Boy Band of 50 Years Ago Recalled
Boy Band’s 1st Pay Job At Quigley – 1896
Five Missoula men of today were members of a boys’ band which embarked on its first pay job for the Fourth of July celebration at Quigley 50 years ago.
The boys of that year – 1896 – and men of today are Fred Dodge, Sid Williams, Claude Elder, W. O. Dickinson and Hugh Kennedy. Quigley, scene of the Fourth celebration of 50 years ago, is a ghost mining town a few miles up Rock creek from Bonita. The boys’ band – for $100 – made the trip from Missoula to Bonita by train and from Bonita to Quigley in a lumber wagon, drawn by four horses.
In recalling the trip, Mr. Elder and Mr. Williams said they stopped at the “Butte hotel,” a three-story frame building, where the boys were billeted on the third floor on 20 cots.
“We decided lemonade at 10 cents a glass was too expensive,” Mr. Elder said, “so we bought some lemons and sugar, got an old bucket and made our own lemonade, which Hugh Kennedy stirred with a stick.
“There were races on Main street, one horse took to the sidewalk scattering the crowd, and the night was a wild one for the miners, as considerable liquor was consumed and the jail was full – so no more arrests could be made. We took our wagon again in the morning for Bonita and the train back into Missoula.”
The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on July 2, 1946
Quigley had an interesting and very short history as Montana mining towns went. Investors there went broke quickly when the ore deposit faded out and the mines were abandoned. The town was also the scene of one of Montana’s most tragic episodes of mob action when the Chinese laundryman, Sam ‘Yank’ Hing, was murdered when he refused to leave the town. See Sam Hing’s story below:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/349175593#
http://deq.mt.gov/Land/AbandonedMines/linkdocs/57tech