Butte, America’s Story Episode 68 - Cook With Gas

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

Butte and the rest of Montana got natural gas for heating and cooking in the early 1930s, when the Bowdoin Dome, near Malta, Montana, began to produce significant natural gas. But Butte was using gas long before that.

The Butte Gas Light & Coke Company was established in 1884. President Anthony Barret was a Kentucky native who came to Montana in 1875, first to Alder Gulch, then Pony, and finally to Butte in 1878 where his success in the saddle, harness and carriage business allowed him to branch out into other investments. He formed a partnership with real estate tycoon John Noyes and banker Andrew Jackson Davis in the lighting and fuel company, which became Butte Gas Light & Fuel in 1899.

The gas the company sold was distilled from coal, which was imported to their facility at the corner of Second Street and Maryland Avenue in South Butte. The plant was just down the street from the Schlitz Beer Depot and the Anaconda Sampling Works, and their uptown office was at 202 North Main, where the Wells Fargo bank is today.

By the 1910s, most of their coal was from the coking coal mines at Sunnyside, Utah, though they were also using tar from Pocatello, Idaho, and from Missoula. Besides gas for heating, lighting, and cooking, lighter liquid by-products such as coal oils were used to make oil-based paint, and the heavier tarry distillates became roofing pitch, road tar, and tar paper coatings. They produced about six barrels of liquid distillate per day, sold as “creosote paint” by the Ellis Paint Company at 24 West Granite for $1.50 a gallon.

In 1918, Butte Gas Light & Fuel had 30 miles of pipes carrying gas around the city, with nearly 30 more miles of distribution pipes for individual customers. They processed 25 tons of coal every day in 30 retorts, piping it into a huge 80-foot-high storage tank with “COOK WITH GAS” in huge letters on its side. To prevent explosions, the gas was covered with 2½ inches of water – which took lots of heating in the winter to keep it from freezing, probably one of the company’s biggest costs.

With an average capacity in 1900 of 175,000 cubic feet a day, Butte Gas Light & Fuel had a monopoly on gas services in Butte. In 1913, customer prices ranged from $1.00 to $1.65 per thousand cubic feet per month. They only had 12 employees, but one report said the “business standing … is as solid as Gibraltar.” Company secretary and plant superintendent R.S. Feurtado had come to Butte from his native Jamaica – just maybe the only Jamaican in Butte in 1900.

Competition from electric lighting and the development of electrical appliances certainly impacted the company’s business, but they continued to operate until 1927, coincident with the time when electric stoves began to compete seriously with gas ranges. Anthony Barret went on to serve as Montana state treasurer in 1901-1905, and died in 1918. Barret was succeeded by J.H. Leyson, probably better known as a jeweler.

The site of the coal gas distillery is occupied by Pioneer Concrete today. There were homes within a few tens of feet of the plant, at least one of which survives today, near the corner of Maryland and Third Streets.

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.