neighborhood. Ranchers came in for a drink after attending to their town chores, or finishing a season of hay baling. Towns along the hi-line, and across the body of the eastern half of the state were miles and miles apart. Sunday was a great day to take a drive to visit old friends and it was usually in a bar. The western half of the state wasn’t much different. Every bar had at least one or two patrons addicted to drink, and everyone understood they were troubled souls. They drew sympathy and rarely affected the health and welfare of the neighborhood. Most small jails had a ‘drunk tank’, with regulars, who were known and in some cases got the only meal they ate prior to being released the next day. The names of the bars displayed on the small town streets speak to the history of the place. The Stockman’s in cattle ranching country, the Silver Dollar and the Mint in mining communities and others like the Palace and Salty Dog. Bars back then were social centers. Kids went in with their folks, sat at tables to enjoy a burger and chips and sip a Shirley Temple. There were always those who considered the bar or tavern as a den of iniquity. Liquor has a way of releasing inhibitions. Back in the day in Butte and Helena, women had their own areas of seating in bars away from the men folk, and it is common knowledge that at some point in the history of the state a woman could walk into a bar and order a drink with no repercussions. The issues around drinking and its affect on the population of the west is a dissertation in itself, steeped in a lengthy history routed all the way from Europe. For the Irish families of Butte, Serbian, German, and Italian miners, the hi-line ranchers, homesteading farmers, the cowboys, and Indigenous people of the west drinking became a way of life. The impact of liquor on the Indigenous people has left the most visible evidence of its destructive qualities on a culture. The Prohibition of the early 1930s left nary a mark on many parts of Montana. A book published by the Montana Historical Society documents prohibition in Butte, mainly by pointing out it really didn’t take hold. Places like the Little Bitterroot Valley in northwestern Montana have stories of bootlegger trails, and around Philipsburg stories of stills hidden in the mountains. Up until the 1950s Native People could not drink in liquor establishments in homesteaded communities on the Flathead Indian Reservation.
Patricia Ann Lyon shows off her fancy cowgirl outfit in the early 1950s in Montana.
The West Old & New Page 18