Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Helena, Montana--a Remarkable Little City
Helena!! When I say it, the word bursts with memories. You see I lived in Helena from the time I was three until I was 18. My Mom still lives there right at the base of Mt. Helena. If you take the poshness and resortiness out of Aspen and think of a "real" old gold mining town, you get Helena.
Helena's history is fascinating and I will always know more about it than Seattle. Gold was discovered there in the 1860's in a little creek that now runs under the crooked Main Street called Last Chance Gulch. The miners were about to give up and leave Montana territory when a swash of a gold pan delivered some good sized nuggets--hence the name "Last Chance Gulch". The rush was on and to this day the downtown buildings, still mostly orginal, have narrow fronts along the street but run deep to the alleys because they were built along the mining claims on the edge of the creek (pronounced "crik" in Montana). The money poured into this tiny town nestled in the Rocky Mountains on the edge of a big valley.
In the 1890's Helena had more millionaires per capita than any city in the nation. It rivaled San Francisco for its hipness. And everybody who was anybody built a mansion. Eventually, the gold became too expensive to extract and profits started to fall. Some of the rich people left. Usually, when that happened in Montana--ghost town--but after much corruption and political fighting, Helena became the capital city. Government and the businesses to support it are the lifeblood of this town to this day.
The most fascinating aspect of Helena (pop. 30,000) is that the Victorian mansions are still there--all over and in every neighborhood east to west. When I was a little girl most of them were in disrepair and since we had a large population of Roman Catholic families, they were filled with large families or turned into apartments. I wasn't lucky enough to live in one but oh did I get to play in them. My family's little house had actually been a log cabin in the backyard of one of these giants; it had siding and dry wall put on and rooms added so it was a relatively normal but quirky house with thick walls and a low ceiling. The main house had burned probably a hundred years before, the only remnant being a large granite block my Dad found in our garden and used as a back door step.
Immediately behind our house were three Victorian homes and across the street two more. I had friends who lived in them all and I have great memories of pretending to be a princess in the top floor ballrooms and playing "mother may I" on the servant's steps behind the kitchens. A block away loomed a gigantic ornate but dilapidated brick house with the carriage house and barn still part of the property. A boy named Billy lived there with his Grandmother. Billy's Grandma looked incredibly like a witch with long gray stringy hair. She acted like a witch, too, because the kids in the neighborhood loved to play in the old barn and she was always chasing us away. My brother was friends with Billy so he got to play in the main house and he came home with stories of cherry wood paneling and a fancy staircase. I was convinced the place was haunted; after all, a mean old lady lived there.
Unfortunately, the haunted mansion was between our little house and my piano teacher's house. In the dark Montana winters, my Mom forced me to walk home from my lessons up the hill past the horrible house. And little Janet with her overactive imagination would see all sorts of ghosts and hear screams and she'd barely make it home without wetting her pants after this long difficult scary uphill trek in the snow.
One day after school, for some reason, my friend and I (I am not proud of this) were being mean to a dweebie boy and we took his hat and threw it into a window of the broken down carriage house behind the haunted mansion. His parents told my parents and my punishment was to go up to the door of the haunted mansion and confess my crime face to face with the object of my fear: Billy's Grandmother. The required mission was to obtain the hat. Usually, these stories end with the surprise that the scary person was just a kind kid-loving jolly old Grandma who invites you in for cookies. Nope, she was even more ugly and terrifying close up; she allowed me to get the hat but she was even meaner than I imagined and yelled at me to stay off the property and oh my God, little Janet had to trudge by the place again on Monday night.
Of course, we visit Helena once or twice a year and traditionally, I drive my children by my old house where my Mom no longer lives. In the last twenty years, Helena has come back to life and the old mansions, thankfully, are being refurbished. Some of them have been turned into Bed & Breakfasts. The Witch and Billy's house is in the process of being redone and it is gorgeous; a historic plaque is placed in the front explaining the home's incredible story. No mention is made of a Witch or Billy who I think went to prison. The carriage house and barn are gone. And oh yes, my kids can't believe how short the distance is between my old house and my piano teacher's house--a mere three blocks.
