City Desk
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Story By Paul F. Vang
For ButteNews.net
Photo by Jim Larson
Living in our mile high mountain valley, we seldom give much thought to whether we’ll have a white Christmas. Generally, winter weather starts early, compared to other parts of the country, and when it comes, it comes to stay.
Still, during Thanksgiving week, it seemed more like a revisit to October, with bright sunshine and absolutely no snow here in the Mining City. True, we did have a blast of winter in late October, with heavy snow and frigid temperatures. Mild weather returned, the snow melted, and hunters came home from outings thoroughly discouraged, as elk were high in the mountains, far from the nimrods.
How warm was it? It was warm enough on November 15 that I spotted two dandelions blooming on my lawn. Typically, the first dandelions bloom in April, but I can’t recall dandelion blossoms in mid-November, especially when that patch of lawn was under a foot of snow a couple weeks earlier.
Mild weather isn’t rare in December. One hundred years ago, during Christmas week in Butte, daily high temperatures were in the 40s, with lows in the mid-20s. The Butte Miner newspaper was totally silent as to whether there was snow on the ground.
A year later, on December 15, 1924, The Butte Miner warned readers of a blast of arctic air, “Severe cold snap predicted,” was the headline, with temperatures at 10 degrees, and “likely below zero before dawn,” with the story noting, “A summer rain was falling here 24 hours ago,” with a high temperature of 55.
A week later, Butte had a high temperature of +1 F. with an overnight low of -20. West Yellowstone, however, reported a bone-chilling -65, and an estimated 50 to 100 horses dying from cold. Still, on Christmas Day, Butte had warmed to 27, after a morning low of -3 degrees.
If the weather turned cold, the Wein’s store on Park Street advertised a post-Christmas sale on Hart Schaffner & Marx overcoats, starting at $16.35, ranging up to $43.35.
The Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, incidentally, is an absolute treasure when it comes to looking up what was happening way back when, with its bound collections of newspapers. Considering the status of today’s newspaper industry, it’s remarkable to note that Butte had three daily newspapers, the Butte Miner, the Butte Daily Post, and the Anaconda Standard, which later became the Montana Standard.
The Christmas Day 1952 edition of the Butte Daily Post reported a low of -19 on the preceding day, though it was a balmy -3 at the School of Mines “banana belt.” The following day it was -16 at the airport and -2 at the School of Mines. With the cold temperatures, the paper predicted, “Santa will arrive with icicles in his beard tonight.”
While cold winter temperatures are generally a fact of life at Christmas, the term, White Christmas, didn’t seem to be “a thing” back then. While my research in the Archives was by no means exhaustive, the first reference to White Christmas I noted was in the Butte Daily Post of December 25, 1941, reporting, “A fine snow sifted down on Butte—to keep fresh the blanket that gave the Mining City a White Christmas.”
The previous day’s edition reported on a snowstorm, “A White Christmas was assured for Butte Wednesday, with heavy snowfall on Tuesday night confirmed.”
This being just a couple weeks after Pearl Harbor, war news dominated the front page of the Post, with headlines reporting heavy fighting in The Philippines.
Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” became a hit in 1942. The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby on his Kraft Music Hall radio show on Christmas Day, 1941. Crosby recorded the song in May 1942, and it became a huge hit in following months, with America’s fighting men and women scattered around the world, and the melancholy words of a Christmas, “just like the ones I used to know,” resonated both on the home front and on the battlefields.
Irving Berlin, according to one account, wrote the song in 1940 while vacationing in California. Berlin wrote hundreds of songs but, surprisingly, didn’t read music. He’d figure out songs and had a secretary who would put the notes on music paper. After a long session at the piano, he told his secretary, “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anyone ever wrote.”
The Butte Daily Post of December 23, 1944, proclaimed, “Butte is Coldest City 36 below.” The accompanying story also reported a low of -48 in Elk Park. Also of note was news that the War Production Board allowed resumption of distilling bourbon whiskey in the U.S., on the basis that alcohol production was exceeding war needs.
On Christmas Day, the Post noted continuing sub-zero weather, and reported that the -36 reading on December 23 had been the coldest December day on record, except for 1932, when it hit -37. It was a wintry Christmas, with the Post reporting, “America had a White Christmas in northern states from the Rocky Mountains to the Eastern Seaboard.”
