Month: November 2024

It’s hard for a Butte person to read about the Kenoffel brothers’ cafes without wondering which one was known as “Awful.” That one was actually a Knofel.  

The story goes…

Back in 1956, Bob Knievel was in jail on either a reckless driving or burglary charge. His youthful offense paled in comparison to that of his jail mate, William Clarence Knofel, already nicknamed “Awful.” A witty jailer observed the duo and exclaimed something like, “how do you like this place? We have both Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel.” Bob, with a nose for self-promotion, adopted the name, changing it to ‘Evel.’ And ‘Awful?’ 

Well, William or Clarence ‘Awful’ Knofel was the real deal. In 1974, the 52 year old unemployed ex-con claimed that Evel’s constant retelling of the naming story had rendered his life unbearable. 

But he shied from the discredit he earned over a long lifetime of poor decisions. 

The early years

In small cities and towns out West, people occasionally drift in, drift around, and drift off again. William Knofel was such a transient resident, never much comfortable around people or regular work. Born in 1922, his early life seems unremarkable. It’s difficult to find any notable mention of him, although the Knofel family lived in Butte since at least the 1890s. In 1942, Knofel served a month in a California jail on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He also faced a rape allegation, but dodged that by pleading guilty to the former charge.

A year later, his luck ran out in San Francisco. In December, 1943 Knofel was convicted of first degree robbery and sentenced to eight years in San Quentin. He earned parole after serving three years. Not a good start for a young man of twenty-five.

Soon after release, he made his first appearance in Montana papers. Knofel was in Billings, serving four months in the county jail following conviction on charges of taking an auto without consent of the owner. With four other prisoners conspiring to break out of the calaboose, Knofel kicked and severely beat a jailer. When arraigned, he pleaded guilty. 

 While serving a new two year term for second degree assault, Knofel’s good behavior led to his becoming a trustee. Taking advantage of the reduced supervision, he escaped in May of 1947 from the Montana State Penitentiary in Deer Lodge. Listed as Clarence Knofel, he bolted with another trustee. The bulletin described him as a former miner, 5 feet 11 inches in height, weighing 152 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. 

When they came down from the hills to the small town of Drummond for food, police promptly captured both men.

In and out, of jail and love

Back in prison, Knofel was once again, by all accounts, a model prisoner. He earned a parole after serving out most of his two year sentence. 

One of the conditions of his release was that he stay away from Butte. Just a few days later, police arrested him there and returned him to Deer Lodge as a parole violator. Knofel then served the remainder of his original two year sentence.

Upon entering into his relationship with the Montana penal system, Knofel’s first wife Bernice filed for divorce. It’s unclear how Knofel found time to develop romances, what with his moving around and other nocturnal business. He did apparently remain single for the next seven or so years.

Knofel then met and married a girlfriend named Charlotte in 1953. She was twenty, he was thirty-two years of age. Charlotte filed for divorce late that year, citing extreme cruelty, but they apparently reconciled. 

Crime gets serious

In Butte on May 2,1954, assailants brutally beat and killed an eighty year old wealthy and well-known Chinese laundry owner named Quong On. Someone dumped his body in a lot near Rocker, Montana. The rumor was that Quong hid his fortune in his house, and police found it ransacked. They arrested Knofel and held him in Butte’s Silver Bow County jail. There he spent the next eleven months, in lieu of a $10,000 bond, awaiting trial for the murder. The court dismissed charges against him that November, when the state was unable to locate its key witness.

Three months later, on February 15, 1956, William Knofel, now calling himself Clarence, was in the Butte city jail, held on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon. During questioning in connection with theft of a shotgun during a robbery of Sears, police found a switchblade knife on him. 

Knofel was now thirty-three years old and found himself sharing a cell with one John Bruno, of the same age, impounded on a conviction of drunk driving. Bruno held the dubious record of having had a blood alcohol content of 3.6, the highest ever recorded, to that time, in Butte police court. He was serving a twenty day term. 

 Knofel and Bruno sawed their way through the bars of their Butte jail cell. A woman prisoner screamed and thrashed from an apparent case of delirium tremens. This effectively diverted attention, allowing the two men to slip quietly out of the building. They drove a Dodge, easily traced to Bruno, toward Kellogg, Idaho. Officers pinched both men less than a day later, when they “brazenly walked into the county courthouse in nearby Wallace, to buy a 1956 auto license for Bruno’s car.” 

