Smells of Butte

By Richard I. Gibson

Geologists know that rocks have distinctive smells. Probably not enough to take your identification to the bank, but when you break granite it smells differently than limestone or sandstone. We might not know for sure what it is, blindfolded, but we’d know they are different. And wet smashed granite doesn’t smell the same as hot dry granite.

Butte must have accosted the world with its smells. I can imagine that the early stamp mills – smashing rocks – must have generated a really distinctive dust smell, and if it was winter, or raining, it would have been just that much different. People notice these things, in the town where they live, where they know its cycles and systems.

If you lived at 401 North Wyoming, at the foot of the Anaconda Road, would you smell the thousands of men pouring down the Road every eight hours – even if they’d showered in the dry, even if they were picky about keeping their street clothes clean?

It’s inconceivable to me that at least in spring and summer, walking past the dozen groceries on Park Street, that you wouldn’t be drawn by the citrus scent of imported oranges and grapefruit, piled on the sidewalk stands. By the fresh lettuce and tomatoes, by the bread – Oh, the fresh-baked bread!

And the restaurants! So many, so varied! What tantalizing aromas must have enticed the miner, the haberdasher, the clerk, the teacher! The complicated blending of Greek, of Italian, of Serbian, of boiled cabbage, must have been unidentifiable, but memorable. Your grandparents, your great-grandparents could probably be transported to a spot in Butte in a particular time if those molecules could be blended again. Like the smell of an old window screen after a summer rain, evoking the scenes of childhood. Like a circus memory, the smell of cotton candy and roasting peanuts and elephant dung and acrobats’ sweat. Smells of Butte.

There’s no such thing today, but it’s not all gone. You can walk down the block of Park east of Montana at certain times, when the Renfrows are roasting coffee at Tap 'Er Light and Chuck is doing something in Quarry Brewing that sends more aroma than usual into the air. It’s usually late morning, on a not-too-cold day, with just enough breeze, probably 2.7 miles per hour, to move the scents around. It doesn’t smell like coffee or like beer. It smells like Park Street east of Montana.

Three days in the life

… of a Butte tour guide/historian

by Richard I. Gibson

Woke up, got out of bed, Dragged a comb across my head…

Well, no. I haven’t needed a comb for decades. Here’s what really happened:

Some of the 2,500 artifacts in the Wah Chong Tai.

On Saturday I met a Chinese family at the Mai Wah Museum (it’s closed for the season, but we always try to accommodate people if we can find a volunteer to show them around). The parents had owned and operated a Chinese restaurant in Bend, Oregon, for many years, and they drove to Jackson, Wyoming, to pick up their daughter to bring up to Butte. None had been here before; they were in search of the grave of the daughter’s great-grandfather who lived here in the late 1940s.

I had tracked down a bit of information for them about the ancestor: he worked as an attendant at the Milwaukee Road depot (today’s KXLF) and lived across Montana Street at the Mueller Hotel (still standing) when he died in December 1950 and was buried in Mt. Moriah cemetery. They came to the Mai Wah to learn more about the Chinese experience in Butte. They provided some translations of Chinese labels for us (the parents are native Chinese), and I know they enjoyed the tour, but the line of the day came from the father, who said, “Well, this WAS worth driving 1,000 miles for.”

The Federal Building included the Butte post office in 1904.

On Sunday, another spectacular fall day, at Park and Main I met a woman from Boston who came to Butte to get a feel for the way things were here in 1900. She had my book, Lost Butte, but wanted more specifics to better characterize the experience of a character (a carpenter) in a novel she is writing. Butte is not the primary setting for the story, but important enough for her to visit to improve the tale’s veracity. We spent an hour and a half walking the streets, great fun for me too, and she gave me a question for further research: If today’s Federal Building on North Main was the main post office when it opened in 1904, where was the post office before that? I didn’t know, but it will be easy to determine (thanks to the Archives!). Note added later: in 1900, the P.O. was in the Goldsoll Block at 30-32 E. Broadway, just east of the City Hall.

