Bearcreek

A large red granite monument commemorates the 75 miners who died in the 1943 explosion at the Smith Mine. The United Mine Workers of America installed this memorial in 1947 to memorialize Montana’s worst coal mining disaster. Twenty-two of the Smith Mine’s victims are buried here in family plots. The death date—February 27, 1943—carved onto their grave markers recalls the tragedy. Other headstones express other, individual losses. Of the 473 people buried here, 107 are children, including the first person interred in the cemetery in 1909, six-year-old Helen Markovich. Marble tombstones decorated with carved lambs and other tokens of innocence mark many of the children’s graves. They communicate parents’ great grief, while also suggesting the toll poverty, infant mortality, and childhood diseases historically took on families. Grouped in the cemetery’s southeastern corner are headstones marked with Cyrillic lettering, many displaying photographs, burned into porcelain to produce a permanent image of the deceased. These markers reflect the Eastern European roots of many Bearcreek miners and their families. At the community’s height, in 1920, a third of its residents were immigrants while another third were the children of immigrants. Headstones marked with Croatian, Montenegrin, Slavic, Italian, Scottish, German, Finnish, French, and English surnames attest to Bearcreek’s ethnic diversity. After the Smith Mine disaster, Bearcreek became a near ghost town as many residents departed, fleeing bad memories. They left behind this simple rural cemetery, whose sandstone, granite, and marble headstones provide mute testimony to Bearcreek’s coal mining heritage and to the people buried here.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

Platted in 1905 by George Lamport and Robert Leavens, Bearcreek was the center of an extensive underground coal mining district. At its height during World War I, Bearcreek boasted a population of nearly 2,000 people. The community was ethnically diverse and included Serbians, Scotsmen, Montenegrans, Germans, Italians and Americans. They were served by seven mercantile, a bank, two hotels, two bollard halls, a brickyard and numerous saloons. The town also boasted concrete sidewalks and an extensive water system. No church was ever built in Bearcreek. Foundations of many of the town's buildings, in addition to some structures themselves, consisted of sandstone quarried in the nearby hill. The local railway, the Montana Wyoming and Southern carried coal from the mines through Bearcreek where it was shipped to communities across Montana.

The Lamport Hotel was once located on the foundation to the right of this marker. Built in 1907, it was described as "well furnished...the beds being especially soft and sleep producing. (The) meals are served with a desire to please the guests and no one leaves without a good impression of kindly feelings for the management." The hotel was razed about 1945.

In 1943, Montana's worst coal mining disaster at the nearby Smith mine took the lives of 74 men, many of whom lived in Bearcreek. The tragedy hastened the decline of the town. Many buildings in Bearcreek were moved to other communities or demolished, leaving haunting reminders of their presence along Main street. The railroad tracks were removed in 1953 and the last mine closed in the 1970s.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

A coal-mining town established in 1905, Bearcreek developed quickly, and after just one year the town boasted telephones, city water, and electric streetlights. Bert Vaill, a cashier with the Carbon County Bank of Red Lodge, purchased this lot from the townsite company for $800, and in 1906 he hired John Russell to construct a one-story Romanesque style bank from native sandstone quarried just north of town. Symbolizing Vaill’s faith in Bearcreek’s future, the bank’s thick stone walls were also meant to assure customers that their money was safe from theft and bank failure, a tenuous assumption in the days before Federal Deposit Insurance. Part of a vibrant commercial district, the bank—owned for a time by Butte copper magnate William A. Clark—played a significant role in Bearcreek’s development through loans and investments. It also provided currency exchange for the community’s immigrant miners. When the International Coal Company defaulted on a $170,000 loan in 1921, the bank went into receivership. Former mine foreman Tom Frasure purchased the property and reopened the bank under the name Miner’s State Bank in 1922. In 1928 it, too, closed.

The building then housed a restaurant until 1943. That year an explosion at the Smith Mine killed 74 miners. The disaster started an exodus from Bearcreek, causing the restaurant and many other businesses to close. Used for storage, the building was rehabilitated in 1967 for use as the Bearcreek City Hall, a function it has served ever since.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

About sixty million years ago, this area was part of a vast subtropical coastal plain with major rivers flowing eastward into an inland seaway. Between these major river systems great thicknesses of plant material accumulated that was converted to peat and eventually buried under sand, mud, and other sediments. Over millions of years, the increased pressure and temperature from burial compressed and baked the peat into medium grade sub-bituminous coal. Between about 70 to 55 million years ago, tectonic forces caused dramatic deformation of the region and culminated in the formation of mountain ranges like the Beartooth, Pryor, and Big Horn Mountains. This deformation tilted the sedimentary layers and associated coal seams in this area downward to the east. The coal in the Bear Creek field is part of the immense Fort Union Formation, which is estimated to contain over 200 billion tons of coal in eastern and central Montana.

