After attending Fisk University in Tennessee, Lee Pleasant Driver enlisted in the Twenty-fifth U.S. Colored Infantry in 1888. The twenty-five-year-old private, who soon advanced to corporal, served at Forts Keogh (Miles City) and Missoula. He was one of the famed “buffalo soldiers,” who patrolled the frontier following the Civil War. Driver remained in Montana after his 1891 discharge, moving to Anaconda four years later. By 1902, he had opened a club room on Main Street, where he also sold cigars and liquor. Around 1909, he moved his establishment to 106 Commercial, expanding into 104 Commercial the following year. Anaconda had approximately 125 African American residents in 1910, and Driver’s Saloon and Club Rooms served as the community’s male social center. Among the organizations that met in his club rooms was the Negro Republican Club; members elected Driver president at their inaugural meeting in 1910. Driver closed the saloon by 1915, and two years later he and his wife Pearl moved their family to a 274-acre homestead ten miles east of Anaconda.
]]>The Lewis and Clark Caverns Headquarters building, designed by National Park Service architect O. John Ballas and built by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews in 1938, is a model example of the Rustic or “Parkitecture” style. Drawing on Arts and Crafts design ideals, architects working in western parks in the 1920s and 1930s used native materials, low horizontal forms, and earth-tone colors reflective of the natural environment. In Montana, architects Robert Reamer, Kirtland Cutter, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, and Thomas McMahon led the movement in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. Their designs translated well in this region where use of native log and stone was a natural extension of settlement building patterns. CCC crews, commissioned under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal jobs program, quarried lichen-encrusted limestone from Cave Mountain for the massive tapered stone porch piers, chimney, and fireplace. These elements, along with cedar shingles on the clipped gable roof, rough-sawn tongue-and-groove siding, and exposed-wood interior trusses show the skill and talent of Ballas and the ability of CCC crews to harmonize the built and natural worlds in this rugged mountain landscape.
]]>President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to bring the United States out of the Great Depression put millions of men to work and transformed local, state, and national public lands. While New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) are best known for their efforts to preserve and restore ecosystems on public land, the CCC also devoted millions of dollars and man-hours to building roads, trails, and buildings on the same lands they sought to preserve. Between 1934 and 1941, CCC crews built over 100,000 miles of roads and trails, developed 52,000 acres of campgrounds, and built hundreds of shelters, cabins, and outbuildings, including over 2,400 “comfort stations” (bathrooms) nationwide. Camp Cavern CCC crews used plans by National Park Service (NPS) architect O. John Ballas to build this Rustic style comfort station in 1938. The building’s massive native granite walls and log rafters, natural hillside setting, and widely separated men’s and women’s entrances aptly reflect design ideals promoted in NPS publications between 1934 and 1965.
]]>Deer hunters first brought the spectacular system of subterranean caverns within Cave Mountain to public attention in 1898. Noticing steam flowing from a natural vent, they discovered passageways and voids filled with striking geological formations. By 1901, local quarry owner Dan Morrison had enlarged the entrance, built 2,000 wooden steps into the caverns, and begun offering guided tours of Morrison Cave. Early tours, guided with ropes and torches, were primitive. Even after federal designation as a national monument in 1908, the caves remained difficult to access. Other cave systems in the United States developed under the National Park Service in the 1920s and 1930s, and Montana state officials petitioned the federal government for aid in 1934. In 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps—a New Deal federal jobs program—established Company 574 and Camp Cavern near Whitehall. Over the next six years, more than 200 crew members, along with a geologist, architect, and engineers, transformed access to the caves. Inside, crews repaired stairways, improved passages, opened new caverns, installed lighting, blasted a 538‐foot exit tunnel, and mapped the cavern. Outside, they built a steep and winding 3.2-mile access road, a granite bridge, maintenance shop, new trails, an overlook deck, and three Rustic style buildings. While still under construction in 1937, the caverns were officially transferred to state ownership, becoming Montana’s first state park well before Montana had a state parks system. The 1940 Montana Legislature authorized creation of the state parks system, and on May 4, 1941 three thousand people attended the caverns’ grand opening.
