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| 'Downtown' Basin, Montana |
On Friday, we again spent most of the day working on chores and the evening watching movies. Nice. On Saturday, August 18th, we packed up the RV and headed south from Great Falls. Following the meandering course of the Missouri River, we drove through vast fields and ranches and into the foothills of the Rockies. We reached
Basin, Montana, a tiny speck of a town along the highway whose former mining community has since been reduced to a handful of homes and struggling businesses. The town was founded in 1880 as a trading post by a couple of miners following the discovery of gold nearby in 1862.
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| At an overlook of the Missouri River |
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| Missouri River |
We checked into the
Merry Widow Health Mine and RV park, a multi-purpose facility offering camping as well as the purported benefits of the mine's radon. Apparently, one can sit or soak in the mine's radon and receive lasting health improvements against a number of chronic issues including asthma, arthritis, migraines, gout and a bunch of others. We have our doubts, though we went ahead and filled our empty bottles with 'mine water', nonetheless. The park is located next to Boulder River whose rushing water we could hear from the RV, drowning out what little noise could be heard from the highway.
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| Mai Wah Museum, Butte, Montana |
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| Wah Chong Tai mercantile |
After a quick lunch of leftovers, we drove south into Butte, a large city incredulously still based on the mining industry. We started with the
Mai Wah Museum. Established as a series of gold mining camps in the mid-1870s, Butte grew exponentially with the discovery of copper in the 1880s, boasting a population of 100,000 by 1910. The need for a huge workforce led to the recruitment of immigrant workers from other mines and eventually from overseas. Many of the men recruited to work in the mines or on the railroads were Chinese, who could legally be paid less than European immigrants for the same work. The steady influx of Chinese laborers led to the establishment of many Chinese businesses, like laundries, curio shops and noodle parlors.
The
Mai Wah Museum occupies two side-by-side buildings, one formerly a noodle parlor and the other a mercantile shop. The Mai Wai building was used mostly as a noodle shop, but offered space for an herbal doctor and other small businesses via an interior hallway on the main floor.
The adjacent
Wah Chong Tai mercantile shop, a branch office of the very successful Wah Chong mercantile of Seattle, occupied the street level and assorted noodle shops operated on the upper level. We toured the building and discovered just above the mercantile shop a short 'middle story' of the building. The front of the building appears as a two story structure, but inside, between the two full height floors was a 'cheater story', so named because it was used to cheat the taxman of the money owed for a third floor. In any case, this cheater story was used variously as housing and as space for herb shops and doctors' offices.
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| Old noodle parlor kitchen |
The upper story held the thriving success of two noodle parlors, complete with two kitchens, one burned beyond recognition, the other still smelling of peanut oil. We wandered through the rooms and admired the dilapidated condition of the tin ceiling in one room and beadboard ceiling of another. We found the old icebox, a huge wooden contraption with the evidence of years of use on the lower shelf. In the kitchen, we saw where cooks had tended the food for so many years they had worn down the concrete floor in front of the wok.
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| Original tin ceiling tiles |
In one of the front rooms, we saw the old light fixtures still hanging from the ceiling where the restaurant's booths had been. Nearby, a giant grinning parade dragon patiently awaits the Chinese New Year underneath a white sheet.
Despite the successes of the Chinatown businesses, many Chinese immigrants experienced discrimination on a number of levels. Not only were Chinese laborers paid less at the mines and on the railroads, but Chinese-owned businesses were boycotted for 'stealing' jobs and customers. They were also penalized in many other ways, not the least of which was their wholesale exclusion from census records due in part to their justified fear of government agents and the recordation of simply 'Chinaman' instead of a real name. Butte's 1910 census indicates a Chinese population of between 400 and 600, though more accurate counts estimate them numbering between 1500 and 2500. Adding to the confusion, some Chinese emigrated under false names as 'family members' of those already established in the U.S.; these became known as "paper sons."
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| Copper King Mansion |
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| Mine headframe |
We really enjoyed the
museum and learning a tiny slice of Asian American history. From there we drove around town, taking in the stately historic brick homes dotting old town Butte. We drove up one street and down another admiring all the Victorian architecture. At one point, we happened on the
Copper King Mansion, a home built in 1884 to the tune of $500,000, a mere half day's salary for the house's original owner,
Sen. William A. Clark, whose salary was purported to be $17 million a month at the time.
