Happy New Year!

In Butte, the 2013 Mai Wah Chinese New Year Parade will be Saturday February 16.

By Richard I. Gibson

Most of my readers will be familiar with the discrimination and prejudice against the Chinese in 19th Century Butte and throughout the west. How did the Butte Chinese community survive?

The Butte Bystander, an unabashedly pro-union newspaper, supported efforts at boycotting the Chinese.

The climate in Butte by the middle 1890s was profoundly anti-Chinese. William Owsley, a prominent businessman who owned one of the largest livery and transfer companies in Montana, was elected Butte Mayor in 1884 in part through his campaign slogan, “Down with cheap Chinese labor.” The strongest of multiple attempts to remove the Chinese developed in 1896-97. Tensions had escalated so that union elements in Butte organized a boycott of businesses employing Chinese – not just Chinese businesses, but also non-Chinese. A boardinghouse owner who used Chinese laundries might be targeted, or a restaurant with Chinese dishwashers. In Anaconda, a building owner refused to renew a lease to a Chinese restaurant, losing $150 a month in income.

It is possible that one reason the boycott more or less failed is that the non-Chinese who used Chinese labor refused to give in to union pressures, even when they were named in newspaper advertisements admonishing the public to boycott them. Eva Althoff, proprietor of a boardinghouse, threatened to sue the union. The white community in Butte used Chinese establishments, from laundries and noodle parlors to herbal doctors and opium dens. Also, the size of the Chinese community could have been a stumbling block. While the official census population of Chinese in Butte peaked at around 400, Rose Hum Lee, Butte native and expert on western U.S. Chinatowns, estimated a peak population closer to 2,500.

And the business savvy of Butte’s Chinese cannot be discounted. Hum Fay, Dear Yick, Hum Tong and Dr. Huie Pock led 215 additional Chinese complainants, including only one business, the Wah Chong Tai Co., in a law suit against Frank Baldwin and 21 others. They ultimately won, but were only awarded $1,750.05 in court costs while losing $500,000 in business; about 350 Chinese did leave Butte. 1896 is a low point in the counts of Butte’s Chinese businesses, with 14 laundries, compared to a peak in the 1890s of 31 [Lost Butte, p. 44]. The numbers slowly rose over the following years.

Resources: Vertical Files at Montana Historical Society Archives (Gibson’s research there supported by MHS Dave Walter Fellowship); multiple issues of the Butte Bystander (available online; source of images); Vertical Files at Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives; Mai Wah Museum files. The information above will be incorporated into the forthcoming Chinn Family Exhibit at the Mai Wah Museum.

Oh, those 1920s prices!

By Richard I. Gibson

In 2013, the Chinese New Year comes a bit later than in recent years, beginning on February 10. In Butte the Parade will be on Saturday February 16, starting at 3:00 p.m. at the Court House. Join the Mai Wah for the world’s shortest, loudest, and coldest (we’ll see about that) parade, which Reader’s Digest declared one of the six “most interesting processions in America.”

In honor of Chinese New Year, I’ll have a couple posts about Butte’s Chinatown.


The menu here (click the pics to enlarge), from the Mai Wah Collection and used by permission, probably dates to the 1920s or 1930s on the basis of prices and the four-digit phone number. In its earliest years the top-floor Mai Wah Noodle Parlor was managed by Chinese not connected with the Chinn Family that operated the Wah Chong Tai Mercantile on the first floor. That was important for the merchants, to enable them to remain immune to the impacts of the Exclusionary Acts, which targeted laborers, laundry workers, and restaurant workers.

By the time this menu was printed by McGee Printing on Granite Street, all the businesses in the Mai Wah-Wah Chong Tai buildings were probably under the purview of the Chinns. Chin On ran the Wah Chong Tai until about 1932, when his fellow Taishanese countryman Chin Yee Fong took over. Chin Yee Fong had arrived in the U.S. in 1905, age about 16. He was the son of Chin On’s partner in the Wah Chong Tai, and he worked as the assistant bookkeeper while attending Garfield School and for many years thereafter.

