Shelby,
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Of all
the towns on the Hi-Line, Shelby has to have one of the
more colorful histories. After all, how many towns on the
Hi-Line, let alone in Montana, have held a professional
boxing match? True, the town nearly went bankrupt because
of it, but, well, the story is just so colorful that it
really must rank Shelby near the top as far as historic
Montana towns go.
It all started in 1923 as a real estate stunt, or to put
it more succinctly, as a way to put the tiny town of Shelby
(population of 2500 at the time) on the map. The problem,
of course, was how to do it? After all, what can a small
town of 2500 do to obtain world wide attention, barring some
natural disaster that wipes out half the town?
Quite
a bit, as it turned out. All that was needed was a lot
of money, a headline and a desperate need for attention.
After seeing a headline in a Great Falls paper of how Montreal
was offering a $100,000 purse for a boxing match between
Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey and a yet unnamed challenger,
an enterprising individual named James W. “Body” Johnson,
who wanted to call attention to his own land holdings, came
up with the unique idea to up the offer a bit. The hopes
were that by offering a sky high proposal to bring a professional
boxing match featuring Dempsey to Shelby, on July 4th of
all days, the publicity would spark an interest in this otherwise
ordinary Hi-Line Town, leading to a nice rush of land sales.
Or so the theory went.
As it
turned out, things didn’t quite work out as
planned. First, the offer somehow ended up being increased
to $300,000 through some shrewd negotiations in Chicago by
Dempsey’s manager, Jack “Doc” Kearns. Then
a massive stadium had to be built to accommodate the vast
floods of people who were expected to pour into town to see
the fight. An octagonal stadium that could seat 42,000 people
was built – seemingly overnight, all at great cost
(see
picture). And to house all these people, a huge number
of “temporary
hotels” were built all up and down Shelby, destined
to be torn down following the fight.
A few
things got in the way of prosperity, though. The town had
great difficulty in selling advance seats. Moreover,
right when it seemed like the town had finally succeeded
in booking some advance tickets and organizing the trains
to bring people out, the fight seemed like it would not happen,
as Shelby wasn’t able to come up with the final $100,000
payment. As such, Dempsey’s manager leaked word that
the fight would not happen – resulting in the virtual
cancellation of all advanced ticket sales. And, by the time
word got out that the fight was on again, it was too late
to sell tickets and transport all the people out to Shelby.
Thus,
on the date of the fight, in a stadium designed to seat
42,000 people, only a handful of people were in attendance.
However, there was no shortage of people milling around.
Problem was, they were Montana locals, and balked at paying
the exorbitant price for admission. Right before the fight
the price was lowered drastically, from $25 to $10. This
persuaded a few people to pay to go in and see the fight.
However, not to be left out, the others who refused to pay
to see the fight just pushed over the barbed wire that surrounded
the stadium right before the opening bell of the first round – leading
to a rush of over 4000 people into the stands – none
of whom paid. The result of all this was a near empty stadium
that was primarily filled with local spectators who were
seeing a championship heavyweight boxing match the town of
Shelby
paid for, all for free.
The
fight itself, between Heavyweight Jack Dempsey and challenger
Tommy Gibbons, was roundly considered a spectacular fight,
as it was the first time anyone had gone the full 15 rounds
with Dempsey. But that was the high point.
Following
the fight, the town of Shelby was basically broke. With
virtually no income received from the fight (since no
one came), the town was straddled with debts. Indeed, money
was so short IOU’s had to be used for payment following
the fight. The end result was that 4 banks in Montana completely
went out of business due to the losses they sustained in
promoting the fight, including the bank which was owned by
James W. “Body” Johnson’s father!
Yet, the publicity stunt did put Shelby on the map, at least
for a day or two. And the town survived the fallout of the
fight. Today, nothing remains of the arena, as the lumber
was repossessed and sold as scrap. Where the arena once was
now stands the local Pizza Hut and several other local businesses.
While
Shelby is not likely to be hosting a heavyweight boxing
match anytime soon, Shelby does still play host to lots of
people. Shelby is fortunate to sit on an interchange of Interstate
15, allowing the town to pull in traffic from people passing
through. Additionally, the town is only about an hour and
a half from Glacier National Park, allowing it to capture
tourists on their way to the park who happen to fall a “bit
behind” in their schedules.
Shelby
is still primarily an agricultural town, and today has
a population of 3300 people. However, the Interstate
has given rise to a few other industries here and there,
including a private prison recently. Shelby has also benefited
from the oil and gas discoveries that were made in years
past. Although the oil and gas boom is long since gone,
the town
still
receives spill over effects in terms
of well servicing and repair. As such, Shelby has a little
more of a diversified economy than many other towns do on
the Hi-Line.
Downtown
Shelby today is small, but quite nice. Like other Montana
Hi-Line towns, Shelby is both compact and contains
all the basics – although you won’t find any
big box retail stores here. Also downtown is a movie theatre,
in the event you get stranded and need to pass some time.
And, should you get stranded, Shelby, unlike many other Hi-Line
towns, has a few more lodging options – as the town
has many motels, including one national chain (a Comfort
Inn if I remember correctly).
For
more photographs of Shelby, see the Shelby
and Cut Bank Photo Gallery page.
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