greed, and filling the air with blasphemy, “now” have well selected
libraries and are lavish in their expenditures to secure the best class
of educational and beneficent institutions. Forty years ago there
were but two places of worship in what is now Montana, and they were
at St. Mary’s and St. Ignatius’ missions, where Fathers Giorda and
Hoecken were teaching Christianity to the red men of the forest. The
four religious denominations--Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics and
Episcopalians--have in Montana “now” over two hundred churches, and
other denominations will add seventy-five more to the number. There are
social and benevolent organizations, and nearly every secret society
known is represented with well-equipped lodges. “Now” Montana has 709
public schools, 55,473 pupils, and 1,186 teachers, and it has its
normal school and school of mines, state university and agricultural
college. It has 488 postoffices, eighty weekly and fifteen daily
newspapers, besides ten semi-weekly and monthly journals.
An Eastern writer tells of the libraries in some of the cities of the
West and expressed his astonishment at the intellectual character of
the people. The facts are, as far as reading is concerned, that the
people of the West are a long ways ahead of those of the East. The
brightest, most energetic young men and women of the East make up the
leading element of the West. There are more college-educated men in
the Western cities than in cities of the same size in the East. People
in the West are generally more progressive than in the East. Few towns
of the size of this (and none of its age) in the East have the electric
lights, the miles of electric railroads, the telephone exchange, the
churches, the public library, the elegant opera house, the fine public
school buildings, the beautiful parks and, in fact, all the modern
improvements which this city has. As to her resources, no one but
nature herself can lay claim to placing them where they are. The many
precipices, where the mighty Missouri plunges over one and then another
with a force of several hundred thousand horse-power, the mountains of
various minerals that are near by, the extensive coal fields that are
at her doors, the thousands of acres of rich pasture and farming land
that surround her. All these have been placed there by Him who created
all things; and it seems to have been kept in reserve for a permanent
camping ground for the advanced civilization of the West. The great
water power at the falls of the Missouri is “now” largely employed in
operating reduction works and smelters that reduce ore of the Rocky
mountains to the amount of two thousand tons every twenty-four hours
and here is operated one of the largest electric refining plants on the
continent, where all kinds of metals are separated and refined. All
this industrial growth has taken place during the last ten years. This
is only a small portion of the development that has taken place in this
state during the same length of time.
It is not Montana alone that has experienced these changes during the
last thirty-six years. The “Then and Now” has revolutionized things in
many other sections of the West as greatly as it has in this state.
For “then” there was no Southern Pacific railway, no Union nor Central
Pacific, no Great Northern or Northern Pacific, neither a Canadian
Pacific, nor any transcontinental railway in existence. “Now” it is
safe to say that 30,000 miles of railway have been built west of the
Missouri river since “then.” And “now” great cities have sprung up on
the sites that were “then” occupied by Indians and wild game. Verily,
great have been the changes wrought in the mighty West by “Then and
Now.”
ROBERT VAUGHN.
Dec. 2, 1899.
A SAMPLE OF THE PIONEERS OF MONTANA.
Of all the instances in this book giving illustrations of the “then
and now,” not one is more striking than the following sketch of a once
humble Norwegian boy, who, in 1854, landed in the United States with
barely enough money to pay his first night’s lodging, but who is now
one of the millionaires of Montana. The young Norwegian referred to is
A. M. Holter, one of Montana’s first pioneers, and who now resides in
Helena, the capital of the state. A sketch of the frontier life of such
a man is a chapter well worth reading. It shows what a man with push,
pluck and energy can accomplish.
The first place at which Mr. Holter resided after coming to the United
States was Freeport, Iowa, and he remained in that state until 1859,
making Osage his headquarters. In the spring of 1860 he joined the rush
of gold-seekers to Colorado, then called Pike’s Peak. By this time he
had joined his brother Martin. After arriving in Colorado, the brothers
went to mining and farming; in these pursuits they made some money,
but nothing big. In the fall of 1863, in company with his partner,
E. Evensen, A. M. Holter left Denver, Colo., bound for Alder gulch,
bringing with them a small sawmill. It took them about thirty days to
make the trip. After much difficulty, they arrived in Alder gulch. To
give an account of this arrival, I cannot do better than to give the
following which appeared in the Helena Independent Sept. 7, 1899, after
an interview with Mr. Holter concerning his early days in Montana. He
said:
“The fact is that we--my partner and I--didn’t get there until Dec.
