What was Helena like in 1887?

Last December, I shared Homer Thomas's description of Christmas in the Gallatin Valley in 1864. Readers seemed to enjoy it so I thought I'd share an excerpt of another delightful primary source, this one a description of Helena published in the the September 1887 issue of Northwest Magazine. Likely written as a promotional piece (so to be read with some caution), it was called "A Glance at the City."

"Let us suppose that you arrive in Helena on the train from the East just at the close of a summer day. The bustle at the station, the long lines of freight cars, the array of hacks and hotel omnibusses, all suggest a large and busy place. You select as your conveyance a brightly-painted streetcar, which takes you "up town" for ten cents, and glancing around at the warehouses, lumber-yards, taverns and saloons which gather about the station, discover that this is a new suburb, created by the railroad, and that the city proper is more than a mile away hugging closely the base of the mountains. In the intervening space you pass heaps of boulders and gravel, beds of old ditches and huge excavations scarring the face of the landscape--the remains of abandoned gold-diggings. The best of the placer ground was long ago washed out, but at one point there is still a line of sluice-boxes and some work is done when water is plenty. ... All this debris of the old mines gives to the approaches to the city a singularly ragged and uncouth look and makes the contrast a striking one, when the car, turning and descending a little hill, suddenly brings you into a long, narrow, winding street, full of vehicles and people and bordered with a picturesque variety of buildings, ranging in size from the log huts to the four story brick hotel and the cut-stone palace of a bank. ..."

Let me know if you like these occasional primary source features, or if I should stick to sharing teaching resources, strategies, and professional development opportunities.

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.