a very long heritage. Most religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity have used the symbol, although today it is most closely connected to the Jewish tradition. Heraldry in the Middle Ages employed it. It was even a symbol for the German Brewer’s Guild, and taverns in Nuremburg and elsewhere used it as a mark indicating that they had the legal right to tap beer. Today, some find occult and satanic significance to the hexagram.

Freemasons used the two interlocking triangles of the hexagram as a symbol for “the mingling of apparent opposites in nature, darkness and light, error and truth, ignorance and wisdom, evil and good, throughout human life.” (from Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry). It is possible that a Masonic connection to the builders of the Butte City Hall led to the hexagram in the stained glass, but the simpler explanation is that it is a simple, symmetrical, ancient, and popular geometric design that worked well with the Romanesque architectural style of the building.

* * *

Tile work on Dodge Brothers building, Park Street at Idaho.

Most Butte folks have probably noticed the swastikas in the tile work at the Dodge Brothers Auto Dealership, built in 1912 at the corner of Park and Idaho Streets. The swastika is another ancient design motif, dating to around 3000 B.C. in the Indus Valley Civilization. Apart from modern usage, it is probably most familiar to us today in Sanskrit traditions, where the symbol means “to be good,” or luck, or auspicious. In Chinese, it means “myriad” or eternity. Early Greek coins used the swastika, and Celtic bronze shields dating to about 300 B.C. are covered with them. Native American civilizations, from the Ohio River Valley to the Navajo and Panama employ swastika designs.

In the 1870s archaeological investigations at Troy, by Heinrich Schliemann, captured peoples’ imaginations, and the presence of swastikas there led to a resurgence of their use as design elements in Europe and America that usually symbolized good luck or success, if they symbolized anything. Schliemann’s work also led to the use of the swastika by German Nazis, ultimately stigmatizing the symbol in much of today’s world.

Because the swastikas at the Dodge Brothers building are combined with many other designs, including rampant lions, flowers, and simple geometric patterns, the likely explanation there is also likely pretty mundane: popular, pretty designs that the tile artist used for decorative effect, and little more.

Background information from Wikipedia and other online sources. Photos by Richard Gibson.