The jail hacker

Extradited back to Butte, Knofel landed back to jail. On March 9, returning from a court appearance on the grand larceny charge, he broke away from a sheriff’s deputy and was recaptured two blocks away. 

The following evening, he managed to spring himself once again. The deputy bringing Knofel’s breakfast found an inch thick hinge bolt on the cell door sawed through. The door opened enough to allow the slim Knofel to free himself. He then exited through a window in the basement garage. Five hacksaw blades and a pile of cigarette butts testified to Knofel’s patient work on the bolt. His earlier escape actually worked to his advantage. As a result, he drew solitary confinement in an old basement cell with rusty iron bolts.

Authorities caught up with him in Helena on March 12, after two days of liberty.. They pinched William and his wife at their hotel. When searched, officers discovered four hacksaw blades sewn into the waistband of Knofel’s trousers. He was issued Helena jail clothes and left manacled to a Silver Bow sheriff’s deputy.

Knofel caused no trouble during the ride back to Butte. Indeed, he apologized to the officers for having “caused the sheriff so much trouble.” Once more, Knofel found himself in the Silver Bow County jail, which now required repairs to two of its cells. 

Having failed to post a $2,500 bond on the grand larceny charge against him, Knofel cooled his heels in the county jail. In December, 1956 the district court judge ordered him to Warm Springs for psychiatric evaluation, following a half-hearted suicide attempt, an abortive hunger strike, and suspicion of tampering with jail locks. Knofel found himself convicted and sentenced to a one year term in the state penitentiary on a charge of receiving stolen property. He served this without incident. 

A little togetherness

Back in June of that year, his wife Charlotte filed for divorce, on grounds that Clarence was a convicted felon. The two had been married for three years.

One week after release from prison, William Knofel, 34, and (somehow) his wife Charlotte, 22, drew the attention of a Great Falls police detective. He found them in possession of two pairs of slacks, a jacket and an electric iron, all taken from a local department store. Pleading guilty, they received fines and suspended sentences. Unable to pay those fines, both became guests of the county, in its ‘crowbar hotel.’

Knofel told officers he stole things to resell because he was hungry. He protested that his wife had never been in trouble before. She proved to be a quick learner.

Early in 1959, after several months in jail, Knofel somehow managed to furnish bond on the larceny charge. During this interval he migrated to California, where he wound up in a mental institution. The system soon pronounced William cured and discharged him.

In July 1960, back in district court on the earlier larceny charge, Knofel’s lawyer asserted that if the court suspended his client’s five year sentence, that he would return to and remain in California. The county attorney didn’t contest this, and the judge suspended Knofel’s sentence. In closing the case, the judge added, “I hope you can get from here to the bus station without breaking any laws.” The bus station was a little over a block from the courthouse. 

Charlotte apparently stayed busy in Butte as the 1950s wore on. She was fined for disturbing the peace in 1957. In August 1959, she forfeited two $50 bonds by failing to appear in court on another charge of causing a disturbance and resisting a police officer. 

In February, 1963, the pair, together again, were charged with petty larceny in Butte. More shoplifting of slacks, this time from Penneys. Police had Charlotte accommodated in the county jail, and issued a warrant for William. The Knofels were able to post bond after a short time. 

A gamble in Reno

Career criminals, like bad pennies, keep turning up. In July of 1963, police in Reno, Nevada held one of five men sought by Secret Service agents as part of a counterfeiting ring run from a college press in California. Over $4 million in currency had been printed and much of it distributed.

The Montana Standard reported that one of the men arrested was Clarence Junior Richards, 41, of Butte. This was an alias for William Knofel, collared by casino guards after a dealer examined the bill. William then threw two phony twenties and another fifty under the table. He later told police he got the money from a man and woman he could neither name nor describe. Knofel was likely attempting to launder the money for a larger racket. Authorities sought four others in Reno, and already had another four in the San Francisco area in custody. 

It’s unlikely that Knofel was able to stay clear of trouble or out of prison in California, although mentions of him fall off in the late 60s. He appeared in a January 1966 Nevada State Journal article as Clarence Richards Jr. He struck another man with a gun during an altercation, sending him to the hospital. The two were once friends but a quarrel had been brewing for some time when they began to fight at Joe Chicago’s Bar.

The rumpus continued across the street at the Elbow Room, and from there out onto the streets of Sparks, Nevada. Police arrested Knofel for failure to register as an ex-felon and possession of a firearm. 

