Butte, America’s Story Episode 12 - Fagan’s Pharmacy

Welcome to Butte, America’s Story. I’m your host, Dick Gibson.

Fagan’s Pharmacy at 52 Main Street in Meaderville was managed by William F. Fagan who opened the store in 1922 following ten years as a pharmacist at various places in Butte. He dealt in “drugs, prescriptions, paints, and calcamine” – the latter was a white or tinted liquid containing zinc oxide, water, glue, and coloring matter, used as a wash or light paint for walls and ceilings.  
Labels from the store show that Fagan’s also sold poisons, such as Aqua Ammonia and creosote, which had the antidotes printed on the label, as well as Effervescing solution of citrate of magnesia, of which an adult could consume the entire bottle. It was a laxative.

William Fagan appeared in Butte in 1913 when he was a druggist for Paxson and Rockefeller at 24 W. Park Street. With his wife Mathilda he lived at various locations around Butte—412 S. Dakota, 658 Travonia, and 1109 W. Galena—before they moved to 77 Main in Meaderville by the 1950s. He operated the pharmacy at least until 1954, and the establishment continued as Farrens Village Drug and Sundries until the location was vacated in 1961. The Fagans relocated to 2209½ Cottonwood in 1963 as Meaderville was destroyed by expanding Berkeley Pit operations. All of Meaderville was lost to the Pit by the early 1970s – at least 488 buildings were gone. Some were moved to locations on the Flats and elsewhere, but most were demolished. The Leonard Mine headframe, a symbol of Meaderville, was toppled into the Berkeley Pit in 1974.  

Fagan’s was at the corner of Main and Noble Streets, a few hundred yards from the Leonard mine, and the Combination Mine—not operating by 1916, but soon rejuvenated as the Reins Shaft of the Leonard—was even closer, up the street to the north adjacent to the Italian Mission at #76 Main. Two saloons flanked Fagan’s to the north, and another stood to the east on Noble Street. Yet another was across Noble to the south. 

In 1916 the large two-story building across Main from Fagan’s housed a saloon at #53 Main, a moving picture theater at #55, and a restaurant at 57-59 Main. There was a large meeting hall above them. By the late 1920’s, Teddy Traparish, Peter Antonioli and Louis Bugni established the first Rocky Mountain Cafe at 53 Main. That building burned in 1940 and the Rocky Mountain Café was moved down the street where it enjoyed huge success and international renown. The Rocky Mountain Café closed in 1961 as the Pit grew, but the back bar survived: Traparish gave it to the World Museum of Mining. In 2011, the Mining Museum loaned it to Headframe Spirits distillery (21 S. Montana) where it returned to regular use once again.

 As writer Edwin Dobb has said, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places America came from."

Join us next time for more of Butte, America’s Story.