1, 1863, and we selected a location on Ramshorn gulch. We managed to
get our outfit as far as the summit between Bevin and Ramshorn gulches
with teams, where we found deep snow and more snow falling. It kept on
snowing; I remember seventeen days in succession that it snowed every
day. We camped there under some spruce trees, with no other shelter,
and the wind blowing all the time. There we made a hand sled to handle
the machinery and built a brush road a distance of a mile and a half
to get the machinery we had down to the creek, where our water power
was to be had. We finally got the stuff down there and had a cabin up
without doors or windows and moved into it the day before Christmas,
1863. We hung up our blankets on the door and window and prepared to
make the best of it on Christmas day. The snow was then four feet deep
and it was still snowing. In fact, we had snow all winter, although I
do not remember that it ever got much deeper than that around us.
“I didn’t know a thing about the sawmill business, and my partner, who
had represented himself to be a millwright, proved that he didn’t know
much about it either. We unpacked our machinery and began to put it
together and found that some of the parts that were necessary for its
use were missing. The feeding apparatus was gone, among other things.
We set to work and invented a new movement, which, by the way, was
afterwards patented--by other parties.
“In the first place, we had to have blacksmithing done, and we had no
tools, so we set out to make some. We had a broadax and we drove it
into a block of wood and used it for an anvil. We had a sledge, and
made a pair of bellows out of some wood and our rubber coats. There
was a nail hammer with the outfit, and with it and the sledge, and the
anvil and a forge we got together, we managed to make the other tools
we absolutely needed. We made our own charcoal, and finally got that
part of the preliminary work done.
“We had no lathe to turn the shafting, and we finally rigged a
contrivance in the cabin wall to thrust one end into. We fixed up a
wheel for the other end and made a belt out of rawhide to turn the
thing by hand until we got the shafting turned. The lathe was even more
primitive than the blacksmith shop, but we got the work done after a
fashion, although it was a slow process.
“After that we whipsawed some lumber, made our water wheel, fitted up
the mill, and got out several thousand feet of lumber before spring set
in. That was my first winter’s work in Montana, and it was a hard one,
too; part of it was all the more trying because I had my face cut up in
a little unpleasantness with the road agents about that time.
“We had no belting, and we made some of rawhide, but there was no way
of keeping it dry, for we had a water mill. We heard of eighty feet
of six-inch belting at Bannock. I went over and tried to buy it. The
man that owned it had no use for it and said so, but he wouldn’t set a
price and I made him several offers, finally telling him that I would
give him $600, all the money I had with me. He wouldn’t sell even then,
and I had to go back without it, and we made a shift to use a canvas
belt that we made ourselves. It was a poor affair, but we got along
somehow.
“Lumber brought high prices, though, and we made some money after all
our trouble. We got $140 a thousand for sluice lumber, and $125 for
common lumber. The sluice lumber was finished on the edges and the
other wasn’t. The second year we started a yard at Nevada City, and I
remember that the demand was so great that whenever we expected a wagon
in there would be a crowd of men waiting for it, who wouldn’t let me
get to it at all. As soon as the binding was taken off the load, they
would make a rush for the wagon and every man would take off what he
could carry. The demand was so keen that they felt justified in taking
it by force, and I wouldn’t even have a chance to keep an account of
what was taken. As far as I know, however, it was always correctly
accounted for and I do not believe that there was ever a stick that
went out that way that I didn’t get my pay for.”