No place like home

Jail room must have been at a premium in Nevada, as Knofel inexplicably returned to Butte by August, 1966. Cited for vagrancy, he ultimately donated his $100 bond to the city by failing to appear in police court. A ‘C’ note is a lot of money to forego when one is already homeless, so it appears he had either forgotten the date, or grown so distasteful of courtrooms that he just couldn’t stomach another appearance in one.  

Charlotte was back in the news in the summer of 1965. She drew a suspended three month sentence, pending her good behavior, for attempting to obtain money under false pretenses. The original complaint was that she had forged another person’s name to a refund slip for a suit from Penneys.

Playing out of his league

As mentioned earlier, William Knofel resurfaced during the summer of 1974 in Twin Falls, Idaho. This appearance was related to Evel Knievel’s planned rocket cycle jump of the Snake River canyon. This was an event that garnered national notoriety and promised a huge payoff for Knieval. Hangers-on, looking to pluck some low-hanging fruit, were there as well. Failing to get a conversation, let alone any financial satisfaction from Knievel, “Awful” Knofel resumed drifting east, landing again in Butte. By this time a full generation had passed, and Knofel was able to assume a low profile existence on the fringe of legality there.

In 1976, police court found the 54 year old ‘Clarence’ Knofel guilty of two counts of shoplifting. He had taken three shirts in one instance, and five pairs of pants in the other.  Knofel paid his fine, effectively wiping out his finances. Of course, there’s a penalty for being broke too.

A year later, Knofel pleaded guilty to a charge reduced from felony car theft. The highway patrol arrested him in a car taken earlier that day from a Volkswagen dealer, That this happened a block from Knofel’s address might indicate that passing by it every day proved an irresistible lure. The next 30 days in jail probably seemed routine by now, and the vagrant had both bed and breakfast, courtesy of Silver Bow County.

A steady baseline of petty crime in later life

Times were hard, and this man who never seemed able to evade the law for long actually notified police in 1979 to the theft of $65 in food stamps from his unlocked apartment. During 1981, he served 15 days in jail for driving with a fictitious temporary tag, a number of parking violations, and escape from the courtroom of Judge Bill Geagan.  

Knofel pleaded guilty to shoplifting six pairs of gloves from a Butte Safeway store in 1982. Justice of the Peace Georgia Moran heard the case after Police Court Judge Bill Geagan was disqualified as biased. This was no doubt based on his history with Knofel. William served a ten day jail term. Amazingly, he found himself back in Geagen’s court five months later, this time for shoplifting two cartons of cigarettes from the same Safeway store. 

By 1983, William, or Clarence Knofel was 63 years old, but had learned little for all his legal experience. In March he returned once more to the Silver Bow County jail for five days, on a charge of disorderly conduct. This time he pleaded guilty to having used profane language against his mother. 

Awful, indeed. 

Epilogue

William and Charlotte Knofel just sort of disappeared after that. There is no sensational geriatric criminal activity to report. As with a number of local residents, perhaps they just gave up and quietly went with the flow, never more to seek easy money without having to mine for it. A simple line in the paper noted that Clarence Knofel died in Butte on October 21, 1985, at age 63.

These two were no Bonnie and Clyde. Like subsistence farmers, they were like subsistence criminals, just trying to keep fed in a lifestyle that must have felt like bad luck at a casino. They were hauled in so often that they must have become numb to incarceration. At least they were fed in jail. It wouldn’t explain all of Awful’s escapes, but drifters seldom like to be where they are for too long.

And Evel Knievel? Well, a lot of the hype was built on sand. The $6 million he reportedly contracted for with Bob Arum was actually only $200,000. He lost his endorsement deals after he severely beat a journalist with a baseball bat. By the late 80’s this man, permanently damaged, was reduced to selling art produced by a friend, but attributed to Evel, from the semi trailer that once held his motorcycle daredevil traveling circus. Banged up and buried in debt, he was, like Knofel, now a little too old to keep running. He did his best to live off his persona, which was more than Awful Knofel could have hoped for. 

Knievel jumped a motorcycle over things for a living, racking up dozens of broken bones in the process. He outlived Knofel, who never jumped much more than his bail, by twenty-two years.

Resources

The Montana Standard of Butte, Montana was essential for researching this essay. I tapped editions from September 12, 1946, May 15 and 16, 1947, February 16, March 11 and 13, and December 2, 1956, March 5, 1957, August 28, 1959, July 22, 1960, November 28, 1962, February 21, March 9, July 9 and 10, 1963, August 5, 1966, September 1, 1974, April 8, 1976, June 9, 1977, September 9, 1979, October 9, 1981, April 2 and September 24, 1982, and March 17,1983.

