The History of Helena, MT.gif)
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| Downtown
Helena |
Helena,
similar to Butte, is best understood by knowing a bit about
its history. Like many other towns in Montana,
Helena started out as a mining town. But, unlike Butte, it
doesn’t share some of the tragic consequences that
Butte has endured over the past couple dozen years.
Helena
was inadvertently founded by 4 men, all from Georgia and
known in the history books as the “Four Georgians”.
These four men, rather desperate after searching throughout
western Montana for gold and finding nothing, stumbled into
the area that is now Helena. That night, on July 14th, 1864,
the men decided to take one last chance in mining the nearby
creek. As luck and fate would have it, the men found gold
that evening. They named the stream they found the gold in,
appropriately enough, Last Chance Gulch.
Word
soon got out about the gold strike and, seemingly overnight,
Helena became a boom town. In just a few short years, several
hundred businesses had opened up shop in Helena and more
than 3000 people called Helena home. Moreover, many of
the previous mining strikes in other mining areas of Montana
were beginning to play out. As
such, many of the miners in these areas gravitated towards
Helena.
The name Helena for the new town did not arrive overnight.
Initially, the new town was called Crabtown, named after
one of the four Georgians who found gold. Soon, though, other
names were bounced around, including Pumpkinville and Squashtown.
However, many of the miners were from Minnesota. These miners
soon began to call the town after another town in Minnesota,
called Saint Helena. This was soon shortened to Helena, which
is the name today.
Montana became a territory of the United States in 1864.
A territorial capitol was established in Virginia City, which
was right next to Bannack. Bannack was the first major gold
strike town in Montana, being established just a few years
earlier in 1862.
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| The
Capitol Building Seen from Mt. Helena |
However, with the boom in Helena and the influx of miners
from the Bannack gold strike, it was decided to move the
territorial capitol to Helena in 1875. This was a fateful
move, as it pretty much sealed the demise of Virginia City
(which would decline into a ghost town once the gold ran
out) while setting up Helena for future growth and development.
Somewhat oddly, the capitol building itself was located about
1 mile away from Last Chance Gulch (which sits deep down
in a canyon), with the capitol building perched on the lower
elevations of a large hill that lies to the west of town.
In 1883,
the Northern Pacific railroad arrived in Helena, further
fueling the cities growth. Moreover, with the establishment
of the territorial capitol in Helena, the city began a slow
move away from a typical mining town – and prevented
the collapse of the town when the gold ran out in Last Chance
Gulch.
Yet, Helena had to fight to keep the capitol there. In 1894,
the fight over the state capitol erupted between Helena and
Anaconda (at the time, the Anaconda area was booming with
the mining being done in nearby Butte). Helena won the fight,
by popular vote, and has remained the state capitol of Montana
ever since.
Helena also had to battle several fires that burned significant
parts of the town. The wooden structures burned easily and
readily. This led to the creation of the historic fire tower
that still stands today over Last Chance Gulch.
Like
all mining towns, the gold soon ran out of Last Chance
Gulch. Yet, Helena continued to prosper. The towns central
location in Montana, coupled with being the state capitol,
continued to bring in new people and roads. Helena also acted
as a distribution point (due to the transportation hub that
developed of roads and railroads) to outlying mining towns
and other nearby resource extraction industries. Additionally,
agriculture in the valley helped to sustain Helena’s
growth.
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