The Anselmo headframe, an icon on the west side of Butte today, was just a trifle in its early days. Research by historian Mary McCormick shows that the central part of the Anselmo mine yard sits on the Trifle Lode, a claim located July 26, 1878, by Simon Hauswirth.

When Julius Levy died March 3, 1901, he was called “the most noted of all western gamblers.” “French” Levy, as he was known because of his birth at Engweiler, Alsace-Lorraine, France, supposedly “had all the money in Deer Lodge County,” obvious hyperbole but a statement of his renown.

The Anaconda Standard called Elizabeth Gurley Flynn “the Joan of Arc of industrial unionism” during her week-long series of speeches in Butte in June 1909. The “girl orator” was 18 years old.

Most early groceries were tiny affairs, scattered throughout residential neighborhoods and the central business district. Arguably the most successful early store was Lutey’s, which grew to have eleven outlets in Butte, but its primary claim to fame is as the first self-service grocery in the United States.

The reports of Mark Twain holding forth in the Silver Bow Club next to the Silver Bow County Court House are much exaggerated. It wasn’t even built when he visited Butte in 1895.

Out in the middle of the Warm Springs Ponds is a bridge completely surrounded by water, even on both ends. When the Morel Rainbow Arch Bridge was completed in 1914, it spanned Silver Bow Creek, connecting Anaconda to the Morel Station on the Milwaukee Railroad for automobile traffic.

Freshly admitted to statehood in 1889, Montana was eager to participate in the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the world’s fair commemorating the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492.

By 1896 the library had 20,000 volumes and was adding 2,000 more annually; in 1948 100,000 volumes were on the shelves. The library sustained damage from embers blown from the devastating “million dollar fire” that destroyed Symons’ Stores a block east on Park Street on September 24, 1905, and it was severely damaged by fire March 27, 1960: part of the roof collapsed.

When Jacob Riis came to Butte December 10, 1906, it is a measure of Butte’s importance as a stopping place for celebrities that he was here as part of a simple high school lecture series.

In 1884 Butte had nine Chinese laundries. The first non-Chinese commercial laundry appears to have been the Butte Steam Laundry, in 1885 on West Granite across from the skating rink pavilion at Alaska Street.

Andrew Jackson Davis, born in Massachusetts in 1819 of Welsh ancestry, was in business as a merchant in Madison, Indiana, by the time he was 16 years old. After stints in Iowa and California, he landed in Bannack and Alder Gulch during Montana’s gold rush of 1863, but he worked mostly as a merchandiser rather than a miner.

Butte’s Chinese Baptist Mission was established in 1896 at 44 West Galena Street, and Mrs. Whitmore was the superintendent there in 1898. By 1900, the mission moved to a new single-story frame building at 24 West Mercury Street, across from the prosperous Wah Chong Tai Co.

In 1918, Butte’s City Directory listed 23 dairies, but only 11 of them were in town. The others were a few miles out of Butte, listed as “5 miles west of city,” “2 miles north of Walkerville,” and similar addresses. The count was down from 42 dairies in 1903, in part due to various business consolidations.

The California was one of Butte’s longest-lived saloons. The building on Broadway just east of Main Street was erected in 1877 as Loeber’s Hall, a dance hall, meeting hall, house of worship, bakery, venue for marriages, theater, and site for political conventions all rolled into one.

Street names in the United States tend to be long-lived, but changes do happen. In Butte, some street name changes honored certain people, many were lost to mining developments, and some just changed.

When Eugene V. Debs first visited Butte on February 8, 1897, he was already a prominent labor union activist. He was a founder of the American Railway Union and was involved in the nationwide Pullman Strike in 1894.

“Having opened the above Hotel with the only Hotel accommodation for lodgers in Butte, we will be pleased to have the patronage of the public, and endeavor to give satisfaction in accommodation and rates.”

When Al Capone came to Butte to check it out as a western distribution center for the prohibition-era booze being smuggled into the States from Canada and seaports like Seattle, he was told by Butte Police Chief Jere Murphy that he could proceed to Meaderville to have dinner in one of the famous eateries there, but he was not to get off the train in Butte.

The German heritage of the proprietors was reflected in their wares: in 1911, the Atlantic boasted that it was the only house in Butte to carry imported Muenchner Hofbrau and Pilsner Buergerbrau, together with family wines and—for medicinal purposes—a selection of the “oldest and finest brandies and whiskies in the world.”

Seven-year-old Chin Sue Kee answered questions through a translator during the Seattle immigration hearing March 23, 1912. Among other things, she reported that her mother was a bound foot woman, a painful practice but one whose goal was to confer elevated status.