Knofel’s adventures in Billings partly came from the October 11, 1946 Butte Daily Post. Notice of Knofel’s first wife, Bernice, filing for divorce came from the May 16, 1947 edition.

The arrest of William and Charlotte Knofel on a shoplifting charge in Great Falls was related by the Great Falls Leader of March 9, 1957. That was also the source for his earliest run-ins with the law.

Charlotte’s arrest for shoplifting at Penneys came from The Missoulian of June 27, 1965.

News of Knofel’s movable bar fight in Reno was from the Nevada State Journal of January 9, 1966. His innocent verdict on the counterfeiting charge was from the same paper of November 14, 1963.

Robert ‘Evel’ Knievel lived a fast and colorful life. He put Butte, Montana on the map at a time, in the mid-1970s, when almost nothing else was going right for the city. Lionized in much press, at least two movies, and a line of Ideal toys, he took on a certain heroic aura. More on the climactic Snake River Canyon jump is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycycle_X-2

The surname Knofel is not to be confused with Kenoffel. Different folks and different stories. This one is inspired by the earlier one at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=3969

Historically speaking, a block was a term used in Butte for a large building, typically of multiple stories. There were many, including the Silver Bow, Copper, Lizzie, Thornton, Beaver, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix blocks. 

Introducing William Owsley

William Owsley was a nineteen year old Missourian who migrated, first to Bannock in the gold rush of 1863, then on to Butte the following year. This made him a true pioneer in the Summit Valley mining district. A rough gold camp was newly formed around ten gulches that extended from the Butte hill toward Silver Bow Creek.

He came as a member of a foursome, sent to help work the Black Quartz gold claim. They joined a small group living in makeshift cabins at the mouth of Dublin Gulch. By the next summer, Owsley was successfully ‘upstreaming.’ That is, he realized it might be easier to make money selling shovels as opposed to digging with one. He opened a saloon – never a bad idea in a working man’s town, and used his profits to acquire property around the camp.

Owsley then built a reservoir to store water from a ditch that channeled Silver Bow Creek water to the placer (see note #1) gulches. The site developed and the value of his land holdings grew. As placer gold played out, most left. The population of 400 dropped by half in two years. But Bill Owsley stayed on.

Maybe just plumb lucky

A couple of fortuitous things happened that validated his judgment.

In 1875, William Farlin struck silver in his Asteroid (later Travona) mine. The same year, Billy Parks ran across a five foot wide vein of chalcocite (copper sulfide) ore in his Parrot mine. Silver brought the crowds, and the far richer copper deposits hinted at a longer life for the once-dying settlement.

The other fortunate break occurred when mining engineer Marcus Daly came to Butte in 1876. Daly arrived on behalf of Utah investors who were impressed by the quality of ore arriving in Salt Lake City. The hard rock mining efforts on the Butte hill proved rough going. With the metals bound up in granite, ore had to travel by wagon 400 miles to Corrine, Utah, the nearest rail head, for processing. It would take a while to bring refining capacity to the Butte hill, but Daly was a man with a nose for copper and the money to develop it. He was as committed to staying as Owsley was. Marcus Daly became the original Copper King.

As shrewd real estate transactions go, William Owsley’s was perhaps the best in Butte. His land became the heart of the city at Park and Main streets.  He first ran a large log livery stable there from 1874 to 1890. It was well-established by the time he ran this ad in 1876: 

Horse trading among big partners

By 1880, he partnered with Lee Mantle in an expanded livery that sold and boarded horses, in addition to the sale of carriages and wagons. Mantle was already a powerful presence in Butte, one of its first city aldermen, and founder of the Butte Intermountain newspaper. He grew wealthy from his insurance, real estate and mining investments. Eventually, he became a territorial representative, the fourth mayor of Butte, and US Senator. 

Partners in business, Mantle and Owsley also leveraged their equestrian holdings by partnering in the West Side Racing Association. There they rubbed shoulders with other luminary directors like Patrick Largey and J. Ross Clark (see note #2). The track they built featured equine and bicycle races from 1881 through 1897.  

The Owsley Livery complex at Park and Main was formidable. By 1884, Owsley expanded his holdings there to include a two-story log lodging, a grocery, cigar store and hay lofts. He controlled McGovern’s saloon and card room next door as well. A section to the northeast had a carriage house, and dressing rooms for drivers. Just north lay Owsley Hall, which in 1884 housed the Variety Theater, telephone and telegraph company, hardware store and a tin shop.

