One of Butte’s most sensational fires occurred on July 28, 1973, when the Medical Arts Building burned. Numerous businesses were lost. The prominent building previously was known as the Owsley Block. Photo permitted by The Montana Standard.

By Kevin S. Giles

Fire stories: Butte burned again and again in its first century, killing 359 people in nearly 500 fires.

In a city built too fast, sprawling as it was across Butte Hill’s broad face, fire departments couldn’t win the battle of the flames. Buildings of all descriptions pressed against one another. When one caught fire, others did too. Commonly, entire city blocks perished.

Sadly, the fires continue in Butte’s second century.

In May 2021, fire claimed the iconic M&M Cigar Store, widely described as the heartbeat of old Butte. In January 2020, the Irish Times building a few blocks down the street burned as well. Both fires were accidents, investigators said.

Order Kevin's books now and receive a 10% discount by entering code "SaveOnKevinsBooks"

What’s the plan, Butte?

Here I am outside the famous M and M bar in Butte, Montana. I spent time inside, too. Photo by Don Bob Sundberg.

One wonders what Butte will do, or can do, to save its history from fire. So far, it appears, nothing. Over the years, fire consumed a significant chunk of the historic business district. I estimate at least a third of it disappeared in flames and ash, but that’s a guess, and I hope I’m wrong. I know only that more and more holes appear in places that once knew thriving commerce. Those places, such as the M&M, identified Butte as a city like no other.

“It smells like history disappearing,” David McCumber, editor of the Montana Standard, said in a video he produced after the fire. “Butte, let this be a brutal lesson. Let’s preserve the history we have left. Not just find reason to tear it down.”

Perhaps it’s inevitable that fire accompanies prosperity. Perhaps, like cremation, fire reduces to ashes a physical specimen that time overtook.

More fire stories

Butte knew fire early.

The great fire of September 28, 1905, destroyed or damaged 62 buildings, including the Butte Free Public Library and Symons Dry Goods. Estimated loss was $1 million. Butte’s second-largest fire in terms of total buildings happened on September 29, 1889. It started in the Bowes Block, a new brick building at the corner of Utah and Granite. The walls caved in less than five minutes after the fire started. At the end, 25 buildings had burned, including the Hennessy Mercantile, the Bernard Block and First National Bank.

Butte’s worst fire wasn’t above ground, however, but deep in the mines.

And then, fires deep in the mines

On June 8, 1917, a fire in the Speculator and Granite mines killed 163 miners, a disaster that stands as one of the worst in American mining history. Less than two years later, 16 men died in another Granite Mountain shaft fire, and on February 14, 1916, a Pennsylvania Mine fire killed 21.

In the years from 1900 to 1990, Butte averaged 47 building fires every decade. The most fires were recorded from 1920 to 1929, at 74.

But from 1960 to 1979, Butte suffered a disastrous 105 fires, including many major businesses and historic landmarks.

Among the historic losses were the Meaderville Mercantile and Brass Rail Bar (1962), the Cornish Boarding House in Centerville (1962), Old Park Theater (1965), and the Old Meaderville Fire Department station house (1965). Two were prostitution houses: Windsor Hotel (1968) and Victoria Hotel (1969). Then came Old Central High School (1972), Columbia Gardens (1973), and numerous house fires where people died.

How much of Butte burned down?

The most sensational uptown fires of that era destroyed the J.C. Penney building and 12 others on February 28, 1972, and the historic Silver Bow Block and two adjoining buildings on October 21, 1978. The Penney block on West Park Street burned to its foundation after an explosion occurred about midnight. The Silver Bow Block was considered one of the most ornate buildings in Butte. That fire started in the wiring of the Mother Lode restaurant in a building adjacent to 26 West Granite, where the historic Inter Mountain and Daily Post newspapers had been published.

This view of Main Street in Butte, Montana, is what Red Maguire would have seen in 1955. The fictional newspaper reporter, the protagonist in my mystery novels, worked at the Butte Bugle in the Hirbour Block, the tall building with facing windows on the right. This view is taken from the M&M Cigar Store looking north. Photo permitted by the Montana Standard.

One of Butte’s costliest fires began during the wee hours of August 9, 1954, in the recently updated Butte Hotel apartments on East Broadway Street. All 100 residents escaped. The hotel’s entire fire-weakened facade collapsed, raining brick and mortar onto Broadway. Firefighters saved the adjacent Hirbour Block — at eight stories one of Butte’s tallest — but to the east, the hotel’s annex and the Windsor Block were lost. Even before the last embers cooled, owners predicted a loss that exceeded $1 million.

A police officer described the evacuation: “They all acted like they had been through something like this before. There wasn’t a scream, there wasn’t a bit of commotion.”

Been through it before? Indeed, many of them had.

Talk of a new M&M

There’s talk of rebuilding the M&M in its former image. The building was a designated historic site. Possibly it could look the same, much as the Rialto Theater in neighboring Deer Lodge came back to life after a devastating fire consumed everything between the facade and the stage. Such restorations don’t happen without heroic community will, prolonged fund-raising campaigns, and acceptance that new walls can replace old walls that told old stories.

But new walls will collect their own stories. The alternative, so sadly visible in Butte, is that empty holes say nothing.

“This was not just another old building being erased from the streets of this mining city,” McCumber said of losing the M&M. “It was Butte’s very heart on fire.”

Receive Kevin's free e-letter! (In return you get his story, 'The Girl Behind the Glass')

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.