Butte

On the way to Butte we stumbled across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site. In 1857 John Grant began laying out a trading post in Deer Lodge Montana to carry on his trade he had learned from his father, a trader with the Hudson’s Bay Company in Alberta. But he was already too late – fur hunting was all but played out by that time, so he began rounding up open range cattle to grow and sell to all the miners moving into the area. He began building in 1862, and by 1868 was ready to move on. He sold the home and land to Conrad Kohrs, a local butcher that had become wealthy getting the cattle raised by Grant ready for the miners.

For 150 years this ranch has had only the two owners. Heirs of Conrad Kohrs eventually sold the ranch to the Park Service when their last relative died who was living in the home. Because of that, the home, with all its furnishings, is just like it looked at the turn of the century. The NPS operates it as an insight for Americans into what open range ranching was like before the influx of people in the early 1900’s. We thoroughly enjoyed our tour of the home and the other ranch features.

In Butte, we were reminded about the namesake of Clark County Nevada. William Andrews Clark amassed a huge number of claims on local silver mines, making him a very rich man. At one point, he owned nearly half the silver claims in the area. However, that wasn’t what eventually made him the richest man in the country at the turn of the century. That was caused by the dense presence of copper ore in his mines, and with the advent of the Industrial Age and the spread of electricity, the price of copper ore went through the roof.

His 34-room mansion built here in 1884 was austere by Clark’s standards, but was the most opulent home in Butte at the time. Given his wealth source, he naturally became the promoter of the local electrical utility, and his home was wired for electricity the day it was built. Our first home in St. Paul was built in 1913, and was not wired for electricity until long after it was built – the gas pipes were still sticking out of our walls that we often used as hooks for wall hangings.

There are 3 Clark homes in Butte. In 1898 William Clark built a home for his son, Charles, as a wedding gift. The standard 3 story mansion with a ballroom taking up the bulk of the 3^rd floor, looks more like a European castle than a Victorian mansion.

The third home was another wedding gift for a child. Peter Clark got a home a bit less opulent than his brother Charles, but still impressive. It turns out that one of Clark’s business ventures resulted in the blossoming of Las Vegas. Despite the transcontinental railroad being available to transport his ore, it stopped in every small town along the way, and took too long. Clark built his own railroad that would carry his ore to its destinations in the East with essentially no stops. However, because of its route, it lacked the support services, even as basic as water. The midpoint of one of the stretches without services fell in Las Vegas, where Clark’s investments brought people galore.

We visited the Dumas Brothel, allegedly the bordello operating continuously the longest in the US. Founded in 1890 to support the exploding mining workforce, the Dumas operated continuously until the closing of the Berkeley Pit on Earth Day in 1982. Despite the fact that prostitution was never legal in the state of Montana, the bordello operated continuously for nearly 100 years.

Apparently, the Red-Light District in Butte covered two complete square blocks during the mining times. The Dumas alone had 34 cribs in which the ladies did their work. Allegedly the Madame would get 60% of the monies paid by the customers to cover the cost of supplying the building, the graft payments to the local police and politicians, and other protection. 40% of what the customer paid went to the lady performing the services.

The building has deteriorated significantly. But even without that impact, this would have been a very seedy feeling location. While the newspaper articles and personal recollections documented here would suggest this was a very upscale setting, it certainly didn’t feel that way to us. However, it was still very interesting.

We visited Our Lady of the Rockies. Conceived as a tribute to his wife with cancer, Bob O’Bill promised the Virgin Mary that he would build a statue of her in his yard if his wife recovered. When she did, he started this project which ended up in being the 4^th tallest statue in the US. Only 4 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty, had they thought about it, I am sure they would have made her 5 feet taller.

Essentially on the Continental Divide, the 90-foot-tall statue hangs 3,500 hundred feet above Butte, and 8,500 feet above sea level. Begun in 1979, Our Lady was finally completed on December 17, 1985. The views of her from Butte are cool. But the views from her of the Butte valley are stunning!

We learned that due to the mining, Butte was a true melting pot of the world, where anyone with mining skills were welcome. Because of this, all nationalities were welcome, as well as cultural beliefs. This Serbian church was erected in the late 1800’s – sadly it was not open the days we were here.

This Jewish orthodox synagogue sat among the Irish Catholic, Protes

tant, Chinese and other ethnic worshiping places. Apparently, much of the renewed ethnic conflict we are seeing in the early days of the Trump presidency were never present in the Butte mining days.

We visited one site of perhaps the most polluted US industrial byproducts. As I mentioned, mining operations in the Berkeley Pit resumed until 1982 when its operators determined they could not profit by further operations. They petitioned the EPA asking to turn off the pumps that kept the pit dry of ground water. The EPA agreed, and on Earth Day in 1982, they turned off the pumps. Since then, the water in the pit has risen about one foot per month, the heavy metal laden acidic water will reach the water tables in Butte in the next 5-10 years.

The water in the pit is so toxic that when birds land on it,

they may not ever leave. On November 30, 2016, a weather inversion forced 20,000 Canadian geese to land on the water at Berkeley Pit. When they left, only about 16,0000 were able to take off. The rest never made it, due to the toxicity of the water. Locals claim the US Government asserts they have the issue under control, but few of the locals actually believe it.

We learned that motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel was born in Butte. Allegedly, when incarcerated in the Butte jail for inebriation, Robert Knievel happened to be there when another chap, Awful Knofel, happened to be in the drunk tank as well. When a joking officer told locals he’d had his hands full the night before with “Awful Knofel and Evel Knievel”, the nickname stuck for the rest of his life. We visited his gravesite at Mountainview Cemetery in Butte. While we were there, a Harley rider came up to pay his respects as well – how fitting.

Now to make our way to Jackson Wyoming for the Eclipse – you maybe have heard something about it lately.

Talk to you soon!