Lee Mantle was off to political pursuits when Owsley later teamed with T. M. Carr in the livery. Perhaps a reflection of the frequent mortality involved in hard rock mining, they expanded into hearse rental service. Owsley also partnered with H.G. “Hank” Valiton in the same line of work. (see note 3) 

Bill Owsley goes big

An 1888 testimonial appeared in the friendly Mantle-owned Intermountain. It stated:

““Bill Owsley may have his faults, but we go on record by declaring that there is not within the territory of Montana, a manlier, more popular or more open-hearted man. He is as generous as he is brave, and as brave as he is big. Known by almost everybody as plain, honest everyday Bill Owsley, he plays faro and drinks whiskey occasionally, but there is not a man in this community who will be longer remembered as a pioneer and character than William Owsley. Long may he wave, politics or no politics.”

An article in the November 20, 1889 Montana Standard noted that William Owsley was offered $60,000 for his holdings at Park and Main, including the saloon. Perhaps inspired by the value of this bid, within two years, he razed the livery and a new six story Owsley Block was under construction. 

The 45,000 square foot Owsley Block was a distinctive five story brick beauty with a four story rounded corner cupola and intricate cornices. . From completion in 1891, and over the course of its nearly eighty year tenure on the corner, it housed Ley the Jeweler, then on the ground floor corner, and a pharmacy next door on Main. There were also, over the years, physicians and dentists, attorneys, an employment agency, cigar store, tailors, dry goods merchants, architects and, on the fifth floor, the Butte Business College. 

Another sign of the times developed in the basement of the Owsley Block. With partners, Bill Owsley formed the Phoenix Electric Light and Steam Heating Company. They brought in three dynamos (capable of powering 1,000 electric lights) an engine, two boilers, a water pump and a number of arc lamps, all going beneath the grand building on a forty year lease. They received their first contract early in 1895, providing heat to the new post office for five years at $500.00 per year. The firm lasted until 1910, gradually merging into Montana Power, and ultimately Northwestern Energy.

The school on the hill

Butte’s two institutes of higher learning were both founded in 1890. Montana School of Mines (or Montana Tech) held the high ground at the head of West Park Street. Closer to the hub of the city, the Butte Business College began in 1890, and continued through 1975.

A diversified economy developed within Butte in the 1890s, requiring many skills beyond those of hard rock mining. During its 85 years, the college taught over 35,000 students proficiency in typewriting, shorthand, penmanship, mathematics and bookkeeping. One of them was William Owsley himself.

The college occupied the fifth floor of the Owsley Block from 1892 through 1953, when it relocated to the Butte High School annex. That annex, larger than the available space at the Owsley Block, had been the site of Army recruiting and induction during World War II. No longer needed in the post-war era, it provided a suitable and larger home for the college.

Owsley ‘goes west’

He was most likely well aware and proud of the role he played in the sudden rise and wealth of a city. That was apparent years earlier.  In 1894, Owsley formed the Free Silver Club, to which he gave rooms in the Owsley Block. He noted that the social places where “old-timers used to hang out” had disappeared. “They want a place to loaf, and would scorn at being seen around the gambling houses.”

The club was a second home to anyone, rich or poor, who was a miner or prospector in the early diggings. He fitted out the rooms with chairs, card tables, reading materials and a well-stocked sideboard. Plenty of cuspidors were on hand as well. Fifty-three charter members each paid $1.00 initiation and agreed to $1.00 per month dues. There, they could drink and spit and endlessly relive their tales of boom and bust together. 

An obituary tribute to William Owsley in the Butte Miner ended by predicting that “his memory ever will be cherished in the annals of this city.” That is generally true of locally powerful figures, until a couple of generations pass. In 1950, Paul Holenstein bought the Owsley Block for $125,000. He then announced plans for renovation and a renaming of it to the Butte Medical Arts Building. 

The Holenstein era at Park and Main

Holenstein grew up in Butte, son of parents who owned the Pine Tree dairy. He served in the Army Air Force during World War II. Afterwards, he took classes at the Butte Business College and sold for Newbro Drug Company. This experience led Holenstein to form the Purity Drug Company, combining Main Drug at Park and Main (site of former Lizzie Block) with Purity Drug store of East Park Street. His 1950 plans for the Owsley Block included a new front entrance, with “electric eye doors to replace the revolving ones.” He added trendy Venetian blinds to all office windows. In a philanthropic move, Holenstein offered free office space to a dental clinic in order to serve underprivileged children of Butte. 

