Ellen Baumler's Blog, page 54

Friday Photo: Spring Roundup

Happy Friday! Here's an iconic photo of a highly romanticized chapter in Montana history.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-460Photographer L. A. Huffman snapped this photo during the spring roundup near Miles City, probably in the 1890s. He called it "Foreman Telling Off the Men for the Circle," describing the routine to start the day's work.

P.S. Remember this depiction of cowboy life?

Shep

In the summer of 1936, a sheepherder became ill and was brought to the hospital in Fort Benton. A dog followed his flock of sheep into town and hung around the hospital where a kindly nun fed him. The herder died, and his relatives asked that his body be sent back East. The undertaker put the casket on the train, and the engine pulled away. The dog followed along the tracks until the train sped away, beginning a five-and-a-half year vigil. Day after day, the dog—named Shep by locals—met every...

William A. Clark

Historian Joseph Kinsey Howard said that a dollar never got away from Copper King William A. Clark except to come back stuck to another. Clark was intelligent, ambitious, and obsessed with his own vanity. Butte was his stronghold. Clark gave his miners there a magnificent park and an eight-hour workday.

Clark with his daughters, Andrée (left) and Huguette, c. 1917.
Montana Historical Society Photograph ArchivesClark spared no expense on his 1880s mansion in Butte. The thirty-plus rooms ha...

Friday Photo: Electricity Comes to Libby

Aren't you glad that safety standards have come a long way since then?

From Montana Views. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 97-14.8The caption in the lower corner reads: "Stringing the first electric light wires in Libby Mont July 1911." Photographer unknown.

Paris Gibson Junior High Blows Up

Central High School in Great Falls opened in 1896. It took a creative community three years to build it. To prepare the uneven ground, sheepherders drove a herd of sheep around the site one hundred times trampling down the dirt. Huge logs floated to Great Falls on the Missouri River were shaved flat on all four sides and became the beams for the floor supports, attic framework, and stairways. The massive blocks of sandstone that form the walls came from a quarry near Helena and rest on a foun...

Titanic Memory

One hundred years ago yesterday, the Titanic sank...

Twenty-year-old Mary Lawrence left Austrian Hungary, employed as a maid to a physician’s family en route to America. Mary seldom spoke about her terrible ordeal aboard the ill-fated Titanic, but in 1939, she did describe her experience to a news reporter. She recalled the utter horror of that night, April 15, 1912. First she heard a terrible crunching sound, then people running, screaming, crying, and shoving and pushing. She saw many fall o...

Cattle Drives

Cattle drives might be a thing of the past, but supposedly there are still three cows to every person in Montana. Some still practice cowboy skills. And for greenhorns like myself, there are learning opportunities if you know where to look. I will be honing my limited skills at a cow horse cutting clinic this weekend! 

B.B. Sheffield cattle roundup in coal creek badlands, Diamond W Ranch, Calabar, Montana, date unknown.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-624Jesuit miss...

Smoking Cure

Many Montanans have fond, and not so fond, childhood memories of Virginia City. Eileen Yeager, who grew up there in the 1890s, tells a story in the Madison County history Trails and Trials about games she and her sister Mary made up to amuse themselves. One was called "Bob and Bill." This game involved gathering old chewed cigar butts from behind a certain barn. Each girl had a cigar box that she filled with the old stogies. They had made a sidewalk of scrap wood in the backyard, and beginnin...

Legal Beer

Eight months before the official end of Prohibition, patrons at Walkers Bar in Butte raised glasses of beer in celebration. A sign read, "The only place in the United States that served Draught Beer over the bar April 8, 1933." President Franklin Roosevelt gave the repeal of Prohibition top priority because traffic in illegal liquor fostered so much criminal activity. Roosevelt knew its repeal would take time. So when he took office in 1933, he signed the Cullen-Harrison Act legalizing bevera...

Ming Opera House/Consistory Shrine

In celebration of Easter...
Masons have been a dynamic force in Montana since early territorial days, playing key roles in events that shaped the state's history. Helena Masons first came together in 1865 for the funeral of Dr. L. Rodney Pococke, for whom Rodney Street was named. The fraternal organization has since been closely intertwined with the Helena community. The Masons acquired the former Ming Opera House in 1912. Built by John Ming in 1880 and renowned throughout the Pacific...