Butte, America’s Story Episode 190 - Shortridge Church

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

Galen Wood, a missionary for the Christian Church in Deer Lodge, began services in Butte (which he called “Satan’s seat”) in 1887, and spearheaded the organization of a congregation in 1888. They met initially at the Fidelity Hall on West Broadway, the present Odd Fellows Hall.

The Shortridge Christian Church was built in 1893. The land at the corner of Washington and Mercury Streets cost $3,065 in 1891, an “inflated” price, according to financially strapped church elders, and the structure itself cost $10,000 plus $2,000 more for the furnishings. All this for an initial congregation numbering 53.

After Sarah E. Shortridge, longtime executive secretary of the national Christian Women’s Board of Missions in Indianapolis died in 1890, a memorial fund was established amounting to about $5,000 a year that came to Butte for at least two years, and the church was named in her honor.

The 15 stained glass windows were donated by church members and “built locally,” almost certainly by the Butte Art Stained Glass Works which had just begun business in 1892 in the 300 block of South Main Street. They helped make news reports of the day call the Shortridge Church probably the most beautiful in the state.

By 1910 the Shortridge Church was thriving to the point that it was one of the main venues for Carrie Nation during her three-day visit to Butte. Although Nation made little headway in her campaign here against drinking and prostitution, she was enthusiastically received in churches like Shortridge where she reportedly did a “land-office business” selling her pamphlets and hatchet pins at the pricey cost of a dollar each to finance her travels and to provide bail money for when she was arrested.

The church hosted a state convention of Christian churches in 1938 attended by about 150 delegates.

After more than a half century, in the face of Butte’s declining population and expensive repairs needed to the church, the congregation relocated in 1961 to Texas Avenue where the successor church was named the First Christian Church, still in use today.

The Drama Guild of Butte bought the old building and used it from 1964 to 1968 as the William Froehlich Theater.

A fire of unknown origin destroyed the church May 29, 1968. Ellen Crain, then in fourth grade at the nearby parochial school, remembers vividly the fire’s multicolored smoke: red, green, yellow, and blue, from burning paints and sets from the Drama Guild. The space is a parking lot today.

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.