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Great-Grandson of Butte Copper King Tours Historic Mining City Sites

Posted on: Monday, 24 October 2005, 21:00 CDT

By Roberta Forsell Stauffer, The Montana Standard, Butte

Oct. 23--A great-grandson of William A. Clark walked mine yards and mansions in Butte this month, some 130 years after the copper king started up a bank in a log building near Main and Broadway.

Retired French Ambassador André Baeyens had visited Butte once before, 25 years ago.

He still laughs at the memory of paying $2 to see the Copper King Mansion in 1980 and not revealing his identity until mid-way through the tour.

Once his secret was out, then-owner Ann Cote Smith took Baeyens into the kitchen for a nice long visit and walked him down to the Arts Chateau, former home of his grandfather. Never did she think to refund his admission.

"Had the senator known, he would have approved," Baeyens said with a smile, since W.A. Clark was not one to pass up a business opportunity no matter the circumstance.

"The senator," as the family fondly calls the senior Clark, represented Montana in Washington, D.C., from 1901 to 1907, after making his fortune in mining. A 1983 article by the late Michael Malone said Clark was reportedly worth $50 million at the turn of the century.

Some 60 years later, Baeyens was posted to D.C. as second secretary to the French Embassy and there he crossed paths with another famous Montana senator, the late Mike Mansfield.

Mansfield shook his hand and told Baeyens he got his start in one of Clark's Butte mines. He also urged the Frenchman to research his family history.

"He had me sit down in the Library of Congress," Baeyens said, "and go through the books (about Clark)." The spark kindled by Mansfield grew into a lifelong avocation for Baeyens, who was especially intrigued by Clark's affinity for France. He's even written a book called "The Senator Who Loved France," due for release in a few months. It explores Franco-American relations between 1870 and 1914.

Don't expect to find it in Butte bookstores though. Baeyens said it's in French and won't be translated unless there's "overwhelming demand." The ambassador was in Montana to lecture on Clark at the University of Montana-Missoula on Oct. 10. When he expressed interest in a side trip to Butte, contemporary copper king Dennis Washington volunteered his corporate jet and also arranged for a tour of Montana Resources' current operations and the Berkeley Pit.

Accompanying Baeyens was Mike Halligan, director of government and corporate affairs for Washington Corp., along with UM geology professor Jim Sears and Bob Brown, former secretary of state and now a senior fellow at the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in MIssoula.

As it was 25 years ago, stop one on the tour was Clark's grand home on Granite and Idaho.

Baeyens was sad to learn Cote Smith had died in 1992, but her guide shoes were ably filled by her son, John Thompson, and her daughter and son-in-law, Erin and Pat Sigl, who inherited the mansion and operate a bed and breakfast in it.

An 1888 closet alarm connecting the mansion to the hospital, police station, and fire station caught Baeyens' attention, as did a family picture identical to one in his collection.

"We were able to give him a list identifying the people in it," Thompson said. "He was really happy to have that." At the Arts Chateau on Broadway and Washington, director Glenn Bodish pointed out all the restoration that had been done and told of his hopes to further transform the mansion into a period museum.

A highlight there was Charles Clark's library, sunlight glowing through the stained glass window, original map table still in its place.

"He really found that to be a beautiful room to be in," Bodish said. "I sensed that he got the feeling of his grandfather in that room." Next was a quick look inside great uncle William A. Jr.'s former carriage house at Galena and Excelsior, now the garage of Mark Reavis, county historic preservation officer. Reavis was chauffeur for the day and also swung by the Paul Clark Home, built in memory of another great uncle who died around age 6.

En route to the Mineral Museum at Montana Tech, Baeyens was dumbfounded over the statue of Marcus Daly, arch-rival of his great grandfather.

There Daly was, looking ridiculous in hunters' camouflage, a cardboard 'Get your bear tags here' sign around his neck.

"That's absurd," Baeyens muttered, not knowing of Tech's time-honored tradition of dressing up the statue as part of homecoming festivities.

The main attraction at the Mineral Museum was the impressive specimen collection donated by W.A . Clark III. Baeyens also watched a short video there on Butte history.

He couldn't resist booing a little when the narrator mentioned the Anaconda Co., and as the credits rolled, he joked that the script had omitted a very important person.

All was forgiven, though, when he spied a life-sized bronze bust of Clark across the room, and he was quick to pose for pictures beside it.

Baeyens was clearly enjoying this personalized tour of Butte.

"I am astonished by the number of people who know of my family and the number who have kindly shown me around here," he said.

A taste of the underground came at the Steward mine yard with a quick walk under the Main Street tunnel. The Steward became part of W. A. Clark's Original Consolidated Mining Co. in 1885, and Baeyens heard stories about it from Montana Resources' mining engineer Tad Dale, who got his start in the Steward in the 1970s.

He listened to descriptions of cold rides in the cages, walked through the dry where miners showered with their filthy clothes on, and checked out the enormous iron hoist, now coated with pigeon droppings.

"This has to be preserved," Baeyens said, and Reavis replied that the county owned the mine yard and intended to preserve it as best it could.

As he was leaving the Steward, the ambassador mused about what Butte must have been like when thousands of men worked in these mines and lived nearby with the noise and the fumes, and he noted Butte's significant contribution to the building of America.

"It's the discovery of a world that no longer exists," he said.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Montana Standard, Butte

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Source: The Montana Standard

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