Ayme Swartz is here for the garbage. She walks a clearing deep in the forest of Homestake Pass, large enough to fit a modern house and backyard. The clearing appears empty, except for a dilapidated shed leaning backward like an old man falling asleep during Sunday service. But on foot, with eyes to the ground, Ayme can piece together a story. Here’s a bit of tumbled green glass— a 1940s-era 7-Up bottle — and a rusted, twisted wire — the canopy of an antique baby carriage. An empty hole, indistinguishable from a prospect pit, shows to her trained eye the former site of an outhouse. And who knows what kind of exciting garbage might lurk at the bottom?
Swartz is an archaeologist on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. She focuses on underrepresented cultures, “giving a voice to the voiceless,” she says. Her job is more than a glorified garbage picker: “I can confirm what you know, I can contribute to what you know, or I can contradict what you think you know.” And contradicting is why she’s walking the woods today.
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In 2020, Swartz set out to document historical African American sites on the forest. But combing the maps of nearly 3.4 million acres, she was shocked to find none. “I knew there had to be something,” she said. So she stuck with it, until a tiny notation on an out-of-date map led her to a remarkable discovery.
“The Brown Homestead.” An imposing boarding house, barns and corrals and a smattering of cabins — here was the site she’d been looking for. Essential to the development of Homestake and the integration of Butte, here was the home of the Black family who broke racial barriers for eighty years, leaving a large legacy in the Butte community.
Homestake heyday
Over the hill from the now-empty clearing, Jack and Cheryl Rochford spend their summers in a grand log home with soaring views, perched above a tumble-down cabin and a fairyland pond. Eighteen years ago they found a logged-over property for sale in the Mini Nickel. Charmed by its remote beauty and the ghosts of the miners who once labored with far less fanfare than their Butte counterparts, they spent their first summer in a camper without running water parked between towering piles of slash.
![Cheryl Rochford and Randy Brown](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=150%2C126 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=200%2C168 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=225%2C189 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=300%2C251 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=400%2C335 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=540%2C452 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=640%2C536 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=750%2C628 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=990%2C830 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C867 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C1005 1200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=1333%2C1117 1333w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=1476%2C1237 1476w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/f2/0f28e6d0-3ebf-11ee-b147-23a64669b1dc/64e10b40de88a.image.jpg?resize=1573%2C1318 2008w)
Cheryl Rochford and Randy Brown identify old cabins from photos of the Rochfords’ adventures while living at Camp Caroline.
“It used to be there were houses up there everywhere,” Cheryl said, paging through photos of tiny shacks, crooked outhouses and log cabins. As she and Jack explored the hundreds of miles of trails, they discovered ruin after ruin, mining shafts, machinery and the mass of detritus left behind by generations of forgotten workers. Each rusty nail, broken tea cup and gaping mine mouth sparked endless curiosity.
“Who wouldn’t want to know what happened there?” Jack said. “When we found they were Black that made it even more intriguing!”
The ghost town they now owned a part of was known as Camp Caroline, which, together with the town of Homestake, boasted a population of 400 miners and their families. A saloon and dance hall, several boarding houses and stamp mills, a train station, a school and a general store kept everyone supplied, employed and entertained.
As they researched, one family popped up again and again. From managing mills, to locating claims, to stocking the store and building the headframes, the Flaggs and the Browns touched every part of life at Camp Caroline.
![Inez Brown Janettia Flagg Camp Caroline](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=150%2C144 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=200%2C191 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=225%2C215 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=300%2C287 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=400%2C383 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=540%2C517 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=640%2C613 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=750%2C718 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=990%2C948 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C991 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C1149 1200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=1333%2C1276 1333w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/c0/1c014244-3ebf-11ee-a694-43f4c10c7102/64e10b567065c.image.jpg?resize=1471%2C1408 1476w)
From left, Inez Brown and Jeannetia Flagg at Camp Caroline. Jeannetia cooked for miners at the Brown boarding house, and passed on several family recipes in the Butte Heritage Cookbook.
Charles Flagg, who arrived in Butte around 1880, was a shrewd man of many talents including mining and carpentry. Richard Brown, who became Flagg’s son-in-law when he married Jeannetia Flagg, arrived around 1887. The family owned year-round homes in Butte, but were restricted from the underground mining jobs that sustained others. Marcus Daly expressly forbid African Americans from working underground. He justified his racism with capitalism: the racial tension that might spark would decrease mine production.
But the clean atmosphere high above Butte allowed clearer heads to prevail at Camp Caroline. There, Charles Flagg, Richard Brown and his brothers all established their own mines, shipped their own ore, and worked alongside white miners in, according to family records, near-equality. Richard and his brother Wallace defied Daly’s edict when they hired on as hoisting engineers at the Mountain Chief mine, the largest in the area.
