Ellen Baumler's Blog, page 42

Madame Mustache

Of all the famous gold rush characters, one stands out as the most ubiquitous. Eleanor Dumont, commonly known as Madame Mustache, appears in an astonishing number of mining camps during the 1860s and 1870s. In her flamboyant wake, she left a trail of legends and stories where ever she dealt cards. And a skilled card dealer she was, introducing the game of twenty-one, the precursor of American Blackjack, at a time when Faro was the common game. An attractive Frenchwoman, she was the West’s fir...

Friday Photo: Pet Wolf

Wolves have been in the news a lot lately, what with the debate over wolf policy. Here's a photo to raise your eyebrows, no matter which side of the debate you're on.

Montana Historical Society Photograph ArchivesEunice Gipson posed with photographer Evelyn Cameron's pet wolf circa 1910-1920.

P.S. More lovely photos by Cameron here, here, here, and here.
P.P.S. Remember when Cameron scandalized Miles City?

Brussels Carpet

Floor coverings on the Montana frontier were a luxury only the wealthy could afford. Turkish carpets were the most expensive, but British-made Brussels floor coverings were a near second. Harriet Sanders packed two expensive Brussels carpets in the covered wagon that brought her family West from Ohio. One of the carpets covered the floor in her home in Virginia City, but the other she had no use for and stored it away. Worried that the mice or moths might find it tasty, she was one day inspec...

Scarred Trees

Culturally scarred trees in Glacier National Park, the Nez Perce and Bitterroot Forests, the Flathead Lake area, the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and elsewhere in western Montana are indicative of travel corridors that native people used seasonally. Majestic Ponderosa pines and, less often, western larch and other types of trees served as a source of nutrition in the spring when the sap was running. Food was scarce at this time of the year and the people were hungry. Various tribes harvested the...

Friday Photo: Skiing at Big Mountain

Happy Friday!

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 97-62 B5 W2-D-735 2The caption of this undated photo reads, "Annual ski meets are held at many Montana ski runs." Bill Browning snapped the photo for the Montana Chamber of Commerce, probably at Big Mountain near Whitefish. Have you ever skied there?

Sedition

Montana had one of the nation’s harshest sedition laws, making it illegal to speak out against U.S. involvement in World War I. Among the dozens of people who went to prison for this crime, Janet Smith was the only woman who did time at Deer Lodge. She and her husband William ran the post office at Sayle south of Miles City and had a ranch in the Powder River country. Mrs. Smith was famous for her cooking and often fed dozens of cowboys at her table. She stood accused of bragging that if the...

Mining Camp Courthouses

The gold-rush-era towns of Bannack and Virginia City have something in common that has gone almost unnoticed. Bannack, originally the county seat of Beaverhead County, and Virginia City, the county seat of Madison County, share courthouses of very similar design built almost at the same time in the mid-1870s. Loren Olds was the architect of both buildings.

Madison County Courthouse, 1963. Photo by John N. DeHaas Jr.
Library of Congress, HABS MONT,1-BRAN,2--3While the Madison County courthouse...

Friday Photo: Bull Elk

Happy Friday, history buffs! There's a pile of fresh snow here in Helena. What's it like in your corner of Montana? Are you going to get out and play in it?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, H-3262Elk in Yellowstone National Park's Hayden Valley struggle to find forage in this 1894 photo by F. Jay Haynes.

Patrick Largey’s Murder

Patrick Largey, Butte’s fourth Copper King, was president of the State Savings Bank, located on the site of the present Metals Bank Building. In January of 1898 miner Thomas Riley gunned Largey down as he sat at his desk. The shooting took place nearly three years to the day after the great powder explosion in the warehouses of the Kenyon Connell and Butte Hardware companies. Illegally stored dynamite caused the blast that killed at least fifty-nine and injured one hundred others. Riley lost...

Butte Explosion

Butte has had its share of mining disasters and mourned its share of fallen heroes. But no disaster precipitated more fire protection improvements than an explosion that occurred on January 15, 1895. Butte firemen answered a fire call in the South Butte warehouse of the Royal Milling Company. The firemen did not know that tons of blasting powder had been illegally stored in the nearby Kenyon-Connell Commercial Company and Butte Hardware Company warehouses. Flames reached the powder, and the f...