He promoted himself as an investment advisor and began a string of novel ideas that just needed funding to succeed. The below ad typifies the approach. A come-0n for baby ducks from his Main Drug store catches the eye, and leads it to an investment opportunity below, in which he pitches a pumice building block scheme. Investors might find their dividends taking the form of building materials…like pumice blocks.

Big dreams of parked cars

In 1957, Holenstein set up Prudential Diversified Services and bought several uptown office buildings, including the Hirbour and Lewisohn, with the intention of renting them. A couple of years later, he conceived his grandest plan for uptown. On the empty lot created by a spectacular 1954 fire that took the Butte Hotel on East Broadway, he proposed a modern steel and glass Prudential Arcade  Building. A combination retail mall and five level enclosed parking garage, it would contain fourteen new businesses, revitalize the uptown and solve the city’s parking issue.

This new construction would require 1.5 million dollars, and constitute a real stimulus to the community. in late 1960, he promised to begin as soon as clear title to a couple of parcels was in hand. Plans featured a fireproof structure with five floors of parking for 211 cars, various businesses, a sky top restaurant and cocktail lounge and a 24 lane bowling alley. 

While still scouting for investors, tenants, and contractors, Holenstein ran into trouble with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. It placed his properties into receivership and Holenstein filed for bankruptcy in 1963. For a time he ran a hotel in Helena, eventually returning to Butte in 1966. He then established Diversified Reality, taking up business in the ground floor corner of his Medical Arts building.

Another dynamo in the Owsley Block

Holenstein also started a business called Downtown Thrift Stamps, and published a paper, the Magicland Citizen, which promoted the Butte area for its business potential and quality of life. As the Montana Standard summarized:

“He devoted much time to tourism for this region. He spoke times without number before clubs and on radio and television to sell what he called ‘a message from Montana to the nation.’” 

Holenstein presented a ten point platform that notably included no tax increases, proposing instead to shrink government to fit the population. (see note #4). This was the crux of his campaign, with an adamant refusal to annex outlying areas to boost taxpayer numbers. He also wanted to tear down the “fire-trap” city hall, moving all city offices to the courthouse. The existing city hall dated to 1882, built during the mayoral term of his real estate predecessor William Owsley.

Another idea was to buy the Butte Water Company from the Anaconda Company. He felt that the fate of the city rested upon assured access to water. There was a proposal to bring back the anti-expectoration law of 1901 and enforce littering laws. He wanted more parking, which was odd, given how quickly uptown fires were creating open space for it. As mayor, he would begin a weekly 15 minute television program where city government reported directly to the citizens of Butte. Holenstein wanted to leverage the Berkeley Pit, World Museum of Mining, birthplace of Evel Knievel, and Butte’s reputation for being the “coldest spot in the country” as tourist draws. 

After the vote

He still lost the election, to popular Democrat Mike Micone, who served as mayor from 1969 through 1977. Micone became the last mayor of Butte, and first chief executive of Butte-Silver Bow County when the two merged in 1977. Boosting population was considered the only reasonable way to raise enough taxes to maintain essential services. That same year, the Anaconda Company sold itself to Atlantic Richfield, and the mines began a slowdown that led to total closure in 1983. Spitting on the sidewalks, in retrospect, was far from Butte’s most pressing concern. 

It didn’t keep Holenstein from issuing a public statement in his paper, that alleged voting irregularities and suggested creation of a taxpayer’s union. This would be seen as subversive or even mad in most cities, but Butte was “the Gibraltar of unionism.” Everyone was immersed in the union culture. At labor’s high point in 1917, there were locals representing 44 different unions in Butte. It took until 1985 for Butte to get its first McDonalds. Perhaps it was Butte- plausible that taxpayers would have a right to collective bargaining. He never got the chance to try it.

Trials by fire

In the early evening of July 28,1973 a fire broke out in the interconnected buildings of the Owsley Block and burned nearly uncontrolled for hours. Every fire department in the Butte area joined in the attempt to contain it. Records were  hurriedly removed from city hall, just up the alley. Police shot out windows of the burning structure with 12 gauge shotguns.  The fire department hosed down every nearby roof, as the Medical Arts showered sparks from above. The Butte Water Company reported that the city’s main reservoir level fell by a foot and a half in the attempt to douse everything at the intersection of Park and Main.