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Berkeley Pit
(notice the tree at the top of the rim) |
Butte's extensive copper mining history is evident all around. There are 14 giant black steel '
headframes' still standing above the mining shafts beneath them. The headframes were used to lower workers and equipment into the mine and haul massive amounts of ore out of it. Apparently, Butte has over 10,000 miles of underground mining tunnels dug through its hills. The Butte Hill, the 'Richest Hill on Earth', was open pit mined beginning in 1955. The area had been mined almost continuously using other methods since 1864, but the
Berkeley Pit changed the landscape considerably. Four neighborhoods were moved or buried by the rubble to make way for the large scale mining operation and in turn a pit 7000 feet long, 5600 feet wide and 1800 feet deep now remains. The groundwater that has seeped back into the underground tunnels and eventually into the pit itself is extremely acidic and laden with heavy metals, so the water is being treated continuously by a plant at the pit's edge to the tune of 10,000 gallons of water per minute. Eventually, the water level will rise above the bedrock and begin polluting the natural groundwater, so scientists are feverishly working on averting that disaster before it occurs, estimated to be around the year 2023.
On the well-intended, but ultimately misguided, recommendation of the museum clerk, we ate dinner at the Asia Garden restaurant at the Butte Plaza Mall, her opinion as to the 'best' Chinese restaurant in town. Wow. After hearing another table of patrons complaining about having received tortillas instead of pancakes with their dish, we left our detailed criticism with the sweet waitress and drove back to the RV. We are 0 for every single Chinese restaurant we've tried on this trip so far. Yikes. I can't believe I keep letting Ken talk me into these places time and time again.
In any case, we spent the evening enjoying the warm sunshine and listening to the gurgling stream behind the coach. What a lovely day!
On Friday, we again spent most of the day working on chores and the evening watching movies. Nice. On Saturday, August 18th, we packed up the RV and headed south from Great Falls. Following the meandering course of the Missouri River, we drove through vast fields and ranches and into the foothills of the Rockies. We reached Basin, Montana, a tiny speck of a town along the highway whose former mining community has since been reduced to a handful of homes and struggling businesses. The town was founded in 1880 as a trading post by a couple of miners following the discovery of gold nearby in 1862. 
The adjacent Wah Chong Tai mercantile shop, a branch office of the very successful Wah Chong mercantile of Seattle, occupied the street level and assorted noodle shops operated on the upper level. We toured the building and discovered just above the mercantile shop a short 'middle story' of the building. The front of the building appears as a two story structure, but inside, between the two full height floors was a 'cheater story', so named because it was used to cheat the taxman of the money owed for a third floor. In any case, this cheater story was used variously as housing and as space for herb shops and doctors' offices.
In one of the front rooms, we saw the old light fixtures still hanging from the ceiling where the restaurant's booths had been. Nearby, a giant grinning parade dragon patiently awaits the Chinese New Year underneath a white sheet.
Butte's extensive copper mining history is evident all around. There are 14 giant black steel 'headframes' still standing above the mining shafts beneath them. The headframes were used to lower workers and equipment into the mine and haul massive amounts of ore out of it. Apparently, Butte has over 10,000 miles of underground mining tunnels dug through its hills. The Butte Hill, the 'Richest Hill on Earth', was open pit mined beginning in 1955. The area had been mined almost continuously using other methods since 1864, but the Berkeley Pit changed the landscape considerably. Four neighborhoods were moved or buried by the rubble to make way for the large scale mining operation and in turn a pit 7000 feet long, 5600 feet wide and 1800 feet deep now remains. The groundwater that has seeped back into the underground tunnels and eventually into the pit itself is extremely acidic and laden with heavy metals, so the water is being treated continuously by a plant at the pit's edge to the tune of 10,000 gallons of water per minute. Eventually, the water level will rise above the bedrock and begin polluting the natural groundwater, so scientists are feverishly working on averting that disaster before it occurs, estimated to be around the year 2023.
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