The reader will notice that Mr. Holter spoke of having “a little
unpleasantness with the road agents.” The story of that occurrence is
now fresh in my memory. It was this way:
Mr. Holter was on a return trip from Virginia City, Dec. 11, 1863, when
he came very near being killed by highwaymen, who were then terrorizing
the country with their violence. George Ives, the leader of a gang of
desperadoes, and some of his companions, had met Holter on the way
near the mouth of Big Hole, and had evidently been keeping track of
him, thinking that he might sell some goods which he had in Virginia
City, and that on his return he would have some money. Mr. Holter had
marketed some articles in Virginia City, but, as it happened, he did
not draw the money for them. This time he was returning with the two
yoke of oxen without the wagon, and at the point of the road where the
trail over the hill strikes the gulch, just below Nevada City, Ives and
his companion, Erwin, passed him, and, as they went by, one spoke to
the other, addressing him as George. They went on ahead and took the
lower road by Laurin’s place, but Holter with his oxen took the upper
road. When near the crossing of Brown’s gulch, Ives and Erwin, finding
that Holter had taken the upper road, galloped their horses and met
him. They began business at once; Ives drew and leveled his revolver
on Holter, standing about four feet from him, and ordered him to pass
over his money. Holter said that he did not have any, but Ives said
that he knew better, and made him turn all his pockets inside out.
Holter passed over his empty purse; Ives examined it and then threw it
away; and he gave him his pocketbook, in which there were some papers
and a small amount of postal currency. Ives was angry at not getting
money, as he evidently expected. He ordered Holter to leave the road
and follow their trail. Holter remarked that as they had the drop on
him he supposed he would have to obey. Just then he turned and spoke
to his cattle, turning instantly again only to see Ives deliberately
aiming at his head, and Ives discharged his pistol just as Holter threw
back his head. The bullet entered Holter’s hat just above the band
and grazed his scalp, cutting the hair as smoothly as with a razor
and taking the skin off part of his brow. For a moment Mr. Holter was
stunned, and would have fallen had it not been for the fact that he
was near the oxen and threw his arm over the neck of one of them and
staggered against the animal. On recovering his senses, his first
impulse was to pick up a new ax and a handle that had dropped from
under his arm. Ives at this instant, seeing that his first shot had
not killed, raised his gun and deliberately aimed again at Holter’s
heart, but the gun snapped. Seeing a possibility of escaping, Holter
jumped in front of the cattle and got on the other side of them before
Ives could fire again. The off oxen suddenly started up and crowded
the others onto the mounted desperadoes, diverting their attention and
making them move back. During this commotion, Holter at once thought of
some beaver dams in the creek a few yards away and broke for them. The
road agents, seeing some men with a team coming up the road, went off
in another direction as unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Holter
then made his way to a cabin on the lower road, where “One-Eyed Reilly”
and his associates lived. Here he tried to borrow a rifle or get them
to go back with him, but they refused him any assistance whatever.
From their answers and conduct, Mr. Holter became satisfied that they
were confederates or silent partners with the road agents. As it was
then growing dark, Holter went back to where he had left the oxen.
After having unyoked them, he recovered his hat and went up the gulch
and stayed over night with Stuart, Malcolm Morrow and Charles Olsen,
who were then mining there. It turned out that the reason Ives’ pistol
only snapped the time he tried to shoot Holter the second time was that
at Lauren’s Ives, being already pretty full and being refused any more
liquor, he had amused himself by shooting at the decanters and had but
one shot left.
After getting back to camp, thinking and talking to his partner about
the matter, Mr. Holter made up his mind deliberately that it was his
duty above all things to arm himself and hunt up Ives and kill him or
perish in the attempt. His partner did all he could to persuade him to
give up the idea, but at last said that he would go with him. After
outfitting themselves, they both started out to hunt Ives, when at the
very first place they stopped they were told that Ives had been hanged.
The news made Holter feel very badly, not because Ives was hanged, but
because he was not present to assist with the job.
The first quartz mill Mr. Holter said that he saw in the territory was
on the Monitor lode in Bevin’s gulch, and not far from his sawmill. The
stamps were made of wood with iron bands around the bottom to keep them
from splitting, and spikes were driven thickly into the wooden stamp to
receive the blow when striking the ore.
