Butte, Montana--The Underground

Saturday, June 08, 2013

Had a little bit of a lazy morning, then went into Butte to the Visitor’s Center to see if we could figure out what we wanted to do today. We decided to do a tour of Buttes Underground, but before the tour started, we had time to eat lunch. Phil talked John and Fran into trying a “Pasty”, so we set off to find a place that the girl in the Visitor’s Center recommended. This was a very small place called “Nancy’s” so small in fact that the seating was 6-8 barstools at the counter. Pasty’s are huge (about 8” across and 4” high), they consist of meat, potatoes and onions all wrapped up in a pastry crust, with a side of brown gravy to pour over it. I had tried this before, so I opted for a Polish Dog, which was very good. John, Fran and Phil shared a pasty.

After lunch we headed for the downtown area to wander around until it was time for the tour. We found a Farmer’s Market that took up one whole block of one street, everything from fresh veggies to jewelry. Fran bought some fresh kettle corn, but the rest of us went away empty handed.

Just around the corner was the tour building, so we didn’t have far to go. The tour guide, Dick, is a geologist by trade and a historian by hobby. He started with a brief history of Butte and the mining industry, and then took us across the street where the tour started. Our underground tour consisted of one square city block, where we would go down some steps of one building, then back up and on to the next. Some of the underground spaces had connecting doors or hallways to the building next door, but most were not connected. You could relate it to a basement, except that they were all accessible from the outside, and the space includes the area under the sidewalks.

The first space we looked at was used first as a Salvation Army office, then as a Barber Shop. The owner of the Barber Shop had installed a vault door, which when opened looked into what appeared to be a narrow closet. But a slight push revealed swinging doors, into an additional couple of rooms. The time frame of the Barber Shop was during prohibition, so our guide guesses that some very special customers were allowed into the back room for a nip or two. The underground Barber Shop was used until 1958.

We visited the old City Hall building which also housed the city jail. The building was built on a slight incline, with the jail on the bottom and built into the hill, making it underground.

Sitting on a concrete slab with only the slightest insulation between the wall and the damp ground, the jail was damp and cold. On display at the jail were artifacts from the Butte City Police Department and gave evidence that Butte was once a rough and tumble mining town. The walls of the jail were covered with graffiti left by former guests of the facility, some of which was rather entertaining!!

The Rookwood Hotel gave evidence of prosperity that Butte had once enjoyed. The hotels entryway was mosaic tile, laid the old fashioned way, one 1” tile at a time. The entrance to the hotel was done in marble slabs and the hotel catered to the more prosperous of the visitors to Butte. In its basement was the speakeasy, complete with two way mirror and peek hole in the door.

The term Speakeasy comes from the person inside whispering the word Speakeasy to the client outside the door, meaning he was to speak easy, or whisper, the password needed to get into the establishment so that the person in line behind him couldn’t hear. The Speakeasy also claimed the space under the sidewalk, and that is where the band was placed, so there isn’t much doubt that the noise could be heard from the street, or that the police didn’t know about the goings on underground. There was a backdoor escape route in the case of a raid, ironically, this escape route led to the alley, right across from the police station.

Our guide was so informative and passionate about what he was showing us and the information he was giving us, that our tour lasted almost 2 hours. This kind of city tour is so much fun!

After the tour underground, Phil gave us a ‘tour’ out to where he used to live…in his past life he lived outside of Butte on his ex-father-in-laws ‘ranch’. This was between his Air Force and Coast Guard time. This place was on Brown Gulch Road (that should give you a big clue), he was amazed that part of the road leading back to Brown Gulch Rd was now paved. We soon ran out of paved road though, and the road got really narrow, and I started hearing Banjo music!! Still we kept on going, past some rather ratty looking shacks, complete with a variety of dogs running along side of the car and trying to nip the wheels. By the time we finally come to the ‘ranch’, the Banjo music is so loud I can’t hear myself think, and there is a gate across the road. So, on this narrow road, just wide enough for a cart, John turns the car around and we head back the way we came. The dogs are waiting for us, drooling at the prospect of sinking their teeth into the tires of the car. But, we are survivors, and we make it out of there!!

Back home safe and sound, the girls took both games of cards tonight, leaving the guys to make lame excuses about luck, or their lack thereof!!