Richard also discovered the Homestake claim, which would later lend its name to the railroad stop and the pass between Butte and Whitehall. According to an 1895 article in the Whitehall Zephyr, “The Homestake mine, operated by the Homestake company, shipped a carload of ore to the Butte Sampling Works last week, a little over 20 tons, which realized $103.80 per ton in gold and $8.80 in silver.”
The Homestake claim would change its name two more times: first to the Kendall, then to the Blackwell, the best known producer of Camp Caroline’s mines. At Homestake, the Browns were working toward success, and Richard’s ascendancy into an elite world of employment would touch the family for generations.
![Cheryl Rochford, Randy Brown and Jack Rochford](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=150%2C212 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=200%2C282 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=225%2C318 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=300%2C424 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=400%2C565 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=540%2C763 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=640%2C904 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=750%2C1059 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=990%2C1398 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C1461 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C1694 1200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/25/125c1624-3ebf-11ee-8e8d-9f27ded99a17/64e10b464412c.image.jpg?resize=1211%2C1710 1333w)
Cheryl Rochford, Randy Brown and Jack Rochford reminisce on the deck of the Rochfords’ home on the Evening Star Lode
Camp Caroline’s namesake
Next door to the Rochfords, Randy Brown acts as the keeper of the Brown family history. He is a walking encyclopedia of the area: “That’s on the Harriet B. placer,” he said, pointing to a cabin in a black and white photograph. “That’s Wallace Brown; he owned the general store.”
![A Brown owned mine](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=150%2C285 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=200%2C380 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=225%2C427 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=300%2C570 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=400%2C760 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=540%2C1026 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=640%2C1216 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=750%2C1425 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=990%2C1880 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C1966 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/0/9d/09da40de-3ebf-11ee-8621-d3eaf4555c5e/64e10b3801443.image.jpg?resize=1044%2C1983 1200w)
Wallace Brown at the entrance to one of his mines near Camp Caroline.
Below the Rochfords’ modern home, the remains of a once-stately two-story cabin snuggle into the mountain’s embrace. “They called it the Chalet,” Randy said. “That’s how Camp Caroline got it’s name.”
![Wallace Brown](https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=150%2C99 150w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=200%2C132 200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=225%2C149 225w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=300%2C198 300w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=400%2C265 400w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=540%2C357 540w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=640%2C423 640w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=750%2C496 750w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=990%2C655 990w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=1035%2C685 1035w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C794 1200w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=1333%2C882 1333w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=1476%2C976 1476w, https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/mtstandard.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/de/1de9e2aa-3ebf-11ee-a103-9330a4d306fd/64e10b59a1b3f.image.jpg?resize=1770%2C1171 2008w)
When the Browns were restricted from working underground in the Butte mines, they staked claims in the Homestake district. Here, Wallace Brown stands near his mine among the large boulders common to the area.
With it’s charming windows, a wide veranda, and “running water” (gravity fed from a spring flowing in the back door), the Chalet was built for Caroline “Lina” Killisch Von Horn. Originally from Germany, Lina claimed her father’s business failure forced her to begged a position as a dressmaker from a schoolmate’s father in London. A skilled seamstress, she sailed in 1883 for New York as lead dressmaker for department store founder Benjamin Altman.
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The Chalet, the cabin built for mine manager Caroline Van Horn around 1900, stands in ruins on private property at Camp Caroline.
Three years later, she married George Killisch Von Horn, reputedly the son of a baron, and had a daughter, Ilka. George loved drinking, betting on horses, and women. Lina, with a career as a fashionable modiste, turned a blind eye until George’s bad debt caught up with them. Lina divorced George in 1894 and reappeared in Chicago, opening a fine dressmaking house as “Mme. Caroline.”
Lina later claimed she made and lost fortunes at her fancy, enough to retire at will. She heavily invested in mining, including the Mountain Chief and Blackwell Consolidated Mining Company. But when she saw her money mishandled, Lina sued. Newspaper records show she won judgment of approximately $15,000, worth around half a million dollars today.
According to the Helena Independent Record of May 27, 1901, following her win in court, “Mrs. Van Horne, who is one of the largest stockholders and a woman of considerable ability, was requested to take charge, and she consented to do so. She arrived on the ground last week and at once made preparations for starting the mill and developing the mine.”
Butte’s Inter Mountain likewise predicted success: “Montana has a woman mine manager and it is safe to wager that she will accomplish more in the way of making the property in her charge a success than did the two men who formerly handled the business.”
In 1901, Lina’s company determined a cyanide treatment plant might effectively concentrate the ore further. The Inter Mountain noted it would become the nearest cyanide plant to Butte, useful to the community as a whole. The Helena paper still struggled with the idea of a woman in charge. Their version led with the headline “Mine Managed by a Woman.”
Within a year, Lina’s company leased the operations out and washed her hands of mining for good. She “retired” to Germany to school her daughter, then relaunched a Chicago dressmaking business in 1913. She died before 1947, having never returned to Montana.