Helena!! When I say it, the word bursts with memories. You see I lived in Helena from the time I was three until I was 18. My Mom still lives there right at the base of Mt. Helena. If you take the poshness and resortiness out of Aspen and think of a "real" old gold mining town, you get Helena.
Helena's history is fascinating and I will always know more about it than Seattle. Gold was discovered there in the 1860's in a little creek that now runs under the crooked Main Street called Last Chance Gulch. The miners were about to give up and leave Montana territory when a swash of a gold pan delivered some good sized nuggets--hence the name "Last Chance Gulch". The rush was on and to this day the downtown buildings, still mostly orginal, have narrow fronts along the street but run deep to the alleys because they were built along the mining claims on the edge of the creek (pronounced "crik" in Montana). The money poured into this tiny town nestled in the Rocky Mountains on the edge of a big valley.
In the 1890's Helena had more millionaires per capita than any city in the nation. It rivaled San Francisco for its hipness. And everybody who was anybody built a mansion. Eventually, the gold became too expensive to extract and profits started to fall. Some of the rich people left. Usually, when that happened in Montana--ghost town--but after much corruption and political fighting, Helena became the capital city. Government and the businesses to support it are the lifeblood of this town to this day.
The most fascinating aspect of Helena (pop. 30,000) is that the Victorian mansions are still there--all over and in every neighborhood east to west. When I was a little girl most of them were in disrepair and since we had a large population of Roman Catholic families, they were filled with large families or turned into apartments. I wasn't lucky enough to live in one but oh did I get to play in them. My family's little house had actually been a log cabin in the backyard of one of these giants; it had siding and dry wall put on and rooms added so it was a relatively normal but quirky house with thick walls and a low ceiling. The main house had burned probably a hundred years before, the only remnant being a large granite block my Dad found in our garden and used as a back door step.
Immediately behind our house were three Victorian homes and across the street two more. I had friends who lived in them all and I have great memories of pretending to be a princess in the top floor ballrooms and playing "mother may I" on the servant's steps behind the kitchens. A block away loomed a gigantic ornate but dilapidated brick house with the carriage house and barn still part of the property. A boy named Billy lived there with his Grandmother. Billy's Grandma looked incredibly like a witch with long gray stringy hair. She acted like a witch, too, because the kids in the neighborhood loved to play in the old barn and she was always chasing us away. My brother was friends with Billy so he got to play in the main house and he came home with stories of cherry wood paneling and a fancy staircase. I was convinced the place was haunted; after all, a mean old lady lived there.
Unfortunately, the haunted mansion was between our little house and my piano teacher's house. In the dark Montana winters, my Mom forced me to walk home from my lessons up the hill past the horrible house. And little Janet with her overactive imagination would see all sorts of ghosts and hear screams and she'd barely make it home without wetting her pants after this long difficult scary uphill trek in the snow.
One day after school, for some reason, my friend and I (I am not proud of this) were being mean to a dweebie boy and we took his hat and threw it into a window of the broken down carriage house behind the haunted mansion. His parents told my parents and my punishment was to go up to the door of the haunted mansion and confess my crime face to face with the object of my fear: Billy's Grandmother. The required mission was to obtain the hat. Usually, these stories end with the surprise that the scary person was just a kind kid-loving jolly old Grandma who invites you in for cookies. Nope, she was even more ugly and terrifying close up; she allowed me to get the hat but she was even meaner than I imagined and yelled at me to stay off the property and oh my God, little Janet had to trudge by the place again on Monday night.
Of course, we visit Helena once or twice a year and traditionally, I drive my children by my old house where my Mom no longer lives. In the last twenty years, Helena has come back to life and the old mansions, thankfully, are being refurbished. Some of them have been turned into Bed & Breakfasts. The Witch and Billy's house is in the process of being redone and it is gorgeous; a historic plaque is placed in the front explaining the home's incredible story. No mention is made of a Witch or Billy who I think went to prison. The carriage house and barn are gone. And oh yes, my kids can't believe how short the distance is between my old house and my piano teacher's house--a mere three blocks.
// posted by Janet @ 8:06 AM
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