And Monday morning I spent in a listening and discussion session with about 15 locals, including MainStreet/Folk Festival representatives, hotel folks, Tina from the Mining Museum, guest ranch operators, Forest Service people, and others. We attended a meeting hosted by the Montana Tourism Advisory Council and the Montana Office of Tourism, charged with devising a new 5-year strategic plan for tourism in Montana. Lots of ideas came out of it; my notes have a greater-than-usual number of stars (personal action items) ranging from web site stuff to educational programs I might help facilitate.

On the way to dinner at the Metals Bank, I stopped off at the Quarry to deliver a copy of Lost Butte to Erik, and encountered Cindy Gaffney, who is working on a project to bring a noted cheese maker from the Beara Peninsula of Ireland to Butte for next year’s An Ri Ra. Ultimately, Cindy would like to establish a cottage business using Butte mines as aging caves for Irish cheese, another link re-connecting Butte with ancestral Allihies Ireland.

Monday dinner was with a family who came to Butte from Pasadena, CA, and Connecticut. Harry had my book and when he called last week to set up the dinner, said it brought back fond memories of his time in Butte – in 1945, here for a few months when he was mustering into the Navy. He stayed in the dorm at the School of Mines and was befriended by a great many people here in Butte, so much so that it made a lasting impression on him. His unit marched in the V-J Parade here in August before he departed to lead his life elsewhere. This was his first visit in quite some time – the trip to Butte was essentially an 85th birthday present to Harry from his family. Tuesday he’s meeting with the Tech Alumni Foundation (Michael Barth) and with Chad Okrusch (he has Matt and Chad’s book, too). The family came to Butte because it was remarkable in 1945, and still is, as we all know. The dinner with Harry, his wife, and their son and daughter was as delightful as possible, a really memorable, truly Butte occasion for me. I can’t share Butte like a Butte native, but I sure can and do share Butte.  

If I ever act like I’m bored, or as if I have an uninteresting life, slap me down.

Wah Chong Tai photo by Dick Gibson; Post Office image is public domain from gsa.gov via Wikipedia.

I'm not from Butte

By Richard I. Gibson

I’m not from here, but I live here. According to many locals, I’ll never be from here, and the differential between “native” and “outsider” is sometimes intense enough to feel. And sometimes there’s no differentiation at all: there is no one Butte, and no one characterization of its people.

But whether or not I’m from here, I still thrill with wonder on a subzero night, walking down Park Street past the Mother Lode Theater, where ice crystals sift down like glittering columns in the narrow spotlights above the multicolored Masonic symbols. I can imagine (only imagine) what it was like to have an ore train pass within arm’s length of your house, as I walk along the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railroad trail, as I capture in the sweep of one eye the Immaculate Conception Church spire, the Desperation Fan Tower, and the century-old M on Big Butte. The pigeons still congregate atop the Desperation as it breathes warm air out from the depths of the Anselmo Mine which it served.

300 block of North Main (1942): all gone.
Library of Congress.

I walk down North Idaho Street, Mary MacLane’s “surprising steep Idaho Street hill,” in the footsteps of 3,000 mourners who followed Tom Manning’s casket from Scanlon’s house, now gone from the 300 block three blocks from my own home, to the cemetery, honoring his death at the hands of the Company in the Anaconda Road Massacre a few blocks to the east. Here and there, until the road crews patch them, trolley tracks emerge through worn asphalt. They recall summer Thursdays, childrens’ days at Columbia Gardens when kids rode the trolley for free for a day of wonder and freedom and fun. Trolleys last rode those rails in 1937, but the streets themselves reek of Butte’s history.

A few cracked and patterned sidewalks still bear the imprint “City of Butte 1910.” Were these the very pavements that Carrie Nation trod with her Prohibition fervor that year? Or did Emma Goldman, “the most dangerous woman in America,” an anarchist arrested in connection with William McKinley’s assassination, but later released—did Emma Goldman walk here on her way to the Carpenter’s Union Hall to speak on “the white slave trade” in 1910?

There’s a new building replacing Maguire’s Opera House where Mark Twain and Charlie Chaplin performed, a new building built in 1914. There’s a new building at the corner of Granite and Main, where Dr. Beal’s Centennial Hotel, opened on July 4, 1876, once stood. We call that new 1897 building the Hennessy, and it was headquarters for the Anaconda Company for three-quarters of a century.

