A Winter Search for Estella’s Cabin: Looking for the Belmont Mine

Estella and William Muth lived in the tiny mining town of Belmont, Montana in 1881.  Belmont no longer exists, but I did find the Belmont Mine on a map, and today we decided to put on the snowshoes and see if we could find the mine, and maybe even a cabin or two.

We started off at Ottawa Gulch, right above the town of Marysville.  Marysville was a booming town of about  4,000 in the 1880’s, and Estella Muth often mentioned heading “downtown” from her house in Belmont.  Marysville had a drug store, grocery, churches, a number of saloons, and a post office, which was serviced by a train that came from Helena.   Today fewer than 200 people live there.

We snowshoed uphill, working our way southwest through the forest, and after about an hour of hiking we found a small structure:

 Not sure what this building was used for, but right below it was a small stamp mill:

The "stamps" inside the mill: used to crush the ore

The stamp mill crushed the ore so that the gold could be extracted.  Large stamp mills must have been incredibly noisy; the stamps pounded on the ore day and night.   I’m sure that the pounding of the crushers was a constant soundtrack to Estella’s life in Belmont.   Indeed, Estella mentioned in her diary that the mill kept running even after the six men were killed in the “Belmont disaster.”   The Belmont stamp mill was a large one, with 30 stamps, and I learned today that it was destroyed in 1944 as a training exercise for a demolition team from nearby Fort Harrison.  So this little mill that we found was not the one for the Belmont Mine. Nonetheless, it was an interesting discovery.  Here are some more pictures of the stamp mill:

Interior: the big chute for the ore

Big wheel for the flat belt that transmitted the power from the steam engine

Another shot of the interior

We didn’t find any standing cabins on this trip, but we plan to return in the summer and continue the search!

If you’re interested in more detail about how the stamp mill worked, Wikipedia has a great article.

Here are a couple of shots of Marysville today:

Ignatz Weil: from Vienna to Helena to Sandpoint

Ignatz Weil, the salesman who supposedly had a mortgage on Ike Greenhood’s house and land on Dearborn Avenue, was one of a number of travelling salesmen who worked for Greenhood, Bohm, and Company.   According to his biography in the  History of the City of Spokane and Spokane County, 18 year old Ignatz immigrated from Vienna, Austria to San Francisco in 1871.  In 1882 he moved to Helena to work for Greenhood and Bohm.    Ignatz travelled all over Montana and northern Idaho, hauling trunks of samples and soliciting orders for the the clothing, tobacco, and liquor that Greenhood and Bohm sold.    And we was busy.    His letters to Ike Greenhood from his trips are in the Greenhhod, Bohm and Company records at the Historical Society, and he seemed to be rarely back in Helena. In fact, in the City Directories from the mid 1880’s, his address is listed as “on the road.”   He wrote to Ike nearly every night, reporting on his latest sales.  Here’s an excerpt from one of his 1887 letters, written from The Grand Hotel in Billings:

“Dear Ike,

I arrived this evening from Melville (?) and herein enclose Hickox order amounting to $1800.  On account of high water I could  not go to Melville…will stop there however tomorrow on my way back….I will go tomorrow to Big Timber, next day to Bozeman or Helena.  Sold so far on this trip a trifle over $10,000.”

And here’s a photo of the letter:

Can anyone decipher the name of the town Ignatz couldn't get to?

$10,000!  That’s a lot of cash in 1887 dollars.  He seemed to be one of Ike’s top salesmen, and from the letters the two exchanged it’s clear that they liked and respected each other.  Many letters include questions about the Greenhood children, and Ignatz often gave Ike advice about running his business.  Indeed, between 1889 and 1891, the Helena City Directory shows Ignatz boarding at the Greenhood residence on Dearborn Avenue (our house!)

In 1891 Ignatz left Helena and headed for Sandpoint, Idaho, with the intention of going into business for himself.  He was in Sandpoint on that February evening in 1892 when Isaac was busy mortgaging his property to Ignatz.  Ignatz stayed in Sandpoint, and ended up becoming one of the founding fathers of the town.  According to the History of the City of Spokane and Spokane County, which was published in 1912, Ignatz Weil “has acquired extreme holdings in the property of this vicinity…and is recognized as a man of clear judgment, foresight, and rare business sagacity.”  In 1900 he became the United States commissioner of the district, and in 1907 he was appointed the auditor, recorder and clerk of the district court.

The biography also notes that Ignatz married “Miss Irene Henry, of Kentucky” in 1886.  Ignatz was still in Helena at that point, but I cannot find any mention of Irene in either the Helena city directories or the Helena newspapers.  They were probably listed in the 1890 census, but since all records of that national census were destroyed in a fire, we don’t have access to that information.  By 1900, however, both Ignatz and Irene are listed in the Sandpoint, Idaho census.  I did find a picture of their Sandpoint home:

Pretty nice, eh? Not bad for an immigrant boy who arrived at 18 with pretty much nothing to his name.

Ignatz died in 1931 and Irene in 1945.  They had no children, and both are buried in Sandpoint: