Our Town One Hundred + Years Ago... July 1900

In 1900, our country was just one year shy of its 125th anniversary. Independence Day celebrations were often grand affairs with plenty of patriotic music, speeches, and a sea of U.S. flags waving in a Montana breeze. However, there was also the dirty little business of politics, not much different from the themes we hear today. Page 2 of the July 7, 1900, edition of the Jefferson Valley Zephyr did not hold back anything from the editorial about the "sordid, selfish, unsympathetic, snakey cold aggregation, thirsting for the last dollar of the laboring poor ... the Amalgamated Copper Company." The company was said to have bragged about controlling the votes of 26 United States senators.

International news included the situation in China after the German ambassador was brutally murdered by Chinese troops and Boxers, and battles were raging between European, American, and Japanese troops against the Chinese. A push was underway in Montana to declare that the standard workday for underground miners would be 8 hours. The Montana Democratic Party expressed strong opposition to the Republican administration's support for the gold standard. A large range fire was burning east of Billings due to very dry conditions. At least 20 heads of horses died, and flocks of sheep were in great danger.

Census numbers were coming in, and early figures for Montana showed about 225,000 residents, with almost 60,000 living in Butte. Anaconda had claimed they housed between 12 and 15 thousand residents, but the figures confirmed only around 7,000. Great Falls was the second-largest city in the state with more than 13,000 residents.

A group of 400 Mormons was moving to the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. Their goal was the construction of a 30-mile-long by 25-foot-wide ditch to irrigate 20,000 acres of land.

Our local news items are taken as written from the July 1900 editions of the Jefferson Valley Zephyr with some editing for length. The ad is for a business in the town of Mayflower near the Mayflower mine in the northern foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains.

WHITEHALL ZEPHYRS: Pony won both games of ball from the Whitehall boys on the Fourth-enough said.

Fire-Crackers and all kinds of Fireworks at Fosselman's. Largest stock in Whitehall.

Major E.G. Brooke has gone east with a car of horses. The Major will take in several points of interest before his return. State Senator W.A. Clark of Virginia City was a passenger on the east-bound train last Saturday afternoon. Mr. Clark was en route to the National Convention in Kansas City.

Mr. and Mrs. D.W. Jackson arrived in Whitehall on Saturday from Jamestown, North Dakota, where they were married on June 27th. Mrs. Ross Hickman and Perry B. Woolverton, both of Whitehall, were quietly married in Butte on Saturday. The Zephyr is assured that it voices the sentiment of this community when it wishes Mr. and Mrs. Woolverton every happiness. A marriage license was issued in Butte on Saturday to Ella L. Stark, of Butte, and John C. Woolverton, of Whitehall. They will make their home in Whitehall. Mr. Woolverton has always been a resident of Whitehall. Married at Whitehall, Saturday, July 14, 1900, Mr. J.D. Carter and Miss Matilda Shields, of Pipestone Springs. Justice of the Peace Andy Less, of Whitehall, officiating.

T.T. Black of South Boulder went to Brigham City, Utah, Saturday to attend to the shipping of a large crop of muskmelons and watermelons, which he will sell in Butte.

L.B. Knight, of the Mayflower, was among those who sought the invigorating ozone of Whitehall, for a season, during the week.

Lime Spur, something like a dozen miles below Whitehall, is shipping 1,500 tons of lime rock to Butte every day. The rock carries an ounce and a half of silver per ton, which fact adds to its value as a flux in reducing other minerals.

Said a visitor to Whitehall the other day: "Whitehall is, certainly, a beautiful creation. It is the garden spot of Southern Montana. As the late Col. Ingersoll would say: Whitehall is a dimple on the face of Dame nature-the smile of a mother upon her firstborn, just entering a field of usefulness with contentment, and peace, and prosperity as her accompanying guards of honor."

A.J. McKay of the firm of McKay & Carmichael, at this place, recently received a letter from David Robinson, a Whitehall stampeder to Alaska, stating he was well, that he had not missed a meal, and that he expected to be at Nome by the 26th. He incidentally mentioned the fact that whisky at Dutch Harbor was 25 cents a glass and meals four bits.

BOUND FOR THE PARK. It was a gay, smiling, lively party of expectant pleasure seekers who passed through Whitehall last Tuesday forenoon bound for Wonderland. It was composed of youth and beauty, married and single, young and old, all enjoying the change from dusty, heated Butte and refreshing themselves during their brief stay here, with heroic doses of the life-giving ozone for which this lovely valley in the grand old Rockies is famous.