"Yankee Jim" George discovered the Bear Creek coal field in 1866, but it would not be commercially mined for another forty years with the arrival of the Yellowstone Park Railway. Five companies operated coal mines in this narrow valley by 1910. Two towns, Bearcreek and Washoe, provided living quarters and services to the multi-ethnic miners and their families. The field contains about a dozen workable coal beds, with some seams as thick as 11 feet. Underground coal mining peaked in the early 1920s, when Bear Creek coal powered railroad locomotives, fueled the Anaconda Copper Company's smelter in Anaconda, and heated homes throughout Montana. Production gradually diminished as railroads converted to diesel-powered locomotives and private homes began using natural gas. Commercial coal mining in the Bear Creek field ended in 1953 when the Smith Mine closed. Small privately operated companies provided coal to area residents for years afterwards.

Geo-Facts:

• Coal grade is a measure of the amount of heat produced during burning. Bear Creek's coal produces more heat per ton than the lignite and sub-bituminous coals found in eastern Montana.

• On February 27, 1943, an explosion in the Smith Mine about 1-1/2 miles west of here killed 74 miners. It was Montana's worst underground coal mining accident.

• In 1926 a miner found a fossil tooth in the Eagle Coal Mine and gave it to Red Lodge physician J.C.F. Sigfreidt. The doctor believed it resembled a human molar and was proof that man had lived in the Red Lodge area at least a million years ago. Eventually paleontologists identified the tooth as belong to a mammalian species that was not human.

Geo-Activities:

• The Bear Creek Coal Fields were mined during the early part of the 20th Century. As you drive through the area, see if you can pick out clues from the landscape to the area's coal mining history.

Erected by Montana Department of Transportation.

Thirty-nine corrugated metal structures mark the site of the Smith Mine, a ghostly reminder of a once vibrant mining district. The Montana Coal and Iron Company (MCI) began developing the Smith Mine in earnest after the arrival of the Montana, Wyoming and Southern Railroad, producing 8,000 tons of high-grade coal in 1907. MCI electrified its operation by 1915, completely mechanizing it by 1929. Throughout the 1930s, the company continued to invest in new equipment, building a new crushing plant, elevator, cleaning plant, coal sheds and scales, electrical substation, and other above-ground structures to support the underground operation. By 1943, miners working three shifts a day, six days a week produced almost 500,000 tons of coal annually, “to meet coal needs for a nation at war.” Investments in safety lagged behind other improvements, however, and in the 1940s many Smith miners still used open-flame carbide headlamps (as opposed to safer electric lamps). The highly gaseous mine also lacked good ventilation or rock-dusting equipment to control coal dust. On February 27, 1943, this proved a deadly combination, when a methane gas explosion in Smith Mine #3 killed seventy-four miners (and later, one rescuer) in the worst coal mining disaster in Montana history. Only three of the men working that day survived. Although MCI closed the Number 3 adit after the explosion, it continued to work its other mines, raking in record profits through 1945. Declining demand, lower quality coal, competition from diesel and natural gas, and bad management led to the operation’s closure in 1953.

Erected by Montana Historical Society.

The Smith Mine is the site of the worst underground coal mine disaster in Montana history. The decaying buildings across the coulee are a memorial to the 74 men who died in the mine on the morning of February 27, 1943. Smoke pouring from the entrance to the No. 3 vein was the first indication trouble. "There's something wrong down here. I'm getting out," the hoist operator called up. He and two nearby miners were the last men to leave the mine alive.

The families of the men trapped underground anxiously waited as rescue crews from as far away as Butte and Cascade County worked around the clock to clear debris and search for survivors. There were none. Some men died as a result of a violent explosion, but most fell victim to the deadly methane gasses released by the blast. The tragedy sparked investigations at the state and national level that resulted in improvements in mine safety.

Today's marker of the Smith Mine Disaster follows a simpler one left by two miners trapped underground after the explosion, waiting for the poisonous gas they knew would come.

br "Walter & Johnny. Good-bye/

Wives and daughters

We died an easy death. Love from us both. Be good."

Erected by Montand Department of Transportation.