Heaviest locomotive in the world - or maybe not quite!

By Richard I. Gibson

In February 1901, Butte and Anaconda were abuzz with the announcement of the arrival of a new engine for the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railway. The “mastodon hog,” No. 19. was built by the Schenectady Company for the express purpose of hauling ore from Butte to the then new smelter being built in Anaconda.

Here are her specs:

Gauge: 4 feet, 8½ inches
Cylinders: low pressure, 34-inch diameter, 32-inch stroke
High pressure, 23-inch diameter, 32-inch stroke
Drivers: 56-inch diameter
Wheel base: 26 feet 9 inches
Engine weight: 110 tons
Water and Coal load: 54 tons (5,500 gallons of water, 10 tons bituminous coal)
Front sheet of steel boiler, 84-inch diameter
Boiler pressure: 210 pounds of steam per square inch
Boiler sheet thickness: one inch (average heretofore, five-eighths inch)
Boiler tubes: 414 1¼-inch tubes

The smokestack was cast iron, engine frames were hammered iron, and piston rods were made of Cambria steel hardened by the Coffin process. The tires were Krupp crucible steel four inches thick. The drive springs were installed by the A. French Spring Company. The cab was wood, with steel running boards. The whole engine was painted “B.A. &  P. standard black.” She had two Dressel headlights 16 inches in diameter.

The first test run, under the command of Engineer Tipton, was accompanied by the builder’s agent, L.S. Watres, Master Mechanic Harrity, and an Anaconda Standard reporter. The engine traveled from Anaconda to Rocker pulling 41 cars. The engine’s maximum capacity was rated at 60 cars of ore totaling 4000 tons, which it could pull at 30 miles per hour.

The engine came in on the Great Northern Line, and its size proved a problem in many places where bridges were too low for it to pass. They had to lower the stack in order to do so. It jumped the track at Minot, North Dakota, the only serious incident en route to Anaconda.

“Elaborate and complete in every detail, the new freight engine marks a new epoch in freight hauling in the United States, and especially in the transmission of ore in mining states to the smelters.”

But within a dozen years, the B.A. & P. was moving from steam locomotives to electrical systems, erecting the first heavy-haul electric railway in the world. No. 19 was sold to the General Equipment Company of New York City on July 24, 1917. General Equipment in turn sold it to the Peñoles Mining Company in Mexico. It was probably scrapped by the late 1940s.

Primary source: Anaconda Standard, February 3, 1901. See also Wired For Success, by Charles Mutschler (WSU Press, 2002).

What Was There? Colorado at Porphyry

By Richard I. Gibson

A version of this post also appears on the site of the Pasta Institute of Technology.

The southwest corner of Colorado and Porphyry Streets has been a vacant lot since the mid-1950s. What was there? Well, just the largest macaroni factory in the West.

Savin Lisa was born in Turin, Italy, July 7, 1858. He came to America at age 15 and worked in the mines of Michigan’s Copper Country for about 6 years, when he came to Butte in 1879. In Butte, he worked in the mines for a few years, but found his calling as a merchant. By the late 1880s he was running a successful grocery business with the main store at 63 East Park. He expanded into the macaroni manufacturing business with a small factory in Great Falls in 1898. It was so successful that he needed a larger facility and a better transportation system, so he established the Imperial Paste Manufacturing and Mercantile Company in Butte in 1901. Spelled “paste,” the Italian word was pronounced pasta.

With $50,000 capital, Lisa built the 3-story Lisa Block at 401 S. Colorado in 1901. The first floor contained a corner store together with the macaroni factory. The upper levels held offices and lodgings, including Lisa’s own residence, together with other aspects of the factory such as the drying room, to which the pasta was taken by elevator. The building was directly west across Colorado Street from the Garfield School, at the corner of Colorado and Porphyry. In the early 1950s a coffee roasting business was in the building, and by 1957 the corner had become the vacant lot that it is today.

In 1902, the new factory was touted as “the largest and best-equipped macaroni factory in the West,” the closest to the sources of raw material (wheat from North Dakota) and with a large, ready market (Butte). The Great Falls facility produced 300 pounds of product a day, but the Butte operation was up to 2,500 pounds a day within a year of opening and reportedly had the capacity for considerable expansion. The Anaconda Standard reported that there was only one other macaroni manufacturer in the United States with the capacity of the Imperial Paste Company. The company had presses to make traditional macaroni, “fine threads (vermicelli),” lozenges, stars, disks, ellipses, and “other fanciful forms,” and also produced three kinds of spaghetti, ave maria pasta (small, short cylinders), and alphabet macaroni.

The factory did not use Butte city water, but rather relied on water from Oro Fino Springs, north of town.

Savin Lisa continued as the company treasurer, but by 1902 the president was Abraham Yoder and the Vice President was David Charles. Charles also had a gent’s furnishings store at 905 E. Front Street, and in 1907 he established and became president of the Miners Savings Bank and Trust, with offices on Park Street. Lisa was prominent in Butte’s business circles and active in men’s social clubs. He started Butte’s Christoforo Colombo Society, the Italian lodge comparable to the Irish Knights of Columbus. He was also a 32nd-degree Mason, an Elk, a Knight of Pythias, and a Shriner. If that wasn’t enough, he was an elected Silver Bow County Commissioner for three years, and served as the Italian consul for Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Lisa was the Butte representative for several trans-Atlantic steamship lines. A busy man!

Resources: Anaconda Standard, June 1, 1902; Progressive Men of Montana; Sanborn Maps; city directory for 1902.

What Was There? Excelsior at Caledonia

By Richard I. Gibson

The little triangular tract bounded by Excel, Caledonia, and the walking trail (former BA&P Railroad bed) has an interesting history. In 1891, the area around Excelsior was platted, but few homes had been built. Andrew Jackson Davis’s twin-sister homes at Granite and Excelsior were a year old, anchoring burgeoning upscale development along Granite and Broadway, but west of Excel and north of Granite there were only nine homes in the area north to Copper and west to Henry, and three of those were little shacks.

By 1900, Silver Bow County (mostly what we think of as Butte today) had more than doubled its 1890 population, from 23,000 to 48,000. The west side was growing, and in the same area, Granite to Copper and Excel to Henry, there were 37 houses, including five large two-story structures. West of Henry was more sporadic, but homes were popping up there, as well as to the north along Caledonia.

The growing west side was served by its own fire station beginning in 1901. It stood in the angle between Caledonia and Excel that was cut by the BA&P railroad. The photo here, from 1901, shows the fire station in its last stages of construction – it still bears the sign reading “this work is being done by Howard L. Hines, Contractor.” The view looks north from Caledonia, with the railroad crossing on Excel at right rear. Map

By 1916 the station had one hose wagon, an 1100-foot 2½-inch hose (made of first class cotton), two 400-foot second class cotton hoses, and was staffed by 6 men on two shifts, supported by two horses.

In 1951, the building together with the railroad tower house behind it was still standing, but was in use as an auto repair shop. In 1957 it was gone.

Image taken from p. 43 of Souvenir history of the Butte Fire Department (1901) by Peter Sanger, Chief Engineer, scanned by Butte Public Library.