]]>Contractor A. M. Walker constructed this simple one-story brick commercial block for department store owner S. C. Adams in 1902. Though Adams did not pay to embellish the exterior of the building, he did spend lavishly on advertising and events. His window displays included oriental rugs and mannequins, and on opening day crowds of gawkers waited outside for the store to open. Inside, a band surrounded by palm trees played in the center of the store, and the cashiers served punch. To drum up business in 1903, Adams staged an expensive campaign to sell union clothing by distributing 1,800 union-made cigars and store flyers to men at the smelter. The stunt worked, but Adams sold the store in 1905 to open a Butte store. Soon after, Adams declared bankruptcy. By 1906, department store giants, the Strain Brothers, moved their Anaconda store here. Strain’s operated large stores in Great Falls, Billings, and Helena with the motto “You Can Always Do Better at the Big Store.” Strain’s closed in 1933 but the building continued to house various department stores, including Montgomery Ward and Schwartz’s.
]]>Contractor John Jacobson built this brick store and boardinghouse in 1915, during a time of rapid commercial and residential expansion in Anaconda. Downtown Anaconda property owners developed every square foot of their lots during this boom, remodeling storefronts, adding second-story lodging, or starting fresh with modern two-story masonry buildings. Jacobson’s upstairs rooms housed a steady stream of single men, while a wide variety of short-lived businesses occupied the first-floor storefront. In January 1916, Israel M. Citron opened The Economy Store, offering men’s and boy’s clothing and shoes. Citron went out of business the same year, and Orton Bros. Pianos opened for a few months. Gibson Studio offered portrait photography in 1918, but left by 1919, leaving only the painted sign outside on the west wall. Other brief tenants included two grocery stores, a meat market, and an ice dealer. William Schmidt, who worked for Sullivan Plumbing next door at 404, changed the tide of renters. He established Schmidt Plumbing here in 1928, and even after his retirement in 1972, his son Carl continued the plumbing business here until the mid-1980s.
]]>Butte architect James Calloway Teague designed this commercial and warehouse building in 1915 to house James O’Leary’s Feed Store. Teague’s design is simple in comparison to the more exuberant buildings on Park and Commercial Avenues. Nevertheless, soldier (standing) courses above and below common-bond (staggered) courses add tasteful decoration, as do the recessed square panels in the parapet. For thirty-five years O’Leary sold hay, grain, coal, and gasoline from this location. Born in Ireland, he arrived in Anaconda in 1895 and, three years later, served in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. He married French-Canadian Exilda Beausoleil in 1902 and together they raised ten children. In 1919, O’Leary joined with other fuel dealers in town to publish a full-page Anaconda Standard advertisement encouraging citizens to purchase Liberty Bonds to support the war effort. By 1930, the O’Learys’ daughter Margaret had joined the business as a bookkeeper and son Harry drove the delivery truck. After James’s death in 1950, Harry ran the store until 1957. Other businesses renting at number 110 included a barber, lawyer, real estate agend and an undertaking parlor.
]]>The masonry buildings in the heart of Walkerville reflect the town’s nineteenth-century silver-mining roots. Mining investors, the Walker Brothers of Salt Lake, and future copper king Marcus Daly began developing silver mines here in 1876. Joseph Broughton, another Salt Lake investor, likely built this substantial brick general store in 1880. By 1883, John Caplice and Alfred McCune acquired the building and in 1884 emblazoned “Caplice & McCune” high on the south wall. Silver markets slumped in 1893, and by 1897, St. Lawrence Catholic Church, a branch of St. Patrick’s in Uptown Butte, temporarily held services here while building a new church nearby. It later used the building to house St. Joseph’s Parochial School. In 1905, Mount Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church acquired and remodeled the building, adding pointed arch windows in the auditorium, a central meeting room, and a rear, six-room apartment for the pastor. The congregation was always small compared to Mountain View Methodist in Uptown Butte, and for many years it shared pastors with Centerville, Silver Bow Park, Wesley Chapel, and Meaderville. Despite their limited numbers, Walkerville Methodists worshipped here until 1972.
