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Summer 1939. "Entering Butte, Montana." Note the sign advertising the Arcade, the beer joint seen in the previous post. 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.
What Thorton Wilder might have had in mind for his vision of 'Our Town'.
Butte couldn't have been much different when Alistair Cooke visited in 1942. He was researching the American home front, but he completed his manuscript just as the war was ending, and his publisher lost interest.
Mostly, Cooke described the town's (and the state's) control by out-of-state corporations, such as Anaconda Copper, and "The Montana Power Company of New Jersey".
Big city, turn me loose, and set me free...
Cooke's manuscript, The American Home Front, was rediscovered and published in 2006.
Learned tonight that this man still does his exercises every morning. He puts on a coat and tie everyday and still has a good memory. He smoked cigars all of his life until just in recent years. He takes no prescripion medications, but he was fitted with hearing aides in 2007 at the age of 111. His wife died in 1957 and they had no children. He did not marry again.
You can't write me a ticket! The speed limit begins 25 miles from here!
Doesn't look like a "beaut" to me.
Just finished reading a news article that today is the 114th birthday of one Mr. Walter Breuning who was born in Minnesota in 1896, moved to Montana in 1918, still lives in Great Falls, and would have been 43 years old when this photo was taken. Congratulations to him for making the Guinness Book of Records. Life in Montana must be good.
Were there just outhouses in Butte at this time? Isn't the city built right on top of the mines?
No, wait. Faster, faster!
Approach slowly, and make sure your vehicle is well lubricated.
I wonder how many times this sign was altered by pranksters??
I remember "discovering" Shorpy a couple years ago, and this 1942 overview of Butte--in large-format Kodachrome, no less (posted 2008)--came immediately to mind today:
On Shorpy:
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