The next year Holter and his partner started lumber yards at Virginia
City and Nevada City in Alder gulch, and the same summer Holter,
with two other men by the name of Cornelius and Olson, built some
water works in Virginia City. This was rather a hard undertaking, for
everything had to be invented anew from the ordinary way of building
water works. The piping and hydrants had to be made of logs, and
there was no way to procure a manufacturer’s auger with which to bore
the logs. As high as $150 apiece was paid for three augers made by a
blacksmith for the purpose. Mr. Evensen, his partner in the sawmill,
had gone back to Denver to get more machinery and a planing mill. He
purchased a freight outfit, consisting of oxen and wagons, and secured
a second-hand planing mill, but was unable to get any machinery, so he
loaded up with provisions and started back. On his return he was snowed
in on Snake river, where he lost most of his outfit. What remained of
the goods was brought on pack animals into Virginia City in the spring
of 1865 at 10 cents per pound freight. But good prices were obtained
for these remnants, however. Ten-penny nails were sold at Virginia
City for $150 per keg, in gold dust. These were again retailed at $2
per pound. Some flour had arrived in Virginia City, and the price had
dropped from $150 per sack of ninety pounds to $60. Holter reshipped
what flour he had to Helena, where it was disposed of at $100 per sack.
That winter he bought a second-hand portable steam engine and boiler,
and had managed to make a sawmill and move it onto Ten Mile creek,
about eight miles west of Helena. To this was added the planing mill
his partner had bought in Denver, Colo., and which was the first one of
the kind in Montana. Soon afterwards the firm opened a lumber yard in
Helena, at a point which is now the corner of Main and Wall streets.
While the price of lumber at Virginia City had been $125 per thousand
for common and $140 per thousand for sluice or flume lumber, the price
at Helena was only $100 per thousand for common lumber. In the latter
part of June, 1865, Mr. Holter bought out Mr. Evensen and took in his
brother Martin as a partner, and the firm became known as A. M. Holter
& Bro., and the demand for lumber was increasing very fast.
In the autumn of 1866 Mr. Holter went East by the Overland stage. The
price for transportation to Omaha was then $350 in gold dust, or $700
in currency. While nearly a month on the road to Chicago, he said that
after deducting stop-overs it took him but seventeen days and nights
actual travel. It was the quickest trip on record up to that date.
While East he purchased a new steam sawmill; also machinery for a door
and sash factory, and appliances for a distillery and an assortment of
general merchandise, which he shipped by the way of St. Louis and Fort
Benton, but as some of these purchases did not reach St. Louis in time
to go on the first boat it was nearly two years before they reached
Fort Benton. Freight from St. Louis to Fort Benton was then 12 cents
per pound, and from Benton to Helena 10 cents per pound.
Holter had spent most of the winter in Chicago, and, when ready to
return, was married to Miss Loberg on the 6th of April, 1867. Their
wedding trip, as Mr. Holter tells it, was an enjoyable one, the bride
journeying to Montana by way of St. Louis and the Missouri river
route to Fort Benton, then by stage to Helena, while the groom came
by the way of Salina, Kan., then by the Overland stage over the Smoky
Hill route, by the way of Denver and Salt Lake, with sixteen other
passengers. Each passenger was furnished by the stage company with a
rifle and ammunition, for the Indians east of Denver were then on the
warpath. Fortunately, the Indians did not make an attack, but great
inconveniences were met by the burning of stage stations and the
killing and stealing of the stock by the Indians. Mr. Holter said that
at one place all hands lay three days and nights in a haystack, for
there was no stock to draw the coach, and at one time the same mules
had to be driven three drives, aggregating seventy-five miles, on
account of the burning of the stations and the killing of the stock.
He said that one of the stations was on fire and the roof falling in
as they passed it, but he finally reached Helena after “staging it”
twenty-five days and nights.
He said that at Salt Lake City he was informed that the steamer
Gallatin, on which his wife was a passenger, had been captured by the
Indians, and, at different points along the Missouri river, she, in
turn, was told that all the overland stages on the road to Montana had
been captured by the Indians. This unpleasant news caused considerable
uneasiness on both sides at the time. But this remarkable wedding trip
ended by Mr. and Mrs. Holter’s having a happy meeting in Helena.
On his return to Helena, Mr. Holter erected a building on Main street,
where the Pittsburg block now stands, and, after the arrival of the
goods in the fall of 1867, he opened a general merchandise store.
The sawmill, also the sash and door factory and the distillery, were
completed during 1868 and 1869. The sash and door factory and the
distillery were the first of these industries erected in Montana.