]]>The well-preserved Thorsen Brothers Grocery building is a classic example of an early-twentieth-century commercial building. The decorative brick parapet made the building look larger and offered ample room for signage, while tall display windows brought in daylight and provided a spacious platform for displaying merchandise. Norwegian immigrants Knute and Tandrup Thorsen opened a grocery nearby in 1904 and had this building constructed in 1914. After Knute went into ranching in 1916, Tandrup and his son Ralph continued to run the store. Tandrup retired in 1955, a forty-year veteran of Anaconda’s competitive grocery field. When he started out, the town boasted twenty-two groceries. By 1925, twelve grocery stores operated on East Park Avenue alone, with forty stores operating city wide. Forty-nine stores offered groceries in 1930, including the “self-service” Piggly Wiggly and the “cash and carry” Skaggs Safeway. Small family-run grocery stores like Thorsen’s all but disappeared in the twenty years after World War II. They were victims of increasingly popular corporate chains, which leveraged their buying power to provide goods at lower prices.
]]>Lawyer Arthur J. Cunningham and his wife Edna built this remarkably well-preserved Craftsman style bungalow in 1915 for $3,300. The house retains nearly all of its original materials, including the narrow wood clapboard siding and wide wood trim, open front porch with tapered porch columns, and irregular-pattern wood shingles in the gable ends. Cunningham was a bankruptcy lawyer with the firm of Cunningham and Waldo. In 1922, he ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for state representative. By 1925, the Cunningham family had moved on and John and Jennie Bridenbaugh occupied the home. Jennie was a nurse and, with John, raised five children here, including one adopted daughter. Jennie was active in the Methodist Church and many public health charities and was state president of the American Association of University Women. In 1952, she was selected as Montana Mother of the Year. John was a radiologist who introduced the then newfangled practice of x-ray diagnosis and radiation therapy to Billings. His practice with partner Dr. Arthur J. Movius prospered and in 1939 became the Billings Clinic.
]]>French immigrant and wealthy Deer Lodge Valley dairyman John Furst built this brick store and boardinghouse for $5,000 in 1895. Just steps away from Marcus Daly’s new bank and the fine Montana Hotel, the Furst Block fit in well amongst its high-style neighbors. The original street-level façade was richly decorated with cast-iron pilasters (still visible on the right and left). The well-preserved second story still reflects the type of elaborately patterned brickwork fashionable at the time. The J. T. Carroll Company, lumber manufacturers and dealers, and the Anaconda Business College were early first-floor tenants. Upstairs, Mrs. Radefeld let the rooms to “first-class gentleman.” Around 1900, Furst added a large two-story rear addition. While the first floor continued to house retail businesses, the second floor attracted non-traditional professionals. Tenants between 1900 and 1906 included astrologer Alexis Pfuhl, clairvoyants Madame Bell and Madame Yeteva, magnetic healer John Burtscher, and female osteopath Dr. Adele Allison. One of two licensed female doctors in town, Allison practiced medicine until her death in 1910. Goodfriend’s Clothing Company, a menswear store, occupied both storefronts from 1905 until the early 1930s.
]]>Margaret Barron bought what was then a new home, along with two vacant lots next door, in September 1909. The house, which originally had a smaller central shed-roof dormer, featured many popular Craftsman style elements. These included a low-pitched roofline, exposed rafter tails, a full-width porch, and natural building materials, in this case wood shingle siding and a foundation of river rocks. Both originally from Scotland, John and Margaret Barron met and then, in 1894, married in Butte. John worked at the jewelry store owned by Margaret’s family until the couple decided to move with their daughter Betty to Hamilton, where John opened Barron Jewelry. In 1915, the adventurous Margaret—whose solo automobile trips to Missoula and camping trips with friends appeared in the newspaper—died of cancer. John and Betty remained in the house, sometimes renting rooms to boarders, into the 1940s. They were joined by Betty’s husband, merchant Bud Smith, after the couple married in 1919. When John died in 1947, Bud and Betty’s son Ellsworth took over the Main Street jewelry store his grandfather had founded, continuing its operation until 1994.
