Old Missoula

Robert Service Poem Born In Missoula?

Dan McGrew

Theme of Poem Said to Have Started in Missoula

A story has been circulating in Missoula recently to the effect that the tragedy which is the theme of Robert Service’s poem, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” had its start on West Front street in the Garden city.

According to the story, Dan McGrew, later known as “Dangerous Dan,” was an ordinary gambler. Fiction, too, has it that the woman known as Lou, also was here with a home on West Front street.

Into the midst of this compatible pair, it is said, came a piano player from the east who stole Lou away from Dan. So far, so good. Then the scene shifts from the east to Alaska, the setting of the immortal poem. McGrew went north and swaggered among the prospecting camps as “Dangerous Dan,” an appellation of his own selection and, it is said, wholly inconsistent with his make up.

There McGew found Lou again, the story goes, dancing in the Malamute saloon while her husband played – and Dan won Lou back again. The end is found in the poem. It is averred by the narrators that Lou later on married a miner and settled down to prosaic respectability.

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on October 16, 1924.

The author of the above article left the impression that his knowledge of the subject was a lot more involved than he was revealing. Many Missoulians – and Montanians – participated in the Alaska gold rushes and lived to tell the tale. The most prominent Missoulian that comes to mind was “Billy” Simons (of Wilma Bldg.), but there were many others. Their story somehow has been largely neglected in Missoula’s historical profiles; however, Robert Service’s poem certainly wasn’t. It’s known that Service spent time in Western Canada, Seattle and Vancouver, however there is no extant evidence that he visited Missoula.

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Short Simons history – Missoulian 2/14/1951

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