War news dominated the front pages, however, with reports of heavy fighting in Europe, in what became called the Battle of the Bulge, and the “Christmas miracle,” when there was a break in the weather, allowing allied fighter planes to provide air support to the beleaguered ground troops, turning the tide of battle.
That -36 weather of 1944 was eclipsed by the arctic blast on December 23, 1983, when Butte had its coldest temperature on record, reaching a morning low of -52, a temperature reached only once previously, in February 1936.
A work colleague, who worked in the Butte Social Security Office in 1983, sent me a copy of a newspaper clipping reporting on that cold Christmas, after I got transfer orders that brought my wife and I to Butte in 1988.
It didn’t scare us off. In subsequent years, we have experienced many cold and snowy Christmases, though we’re just as happy that -52 is just part of someone else’s good old days.
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By Diane Larson
Photo by Jim Larson
The new owners of the Uptown Cafe, Jimmy and Angie Peterson, sat down with Jim Larson of ButteNews.net and talked about their recent purchase of the Uptown Café, their previous project The Lakehouse at Georgetown Lake, and their plans for the future.
In 2019, the year before COVID hit, the Petersons acquired the old Brown Derby at Georgetown. Through a lot of hard work and long hours, they remodeled the physical building as well as the type and flow of service and rebranded it as it became The Lakehouse. “It ran pretty successfully for four years,” said Angie.
“And then we decided to jump in and invest in Butte,” Angie said. Jimmy was born in Butte and Angie lived here for many years. Angie mentioned, “I had the pleasure of working at the Freeway and got to know the people and always loved Butte. Butte has been a second home to me.”
The Petersons have also lived in Phillipsburg, and Twin Bridges and grew up in the restaurant industry. For a while, they both decided to work for corporate America. Angie was in the medical field and Jimmy was in IT. “I was in the microchip industry for basically 25 years,” Jimmy said, and then added, “Getting back to the Lakehouse, it was a good excuse for being closer to family and being closer to home.”
This sparked their desire to be in the restaurant business and get back to their roots.
When they saw that the Uptown was available, for them, it meant good timing and a good excuse to “invest in Butte and try to keep this tradition going,” explained Jimmy.
With that said, it was also evident in the new economy that certain changes were going to have to be made. “With the current market, inflation, and with our food costs, we were losing money every day,” said Jimmy about the buffet-style lunch service that was the trademark of the old Uptown.
In the new Uptown, as you walk into this space, the first thing to notice is an elegant bar to the right, just in front of the window. “When we toured this when we were looking at it, that was the first thing that we said. We’re like this needs a cocktail lounge. We came in here as customers long before we even thought about purchasing, and we would stand at the door and wait to get a table. And so now it’s nice you come in, have a cocktail, get a table, or you could even eat at the bar,” explained Angie.
The space has changed somewhat but not too much, the layout is slightly different.
The lunch is now full service with a menu that provides some new and some traditional dishes. To keep the people of Butte happy they offer a Throwback Thursday. On this day they offer some of the most popular menu items. It is their way of reaching out to the people of Butte and taking care of them. Mixing the old with the new. “We want to make everyone happy. So, we’re reaching out to the new but still trying to respect the old ways,” Jimmy said.
“Our new menu basically focuses on health, for those that are looking for healthier options,” said Angie. Trying to create fun options for those that are on keto diets or gluten resistant as well as other issues. The new menu has been redesigned with all of this in mind. “It is our aim to please everybody,” Angie said. And they continue to work on what the community wants as well as their diet needs.
Another much-desired change is the placement of the salad bar. “It’s a high-quality salad bar. The food is high quality, but it is also fast; fast, and fresh. So, anyone working uptown can come in, just like the old days, get food quickly, and get back to work, if they want to,” said Jimmy.
The lunch crowd is considerable. “We have a lot of people from Northwestern Energy, the Federal Building, the courthouse, and other surrounding uptown businesses,” Angie explained. Jimmy added that the deliveries are still going strong as well. “Not only are we convenient for people to walk in and have lunch here, but we’re still delivering all around town too,” Jimmy said.
The dinner menu, at the time of this interview, was still in process of being finalized, but Jimmy explained that they have a lot of good ideas come they are working on and streamlining those.
The Uptown is an iconic business in Butte. The Petersons explained that they are brainstorming daily on how to increase what is offered to the customers with the number of staff. Like most businesses in Butte, they have had their share of issues trying to get enough staff to offer the best of service. “We’re always trying to improve and keep this business thriving,” said Jimmy.