When Chin Yee Fong became the manager, he was using the Americanized name Albert Chinn, and he became a prominent and important businessman in Butte. His large family—nine surviving children of ten, all but one born in Butte—was eventually scattered across the U.S. His son Howard, at one time the Mai Wah Noodle Parlor Manager, had a long career as a restaurateur in Minneapolis. Son William stayed in Butte and lived at the Mai Wah for a time, then rented it to Paul Eno whose fix-it shop was there for many years. William Chinn was an electronics technician in Butte; he died in 1980.

You’ll find much, much more about the Chinn family in the Mai Wah’s upcoming exhibit on their lives and times. I’m preparing the exhibit, with support from the Montana Historical Society’s Dave Walter Research Fellowship (to me) and the Montana Cultural Trust (to the Mai Wah). It should be in place this summer.

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.

100 years ago today

Photo from Library of Congress, HABS/HAER collection, 1979.

February 7 marks the centennial of Lutey’s Marketeria in the Stephens Block at Park and Montana. It was the first self-serve grocery store in the United States.

Lutey’s stores were established initially in Granite (now a ghost town) in 1889. Joseph Lutey moved the operation to Philipsburg in 1895 and finally into Butte in 1897, where he and his sons built it into one of the largest grocery chains in Montana.

Joseph Lutey was a Cornishman, born in the village of Morvah, about 8 miles from Land’s End at the far southwest tip of Great Britain, on Christmas Day 1849. He came from a family of yeoman farmers and tinners, inasmuch as this part of Cornwall boasts both agricultural country and tin mines. Joseph’s own background was in mining; he came to the United States in 1868 (age 19) and worked the mines of New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Nevada before landing in Montana at Granite in 1887.

The first Butte store was at 47 West Park (the Thomas Block). Joseph died in 1911 and the business continued under his sons until about 1924. The Marketeria was prominently located at 142-144 West Park, at the corner of Montana in the Stephens Block that still marks this corner (Hilltop Market today). The ghost sign shown here is on the south façade of that building.

The 2007 Chinatown Archaeological Dig (financial support from the Butte URA; exhibit at the Mai Wah supported by the Montana State Historical Society and Mai Wah volunteers) uncovered a large broken crock advertising Lutey’s “fine pickles and pure vinegar” from the c. 1920 Chinese trash midden at the dig site, in the vacant lot south of Mercury and east of Colorado Street.

The Lutey’s self-service grocery was the model for Piggly Wiggly stores, the first widespread self-service chain in the U.S. You’ll find rich detail on the Lutey’s stores in Kent Lutey’s article “Lutey Brothers Marketeria,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 28 (1978): 50-57.

At the Mission

By Richard I. Gibson

In honor of Chinese New Year, today's post is about Chinatown. Don't miss the Parade, starting at 3:00 Saturday Feb. 4, at the Court House. It's audience participation, with a reception and firecrackers at the end at the Mai Wah Museum.

Click to enlarge

The Butte Chinese Baptist Mission stood at 24 West Mercury from about 1900 until about 1946.

The 1919 photo here of a group inside the Mission, from the Mai Wah collection and used by permission, was donated by Dr. James Chung of Los Angeles. It is part of a collection of photos related to Dr. Wah J. Lamb, one of seven Chinese physicians practicing in Butte in 1918. Lamb’s office then was at 116 E. Mercury, and he and his family lived at 1107 S. Wyoming; by 1928 he was at 46 E. Galena and by 1940 he was retired and living in Los Angeles. The photo includes several of his children: Faith, front left; and Esther and Ruth, middle of center row.

The lady at left center is Mrs. Wong Cue, a tailor whose shop was at 103 S. Main; her husband, also a tailor, was arrested in 1929 by the Helena sheriff for possessing $30,000 worth of cocaine and morphine. At right in the middle row is Mrs. Bracken, wife of the superintendent.

The 2007 Butte Archaeological Dig, sponsored by the Butte-Silver Bow Urban Revitalization Agency, uncovered thousands of artifacts from the vacant block that once included the Chinese Baptist Mission. The most important of those artifacts are now on display at the Mai Wah Museum.