Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 69 Unfortunately for urban explorers, all of Missoula's 40 or so entrances to the underground are sealed. Not that you'd necessarily want to travel through them anyway. At 6 feet tall and 3 – 4 feet wide, those of us with a few extra pounds or a tendency for claus- trophobia might do better to avoid them and read Ms. Manning's book instead. Finally, there are the tunnels underneath Butte, Montana. Not just mining tunnels, although the Copper City has plenty of those as well. ese tunnels contained stores, eateries, a jail, and a brothel, naturally. But they also contained one of Western America's grand- est speakeasies. In the early 20th century Butte was a bustling metropolis in which the trolleys ran 24 hours a day. As many as 130 different organizations did business in the tunnels alone. When the country was firmly ensconced in prohibition, Butte still had somewhere in the order of 100 bars. So it was boom times for Butte when the Rockwood Hotel was built in 1912. e Rockwood was fancy, with floors imported from Italy and wainscoting in marble. In short, the Rockwood meant luxury. But it also meant booze, and lots of it. Because when the area under the Rockwood was excavated in 2004, a surprising discovery was made: In the tunnels underneath was one of grandest speakeasies to sling whiskey west of St. Louis, complete with carv- ings of mythical griffins, stained glass, tables for gambling, and a room for checking guests' coats. e collapse of prohibition was so dramatic and so sudden that the Rockwood Speakeasy was more or less abandoned; the coat check room was still full of coats, untouched since the 1920s, and there was a political button found on the ground. It read "Hoover For President." e button is a memento of how Montana's history and folklore can be even deeper than we realize, and that in addition to all the stories we already know, of homesteaders and trappers, farmers and schoolmarms, there are other stories buried just underneath. ey wait, underneath streets we see everyday, for us to dig them up again. HAVRE BENEATH THE STREETS is open 9 to 5pm in summer and 10 – 4pm in winter. (406) 265-4383 The Rockwood Speakeasy is the centerpiece of OLD BUTTE HISTORICAL ADVENTURES'S "BUTTE CITY UNDER- GROUND TOUR," which lasts about 1½ to 2 hours and is available 6 days a week. The tour winds through a block of exhibits, and includes the old jail and parts of the Dellinger Building, which is, as they point out on their Web site, "ghost-ridden." I would like to encourage you—no, admonish you—to give them a call at (406) 498-3424 and take the tour soon. And those curious about THE TUNNELS OF MISSOULA, would do well to read Nikki Manning's Historic Underground Missoula, available from your favorite local bookstore. Though closed to the public, the walls bear ominous messages in graffiti, like "To Hell, Step High" and "Beware the Devil", which seems to suggest the Billings tunnels will be the subject of Montana's urban (or would that be rural?) legends for a long time to come. take a tour This recreation of an underground salloon in Haver shows how lively the tunnels could be.

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