Can you hear men’s voices on North Wyoming Street, where the Finlander Hall stood? On a hot August night listen carefully, and you might hear bits of “Solidarity Forever,” echoing down the decades from a similar August night in 1917 when Frank Little spoke at the Finlander and was dragged to his death from the boarding house next door. The song’s voices are accented, out of tune, but unified in their vision. Or go a block north and listen for the murmur of a thousand tired men pouring down the Anaconda Road at shift change. Of all the things that Butte has lost, and there are many, the sounds, the noise, the din of mines, machinery, mules, and the traffic of people in motion and busy and active is one of the most noticeable. Many are the old-timers who had no watch, but knew the time from the mine whistles, each with its own signature sound and direction. Even today, the silent headframes and the lay of the land make it a challenge to get lost in Butte, at least geographically: headframes, Highlands, Big Butte, and East Ridge define your position better than a map. Getting lost in time in Butte—that’s another matter. That’s pretty easy, for people who are from here, and for people like me, who are not.

Stephens Hotel turret, Park and Montana.
Library of Congress.

Can you smell the noodle parlor aromas in Chinatown? You might, because one of the three survivors in Chinatown is the Pekin, still in operation after a century and still in the same family. Especially in China Alley behind the Pekin tantalizing spices grab your attention—but don’t forget this alley was also a scene of death, a shootout that took several lives during the tong wars in 1922. Nothing in Butte is one dimensional.

Can you smell the open sewer that ran through the Cabbage Patch and the East Side? No, it’s long gone, and there are nice new buildings straddling its old location east of Arizona. But look around with 1884 eyes and you’ll see the ditch, a flowing stream for a while, that came out of Dublin Gulch, provided some water to the Butte Brewery on North Wyoming, then continued south to Silver Bow Creek. All filled and paved and gone now—unlike the gulch that came south from the Original Mine, east of the Court House, through the heart of town. That one is paved over, but not gone: the 10-foot-high 1884 culvert that channeled the flow to the subsurface still serves Butte, and was under repair in 2012.

A hundred stables dotted central Uptown Butte in 1884. No smells there, of course.

Can you smell the arsenical fumes that came from open fires, smelters for Butte’s first ores? No, but you may find arsenic in your yard or in your attic. Don’t eat the dirt. Bladder cancer killed my dog, and between them two veterinarians knew of seven cases of canine bladder cancer, all from Butte.

On any Uptown corner, be prepared to be jostled by ghosts in their thousands. Watch out for the ladies in their tight bodices, come to watch the million-dollar-fire on Park Street in 1905, or the crowd that gathered for a similar fire a block west on Park Street in 1972. Or enjoy the camaraderie of ghostly folks out and about, taking care of business, shopping for anything, everything that money could buy, anywhere in the United States—Butte had it. High-end Everitt cars? Yes, in 1910, when it “costs but $1,900” from Tom Angell’s dealership at 10 North Wyoming. I can see folks taking that test drive down Wyoming to Park, certainly turning right or left since another block or two would take them into the red-light district. But even a well-paid miner earning $3.50 a day probably saw owning the Everitt as a pipe dream.

Can you taste the food of thirty nations? Grapefruit in winter? Certainly, from any of a dozen different grocers even in the 1890s. Italian specialties from Savin Lisa’s stores on East Park; solid meat and potatoes in Irish boarding houses, from the Florence Hotel’s dining room that seated 400 to Mary Buckley’s house in Corktown where 30 men gathered to a meal; Cornish pasties in a Walkerville miner’s lunch bucket, and tamales, chop suey, Greek mixtures, and homemade – take your pick.

Butte accosts the senses, all of them. Feel the winter wind cut down an alley, or a moist spring breeze filled with promise, even though there may be snow on the ground in June or July. Those winds blow on to Ireland and Cornwall and Lebanon and China and your families left behind. Does that make it easier to work with the death and dirt of the mines? There’s something this outsider can’t really know.

No, I’m not from here, but Butte is in my blood and brains, and it will never go away.