It was a weird summer Saturday night in Butte, Montana. A crowd of more than 10,000 stood nearby, watching the blaze and the responders. Nearly as many rubbernecked from parked cars in the area. Mike Babcock of the Montana Standard called it “an atmosphere of freaky holiday.” Police had their hands full controlling the crowd, and some looting occured as nearby businesses evacuated what they could to the street.  

Around 10 pm a section of the corner tower fell into the street below, followed shortly by the wall above the men’s shop on Park Street. An hour later, the Hoffman Block next door on Park caved in.

The morning after

Wrecking crews began work to bring the rest down as soon as it was cool enough to do so. The remaining five stories of fire-compromised brick were fragile enough that the Anaconda Company suspended blasting at the Berkeley Pit for two days. 

The inferno wrecked several of the Medical Arts building’s neighbors in the Park and Main area. Up went J.C. Penney Shoe Store, Maggie Ann’s Fashions, GAC Finance, Wein’s Mens Store, and Big Sky Optical. 4 North Main and former mayor Jimmie Shea’s insurance office suffered damage beyond repair. Holenstein’s Diversified Realty, which occupied the ground floor corner, was a loss, as were the medical records of doctors and dentists, attorney’s papers and the Montana Power Company land records.  

Loss estimates reached $2 million, but Holenstein said the building’s insurance would cover only about one-third of that value. The complete enterprise and records loss of medical professionals and lawyers couldn’t be objectively valued. Three days after the blaze, a mammoth wrecking ball was at work on the remaining walls. Investigators never settled upon a cause.  

Flat space with no takers

Holenstein said he expected to rebuild and didn’t want another situation like what occurred after the huge J.C. Penney fire on Park Street a year earlier. Authorities then suspected arson, although two grand juries returned no indictments. The New York financier who owned the building settled for it becoming a city-managed parking lot, with a split from the meter revenue.

A massive inferno on Main Street in 1969 took out the Board of Trade, Donut Shop, Hunter’s Gifts, a jewelry store, Al’s Photo Shop and the Heidelberg Bar. Holenstein and a partner cleared the extensive rubble and put in a metered parking lot, operated on a split revenue basis with the city.

Despite his intentions, the large tract where the Medical Arts Building, or Owsley Block once stood became yet another in a series of fire-inspired parking lots. There didn’t appear to be any demand for new construction on what would be prime lots in any healthy city.

Holenstein quickly took over the old Metals Bank Building, kitty corner from the Medical Arts lot, and moved Diversified Realty there. He thus became a unique part of the Park and Main story by simultaneously owning three of its four corners; a burnt ruin at the northeast, along with Main Rexall Drug on the northwest, and the Metals Bank building on the southwest.

The one unforeseen hitch in Holenstein’s plans was his own death. He fell to cancer at age 57, eight months after the fire that took out his anchor at Park and Main.

A town goes to blazes

In November of the same year as the Medical Arts disaster, the city’s prized recreational area, the Columbia Gardens, somehow caught fire. Most of its structures burned to the ground. The Anaconda Company, which had long financed the amusement park as a civic philanthropy, promptly excavated the site in an expansion of its open pit mine east of the city.

A little over a year later, another fire claimed multiple businesses on West Park very near where the Medical Arts building was: Gamer’s Shoes, Diana Shops and Gene’s Furs, in addition to a Chevrolet shop on adjacent Galena Street. 

Ten months after that, on August 20, 1975, the residential Pennsylvania Block at 44 West Park burned.  And three years later, the twin architectural treasures of Silver Bow Block and Inter Mountain building. 

Parking lots abounded in the 1970s. Sites which were formerly Penney’s, Medical Arts Building, and Pennsylvania Block were all cleared. The Park and Main area came to resemble an old hockey player’s smile. There was irony in the sudden availability of parking uptown, as Holenstein had once championed the mother of all parking lots, the Arcade Mall, before fire became a clear trend uptown. 

A light goes on at Park and Main

In 2015, NorthWestern Energy, successor to Montana Power as Butte’s electric utility, heralded a rebirth of the old Owsley corner. It built a solid and good looking five story headquarters on the site. This was the first major business construction uptown in over fifty years. Before the Prudential Federal Savings (now D.A. Davidson) was built in 1965, the most recent commercial structure of major size was the Finlen Hotel, a full forty years earlier. Butte had slid a lot since the lofty days of limitless expansion during World War I.  It felt good for the community to reverse that tide, if only for this single bright instance at Park and Main. 

