Beartown 2
Rough and Tumble Living
"We were all comfortable, had plenty [of ] grubb, were all well, most of us young fellows...There was good stores with luxeries, plenty [of ] wine, wiskey, and beer, and other recreations, a good gambling house, so the boys
could go to town...We got into some great scrapes, sometimes, but no one was ever "seriuos hurt," for all worked hard and [we were] living on great hopes and excitement."
--Henry Boses account of Beartown, 1869-70
Combine 17 saloons with a brewery. Sprinkle in a fair share of gold fever and you have the ingredients for a wild town. A group of partying miners called the "Beartown Roughs" kicked up their heels on the weekends
after a hard week muscling rocks on their claims. In contrast to Garnet where family living was common in the late 1890s, this early mining community fit the classic image of the Wild West. Miner Henry Boses never saw anyone "serious hurt," but other accounts
recall shootings and murder in Beartown. Jimmy Ryan, a fiery Irish saloonkeeper, shot at a miner for insulting his singing, but missed and killed the miner's partner.
The Story of Shorty's Arm
"Dr Mitchell caught his horse, and singing lustily though unintelligently through "hic's" started for Deer Lodge with Shorty's arm."
--Mary J. Pardee
A miner known as "Shorty" made local history when he stumbled drunkenly into his own fireplace and badly burned his arm. Dr. Armistead Mitchell, who later would help found Garnet, often trekked from his Deer Lodge home to offer medical help to the Beartown miners. This time, Mitchell sawed off
Shorty's arm and then joined his patient in an all-night poker party. Whiskey proved a powerful anesthetic for Shorty. Apparently the liquor also clouded Mitchell's thinking. In the morning, the doctor took off with Shorty's arm, intending to save it for dissection. Somewhere along the way,
he lost the arm.
