Distinctly Montana Magazine

37 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m Here's one of them. You might already know something about the Great Fire of 1895, like how it killed 58 people and was not just a fire but a huge explosion that blew out windows all over the city. But you probably don't know the story of Officer Fred Kembeck, who came to the scene of the conflagration after the first ex- plosion (dynamite illegally stored in a warehouse had caught fire). Once there, someone waved him down. They'd witnessed a low-life picking the pockets of one of the corpses. Kembrick decided to apprehend the ghoul. He seized the man and began transporting him back to the station when the second explosion occurred. This was the big one. A piece of flying debris, whis- tling like a red-hot missile out of hell, struck Officer Kembrick in the head. The poor man was instantly killed. History doesn't seem to record whether the sneak thief shared Kembrick's fate or whether he lived to loot again. Okay, okay, here's another: in 1903, faced with the increasingly unavoidable issue of the city's population of "sporting women," Butte's city fathers performed the moral calculus and arrived at the same conclusion as did no less an expert than St. Augustine himself, who compared the "public woman" to what the "bilge is in a ship at sea," or what the "sewer pit is in a palace. Remove this sewer and the entire palace will be contaminated." The Ana- conda Mining Company, it might be added, also shared this, ahem, enlightened viewpoint. Neverthe- less, something had to be done; they were too brazen, too showy. The solution? Butte's soiled doves were hereby ordered to wear high- er necklines and lower-hemmed skirts. Ever rebellious, they moved from the open streets to the alleys instead—and kept their decolle- tages on display. Those are just two of thousands of Butte stories, and I hap- pened to learn them while on a nice afternoon stroll thanks to the "Story of Butte." There could be no more aptly named app. * * * Story of Butte is a project of the Butte-Silver Bow Public Ar- chives and Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization (Butte CPR), with some help from the Montana Historical Soci- ety, Humanities Montana, Butte Conventions and Visitors Bu- reau, and more. One of its primary architects is Nancy Woodruff, a board member of Butte CPR who helped conceive of the project after seeing a similar historic app developed by a history professor friend of hers for Spokane, Washington. She saw it as a natural fit for Butte. Primarily, she says, Story of Butte "promotes interest in Butte's amazing historic buildings. Story of Butte contains hundreds of articles about historic commercial, public, and residential build- ings, thanks to content shared with us by the Montana Historical Society's National Register Sign Program. If you're standing in front of an interesting building in the historic district, chances are you can look it up on the Story of Butte app and read about the people and events associated with the structure, as well as view historic photographs. Or from your home you can virtually wander through the Butte historic district on the Story of Butte website." But there are certain ancillary benefits to the town as well, like beefing up Butte's "heritage tourism, a key part of Butte's tourism economy. Folks working in the tourism sector have been supportive from the beginning... At the visitor center the QR code for the app is taped to the door so that after hours visi- THANK OUR LADY OF THE ROCKIES THAT YOU HAVE "THE STORY OF BUTTE" AT YOUR FINGERTIPS. Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives

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