]]>As Butte boomed from 3,300 people in 1880 to over 20,000 in 1890 and over 45,000 in 1900, rentals remained in great demand. Built before 1891, this two-story brick building, which now houses four units, originally contained eight separate apartments. A large, open front porch (now enclosed) and a second porch that ran the entire length of the Jackson Street façade ornamented the exterior. In 1910, fifty-six-year-old widow Martha York served as the apartment house’s landlady, supporting four children, ages twelve to twenty-one. In addition to the Yorks, the building was home to an undertaker and his family (including four children), a copper miner and his wife, and four male lodgers. Mary Kelly, also a widow, ran the apartment in 1920. Because mining was such a dangerous occupation, Butte was known as a city of widows and orphans; running boardinghouses or apartments offered widowed women a way to support themselves without leaving home. The apartment’s residents reflected Butte’s diversity: the Irish-born Kelly rented to American-born, Irish, Bohemian, and Finnish tenants, whose occupations ranged from hod-carrier and miner to sheepshearer, electrician, waitress, and housekeeper.
]]>Contractor Fergus Kelley spent $4,000 building this handsome two-apartment residence in September 1900. He and wife Katherine, a well-known Butte vocalist and music teacher, lived at number 423 and rented the other half to tenants. In the early 1890s, this stretch of Mercury Street was a rough dirt road at the western edge of Butte, a checkerboard of empty lots, old log cabins, and new Queen Anne style cottages and boardinghouses. Butte’s population grew exponentially by 1900, and modern brick apartment houses quickly filled available lots with much-needed multi-family housing. Fergus and Katherine’s building, with its matching front porches, attractive decorative parapet, and distinctive window sashes, housed skilled mine workers and young professionals. Sadly, Fergus and Katherine enjoyed the property only briefly. Fergus died of lung disease in 1901, and Katherine eventually sold the building. Boilermaker Thomas Grimes and wife Agnes rented at number 423 from 1904 to 1925. Like many other working-class renters in Butte, the Grimes’s sublet their extra bedrooms to an ever-changing array of unmarried workers.
]]>Dr. Felix L. St. Jean and brick mason Joe Cosgrove commissioned local architect Herman Kemna to design this building in 1893. Though later owners remodeled the first-floor façade and renamed the building, the second story remains among the best preserved and most elaborate cast-iron façades in downtown Anaconda. The local Tuttle Manufacturing and Supply Company designed and fabricated the iron front in an unusual Italianate/Queen Anne style featuring Eastlake ornamentation. The Eastlake style, adapted from furniture designed by English architect Charles L. Eastlake, incorporated carved brackets, ornate columns and capitals, and symmetrically placed bas relief (raised) and incised floral motifs. Dr. St. Jean, head surgeon at St. Ann’s Hospital, had his private practice and rented rooms upstairs, while the Standard Drug Company and a dance hall operated on the first floor. Dr. St. Jean was instrumental in bringing modern healthcare to Anaconda, and he also invested in mining and real estate. He formed the Georgetown Mining and Milling Company in 1890 and developed several other buildings, including the Anaconda National Bank building next door.
]]>In 1888, one- and two-story, wood-frame commercial buildings filled almost the entire block. Constructed circa 1890 on the block’s last vacant lot, this store was home to McKinnon and MacKay’s grocery. An expanse of brick with three recessed panels tops the building, making it look taller and more imposing than it is. Cast iron posts provide the structural support needed to incorporate large windows, which offered display space and allowed natural light to flood the shop’s interior. McKinnon and MacKay’s specialized in “the finest butter on earth” and in 1894 was the only store in Anaconda to offer produce from the Bitterroot valley. A soda water factory occupied the site in 1906. In 1908, it had become Mallory and Anderson’s, which sold everything from fresh Timothy hay and sawed wood to “Plymouth Rock pullets” and “choice geese.” In 1913, F. M. Osborne opened a machine shop, where he repaired cars, bikes, cash registers, and guns. Osborne also sold Wahl and Regal automobiles. Wahl and Regal were two of hundreds of short-lived car manufacturers that operated in the 1910s.
]]>In October 1900, German tailors William Weiss and John Zilinsky invested in this commercial building. They paid an exorbitant $9,500 for three lots behind Marcus Daly’s bank, where they constructed the first story of this two-story building. Early tenants, the Great Northern Express Co. (parcel delivery) and A. J. Cummings Grain and Stock Exchange, served Anaconda’s well-to-do families. By 1915, Weiss added an upscale second-story boardinghouse. Narrow brick piers and a stepped parapet accentuate the building’s height, while blocks and horizontal bands of cast stone add interest to the second-floor windows. Throughout the 1900s, various businesses—from insurance agents and jewelers to tailors and confectioners—occupied the first-story stores. Upstairs, a constant flow of single men, newlyweds, and widows lived in the boardinghouse rooms, sometimes with surprising results. In May 1919, managers Ambrose and Katherine Powers found an abandoned infant girl in one of the rooms, left by short-term guests registered as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The Smiths never returned for the baby, and the Powers adopted her as their own.
]]>In 1917, Charles and Gladys Pelton arrived in Stillwater County from Nebraska to become ranchers. Together, they created one of the most successful sheep ranches in Stillwater County. Charles “Charley” served as president of both the Stillwater Wool Growers Association and the Beartooth Stockgrowers Association. The Pelton family first lived in a small white house immediately south of here. In September 1927, they hired local contractor and mason Vern Garoutte, from Absarokee, to build this distinctive American Foursquare house. By February 1928, the Absarokee paper reported that the couple and their four children were “happily ensconced” in their new home, “a fine cobblestone two-story structure with basement, and … all modern conveniences, such as electric lights and waterworks and a fine fireplace. It is an ideal country home.” The American Foursquare was one of the most popular housing styles in the early twentieth century. The Pelton House includes all the style’s typical features: a square plan, a low pyramidal hipped roof with wide overhangs, two roof dormers on opposing roof slopes, and a full-width front porch. Yet it is the home’s construction that makes it unique; it is built with great skill of local cobblestones, many of which came from excavating the basement. The walls are twenty inches thick, and a massive cobblestone chimney dominates the north elevation. Gladys and Charley Pelton lived here until 1959. The Pelton House is an impressive example of cobblestone construction, skilled workmanship, durability, and beauty.
]]>Rapidly increasing demand for copper ore in the 1890s brought an influx of more than 5,000 new residents to the Smelter City between 1890 and 1900. To house them all, a fleet of carpenters built hundreds of cottages and multi-family units. This brick boardinghouse, built in 1897, stands out from its Queen Anne cottage neighbors. The house’s hipped roof, wide fascia board, and segmental arch window frames reflect the Italianate style, popular in the West beginning in the 1870s. Advertisements for the rooms boasted electric lights and bathrooms, luxurious amenities at the time. Initially, working-class men and young families lived here. In 1900, smelterman J.C. Brennan and family and streetcar driver Michael Kilcoyne, his wife, children, and two brothers-in-law shared the house. By 1906, two women, fourteen smeltermen, and a policeman crowded into the residence. Grocer Marko Hotti, an immigrant from Albania, and his Czech wife, Louisa, lived here after 1924 and rented out rooms. Hotti’s Grocery was a fixture on Park Street until 1945. The house remained in the Hotti family through the 1990s.
]]>Hardware store owner, banker, and real estate developer George Miles, nephew of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, hired a contractor to build this hipped-roof cottage around 1910. Following completion of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1908 and passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act in 1909, newcomers flooded into Miles City and demand for housing soared. Developers focused attention on the spacious lots east of the Northern Pacific tracks. Families and wealthier landowners located away from the tracks, while investors like Miles built small rental cottages and apartment buildings near the tracks. Beulah Cresap and her husband William, the manager of the Golden Rule department store on Main Street, rented this Craftsman style home from 1912 to 1924. The home’s side bay window, exposed rafter tails in the eaves, and front porch (now enclosed) were common architectural elements found on the many Miles City houses built from “pattern book” plans. Dentist Dr. William Smart and wife Lydia bought the home in 1924. Dr. Smart was a state dental examiner and President of the Montana State Dental Association in 1932-33.