It was also a case of completing a historical electric circuit. William Owsley started the Phoenix Electric Light and Steam Heating Company in the basement of the Owsley Block. That company merged into the Butte Power Company, then Montana Power, and in time, Northwestern Energy, It built on the ground where the Owsley Block stood, literally growing from where it was first planted.

Notes

Note 1 – Placer mining was that done on a very small scale with water and a pan, or larger, with a sluice and rocker box to separate gold from dirt and sand. Either way, it required water, and Butte did not have much. Controlling access to it was valuable in itself. ‘Placer’ is contrasted with hard rock mining, as was done in the following silver and copper booms. It demanded digging, blasting stamping and roasting granite to extract its metal content. The capital-intensive nature of this kind of mining required deep pockets, which brought in the big players who eventually exploited the potential wealth of the Butte hill.

  Note 2 – Mayors of Butte stuck together in the early days. That, or members of a group of business associates took turns being mayor. W.R. Kenyon of the Kenyon-Connell store was mayor in 1887 and 1889. As indicated, Owsley ran the city in 1882 and 1884. Owsley’s livery partner H.G. Valiton served as Butte’s second mayor in 1880; elected once again in 1890. Lee Mantle even got his turn in 1892.

Note 3 – Patrick Largey was president of the State Savings Bank, kitty-corner from the Owsley Block at Park and Main. More about him appears in the essay regarding the southeast corner of this intersection. J. Ross Clark was brother of, and partner to W.A. Clark in banking, railroading and sugar production. He bought the Kenyon-Connell hardware holdings from the Largey estate in 1897. This was a year before a man injured in an 1894 explosion at the Kenyon-Connell warehouse burst into Largey’s office at Park and Main and shot him dead.  

One more note

Note 4 – Butte had 22,000 residents in 1973. Population figures for the city were difficult to determine. Early miners were transient and boarding house operators tended to be vague as to occupant numbers. Sometimes three men would take a room and sleep as they worked- in shifts. The city’s peak population was probably in 1917, at not less than 80,000, although some estimates reached 100,000. City employee numbers were disproportionately large for a city that had shrunk nearly 75% by 1973.

Resources

A good biography of Lee Mantle exists at Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Mantle

Description of Owsley Block, circa 1885, from Dick Gibson for the Verdigris Project at https://www.verdigrisproject.org/butte-americas-story-blog/butte-americas-story-episode-71-the-owsley-block

Formation of new electric light company from Butte Daily Post; February 26, 1894; Incorporation of new company in Butte Miner; June 30, 1895; Contract to heat the new post office, from same paper; October 4, 1895. 

Obituaries from the Labor Bulletin of April 19., 1919 and Butte Miner of the same date shine a light on the life and accomplishments of William Owsley. 

A timeline of early Butte mayors appeared in the Montana Standard of May 25, 1941.

Sophronius Marchesseau was another of Butte’s original mining settlers. He lived a long time and told many tales for posterity. Some of them appear in the Butte Evening News of December 18, 1905, and inform some of the background for earliest beginnings of Park and Main streets. 

Further resources

Paul Holenstein and the birth of the Medical Arts idea was from the Montana Standard of February 5, 1950.

Some detail on the proposed Prudential Arcade building from the Montana Standard of November 6, 1960. 

Holenstein’s SEC difficulties from the Montana Standard of March 1, 1963.  

Dependably accurate historian Dick Gibson wrote a brief history of the Owsley Block for the Montana Standard of May 20, 2016. 

An excellent revisit of the 1973 fire was provided by Tracy Thornton for the Montana Standard of July 26, 2020. Closer to the source was reporting by Rick Foote of the same newspaper in its July 30, 1973 edition.

Paul Holenstein’s platform for Butte mayor is in his own paper, the Magicland Citizen of February 1, 1973. His open letter recommending creation of a taxpayers union, among other beefs, was from the same paper on June 3, 1973

The side by side photos (before and after) of the Medical Arts Building fire are thanks to (left) Montana Standard and (right) Butte Silver Bow Archives. They appeared in the Montana Standard of July 26, 2020.

Paul Holenstein’s death notice appeared in the Montana Standard of March 29, 1974. 

Photo of the new Northwestern Energy headquarters at Park and Main from Mosaic Architecture of Helena, MT.  Website at https://www.mosaicarch.com/projects/work/northwestern-energy-montana-general-office/

A related essay concerns the two businesses adjacent to the Owsley Block, and north of it – Spillum’s and 4 North Main. https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4286