Lost Butte, Montana, a book by Richard I. Gibson, is in stores and museum gift shops around Butte. Or order from the publisher. It's also in E-book formats at all the usual places. And read an interview with Gibson, here, and on KXLF here. The Facebook page has many historic photos of Butte, and the Butte-Anaconda NHLD project showcases many historic buildings. Location-oriented posts can be found on HistoryPin. On Mondays beginning in January 2016, look for Gibson's "Mining City History" column in the Montana Standard. Many of these blog posts have been converted to podcast episodes, available at KBMF.



Monday, March 17, 2014

Happy St. Patrick's Day - 1903

From the March 15, 1903, Anaconda Standard. The vignettes are Ross Castle, Killarney (upper right) and The Vale of Avoca (lower left). The artist, Willis Hale Thorndike, was born on Feb. 8, 1872 in Stockton, California, and studied art in San Francisco, Paris and New York. He began his career with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1890. By about 1901 he was in Anaconda, living at the Montana Hotel and working as an illustrator for the Anaconda Standard. He appears to have met and married Irene Hunsicker in Anaconda, and they lived there until they left for New York on January 3, 1904. Back east, Thorndike worked for the New York Herald and Baltimore Sun until 1915 when he returned to California. He worked as a political cartoonist in Los Angeles from 1928 until his death there on March 18, 1940.