In 1869 Mr. Holter sustained a loss of about $40,000 by fire; the
sawmill and planing mill were burned in March, and a month later the
first big fire occurred in Helena, in which he sustained a loss.
The Rumley mine was discovered in 1871, in which Holter purchased an
interest, and started negotiations with Frederick Utch of Cologne,
Germany, for his right in the United States for the then existing
patent on the Utch concentrating jig. He had one of these shipped to
Montana, but it took a long time to get it here, as it was shipped
by way of the Union Pacific railroad, which was then being built;
consequently it laid a year at Rawlins, Wyo., but finally arrived, and
was set up on the Legal Tender mine, east of Helena. Along in the early
70’s he erected the first concentrator in the Rocky mountains on
the Rumley mine. The mechanics were inexperienced, and it soon became
evident that the machinery was not of sufficient strength, and the
venture was a failure, with the exception that it showed what could be
done in the way of concentration by properly erected machinery, and
Montana is today the foremost in concentrating ore by this process.
In the spring of 1877 he purchased a part of the Parrot mines, which
proved to be one of the best investments he ever made. In 1880 this
property was organized into the Parrot Silver and Copper Company.
In 1879, on account of ill health, Mr. Holter took a trip to Europe,
spending most of the time in Norway and Sweden, and returned to Montana
in about eight months.
In 1878 Holter & Bro. built a sawmill on Stickney creek and started
a lumber yard at the mouth of Sun river, with George Wood in charge,
where Great Falls now stands, and erected a planing mill at that city
in 1885.
In 1880 Mr. Holter and others purchased the Elkhorn mine at Ketchum,
Idaho. In 1881 he became interested in the Maginnis, the Kit Carson,
the Stuart, the Silver Bell, Peacock in Idaho, and in the Elkhorn
mine in Montana. In 1882 he became identified with the Helena Mining
and Reduction Company, which was afterwards changed to the Helena and
Livingstone Mining and Reduction Company, which established the East
Helena plant in 1888. In 1884 the same company erected the first street
railway in Helena and also organized a gas company in the same city.
In 1886 he, with others, organized the Helena Concentrating Company.
This company afterwards erected the first concentrator in Idaho, at
Wardner. This, however, has been replaced by a larger and more modern
plant. In 1886 this company purchased an interest in the Helena and
Victor Mining Company, and erected a concentrating plant at Victor. The
same year Mr. Holter and others organized the Livingston Coal and Coke
Company, and opened the mines and built a washing plant at Cokedale in
Park county.
In 1887 the Holter Lumber Company and the A. M. Holter Hardware Company
were incorporated, of each of which companies Mr. Holter is president.
In 1888 Mr. Holter and others purchased the properties at Wardner,
Idaho, now known as the Helena Frisco, and constructed there a large
concentrator, which was destroyed by the riot at Frisco in 1892, but
has been rebuilt. In 1890 he and others organized the Cascade Land
Company.
In 1892, in company with his family, he took another trip to Europe,
being absent about five months. Again, in 1892 and 1893, Holter and
his partners did a large amount of development work in the Trail creek
district, now known as Rossland, B. C.
In 1891 the same parties purchased the Blue Canyon coal mines, and
commenced building the Bellingham Bay & Eastern railway. In 1892
they organized the Coeur d’Alene Hardware Company at Wallace, Idaho.
Mr. Holter was one of the promoters that erected a Peck Montana
concentrating plant at Corbin in 1891, and another at East Helena in
1898. This process promises to revolutionize concentration. In 1898
they organized the Sand Point Lumber Company, at Sand Point, Idaho.
Going back a little, Holter and others organized the Montana Lumber and
Manufacturing Company, in 1888. This company met with a heavy loss in
1895 by the burning of its sash and door factory at Helena. The next
year they bought a half interest in the Capital Lumber Company, and the
two companies were, in 1898, sold to the Washoe Copper Company.
I am personally acquainted with A. M. Holter, and have been since he
located his mill on Ten-Mile creek. Then I kept a butcher shop in
Nelson gulch and furnished him meat for his men.
Mr. Holter is a Republican in politics and the first of that party
who was elected to office in the city of Helena. He has held several
offices, always with credit to himself and satisfaction to his
constituents.