]]>Thomas Silha and sisters Mary Vollenweider and Margaret Morse hired architect Joseph White to design this commercial/residential building in 1911. The $20,000 brick building originally featured identical storefronts with glass display windows topped by prismatic glass panels that reflected daylight deep into the interior. Furnished rooms upstairs offered housekeeping services. In 1912, Thomas Silha’s Palace Block on the south housed a confectionery and cigar store and Orton Bros. Pianos in the rear. In 1915, Charles Tescher and wife Marion ran a pool hall and furnished rooms in the Morse Block on the north, but by 1917 they had moved into Silha’s confectionery next door and added a Brunswick bowling alley. Earl Tucker and William A. J. Thompson ran the alley from 1928 until the mid-1930s. Thompson’s grandson Jack opened a bar by 1952. Next door, Morse and Vollenweider managed tenants upstairs, and Morse’s son John ran a pool hall and confectionery until the early 1940s. Both widows, Vollenweider and Morse incorporated their business in 1928 and became well known real estate investors in both Anaconda and Butte—an unusual profession for women at the time.
]]>Simple one-story brick commercial blocks became popular with investors in the early twentieth century. By economizing on ornamentation and expensive second floor residential fixtures like kitchen cabinets and indoor plumbing, a landowner could develop a large lot with a modest upfront investment. The three storefronts in this building, completed circa 1900, hosted numerous businesses over the years, including a tailor, music store, cyclery, hat shop, and physician’s office. Belgian-born Louis Frank Verberckmoes sold jewelry and eyeglasses from 1913 until 1925 in number 208. After construction of the Bluebird Theater to the west in 1925, Verberckmoes’ shop became the Bluebird Café. In 1913, plumber Herman Ulrich opened a plumbing shop in the 206 and 206 ½ (center) storefronts and lived in a rear apartment with his Norwegian-born wife Engiber and their three daughters. Ulrich’s shop was a fixture on Park Avenue for more than forty years. When Herman died of a heart attack while shoveling snow in 1937, Engiber opened a women’s dress shop, which remained in business here through the mid-1940s.
]]>Attorney Torrence MacDonald and wife Nellie built this home circa 1911, shortly after the birth of their oldest child. In 1925, the MacDonalds moved to Helena, where Torrence served as the assistant attorney general. In 1928, attorney Charles Foot, wife Theresa, and adult daughter Katherine moved into the residence. Katherine, a stenographer, purchased the home in 1931 and remained in residence until circa 1950. Both the house and the neighborhood underwent major changes during Katherine’s time here. In the 1930s, the city and the Works Projects Administration (WPA) spent $120,000 to transform Woodland Park from the “city’s swamp” into a recreational haven. Also in the 1930s or 1940s, Katherine hired notable Kalispell architect Fred Brinkman to design an attached garage and update the home. A fan of the Tudor style, Brinkman specified decorative stucco and half timbering, prominent chimney caps, and tall, multi-pane windows. This is one of several other Tudor style projects designed by Brinkman, including the 1925 First Presbyterian Church on Main Street.
]]>The Great Northern Railway transported people and goods to, and through, northern Montana in the late 1880s and early 1900s. By the mid-1920s, however, automobile travel eclipsed rail travel. Soon, modern roads and new roadside service stations, motels, and cafes catered to auto travelers. The Northwest Refining Company of Cut Bank built this outstanding Streamlined Moderne style gas station in 1939. Texaco industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague adapted the style for gas stations in 1936, and oil companies nationwide followed suit. Teague specified white porcelain-enamel tile siding, but white brick or concrete block were common substitutes. Colorful horizontal “speed lines” at the roofline, large glass display windows, and enclosed service bays are other stylistic hallmarks. These design ideals were all aimed at making service stations appear as clean and modern as a new hospital and inviting to any type of driver. Danfield “Dan” Heltne leased the station from the outset in 1939. He initially sold Grizzly Oil Company products, and then, through different owners, sold Oval E, Carter, Humble, and Enco products through the 1960s. He purchased the station in 1974. Always a cheerleader in the community, Heltne spent years directing the May Music Festival, Kiwanis Club, the Salvation Army Board, and the Havre Chamber of Commerce Board. Dan passed away in 1990 and his son continued the business. Over the years, Heltne’s became a Havre institution and a Hi-Line landmark. When it closed in 2006, it was the longest continuously operated service station in the area.
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