The skeleton of Lina’s Chalet hints at its former glory, and it, too, was a product of the Browns. Charles Flagg constructed the cyanide plant, and likely the Chalet as well. Richard Brown and his brothers managed the plant and the Blackwell mill under various companies, including Lina’s. And while the men managed to work side-by-side with white miners without the “racial strife” Daly predicted, the Brown women fed, housed and cleaned up after the same.
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The former Brown boarding house on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest is the only known African American-owned hardrock mining site on national land in the United States.
Jeannetia and her two sisters-in-law, Betty Brown McDonell and Nannie Brown Coughlin, established a large boarding house one gulch over from the Chalet, at a point convenient to serve all three Camp Caroline mills: the Blackwell, the Evening Star and the Katie O’Brien. With no other place to rent a bed or buy a meal between Whitehall and Butte, racial concerns didn’t seem to enter the picture for the miners of Camp Caroline: the 1900 census shows the seven boarders living with the Browns were all white.
Unparalleled in the National Forest system
Back in the near-empty clearing, Swartz points out a flat space: wildfire destroyed the Brown boarding house in 1988. But that small clearing holds heavy importance: “This is the only African American-owned hard rock mining site known on national forest in the U.S.
“I always ask, so what? What does it matter? Otherwise archaeology is just a really expensive way to learn history,” she says. “The ‘so what’ is bringing this to the public, to the outdoors.”
Black leadership groups like Outdoor Afro lament the lack of connection Black people have with the forest system. “Projects like this one are able to say, no no no—you DO have a place here, to give people back their history,” she says.
And so, instead of just documenting the site and letting it disappear into mountains of government paperwork, Swartz reached out.
She imagined if she could target students interested in history and archaeology, she could give them something truly unique in the American national forest system. Most field studies take students away to places like Rome to excavate famous ruins, but have no applicability to those wishing to stay in America. This project would be different.
She landed on a joint University of Montana-Montana State immersive field school, where students would gain federal archaeology skills, learn to conduct field studies, and understand archival research and processes. There wasn’t exactly a precedent. “They’re the rivals,” Swartz said, “Except for sports they have zero interest in working together.”
“When we went to MSU they were like, ‘Well what do you got?’ And we were like, ‘Not much. You’re the historians: we do garbage, you do paperwork. How can we make this happen?’” To her surprise, the field school came together seamlessly.
Micah Chang, a former PhD student who assisted with the field schools last year, said there were 11 students in the first camp at the Brown site. “Every student had a piece of the research and were heavily invested in it,” he said.
Together, the groups combed the archives, then turned to the “empty” plot of land. It wasn’t empty after all: rotting fence rails delineated a pasture, square stones marked a garden plot, prairie dog mounds exposed the broken glass of a bottle dump. Walking the landscape, eyes down, they operated on common-sense assumptions: you wouldn’t walk too far to an outdoor privvy at night, or locate a well too far from the kitchen that served 30 meals three times a day.
Swartz’s favorite finds include the variety of ceramics, some from Japan and China. “It doesn’t necessarily mean those cultures were here,” she said. “It could be whether the Browns bought it because they liked it. That can tell us what type of boarding house they were trying to portray: what percentage of the ceramics are earthenware— cheaper, readily available— and what percentage is handpainted china with a gold gilt edge?”
Swartz recognizes without a full site excavation she can’t interpret the pieces as thoroughly as she’d like. “We have to do triage archaeology, we have to get out there and get it done, get it recorded. It’s so much and we have such a short amount of time out here.”
But even if the funding were there, she wouldn’t develop the site or even preserve it further—road maintenance alone would cost too much. But she would like to make a story map of the site, where online visitors could see the Brown family’s impact. Ideally, she’d also like to place interpretive panels at lower point, both to make it more accessible and to protect the site. “The more people that know about [the exact location] isn’t necessarily good.”
Legacy
The Brown Boarding House closed in the 1930s. The Browns returned full-time to their home in Butte, where Richard worked as a custodian at the Butte Daily Post.
The racial barriers that kept Black men from the mines finally fell in the 1950s when three men, well-known to Butte locals and therefore believed unlikely by mine management to cause internal strife, were hired by the Anaconda Company. Two of the chosen were Richard Brown’s sons, Herbert and Hiawatha. The pair were already hometown heroes, known for their athletic prowess in football, basketball and track. Underground they teamed up on a diamond drill in the Kelley Mine. Another son, Joseph Dunge Brown, worked for Texaco in Butte as a member of the Machinists Union, when less than 1% of African Americans gained admittance to a union.
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Herbert and Hiawatha Brown were stars in track, football and basketball in Butte before becoming two of the first Black men hired to work underground for the Anaconda Company.
Brown women also broke racial barriers in Butte. Jeannetia and her daughter Lena were past presidents of the Pearl Club, a Black women’s organization that funded scholarships and other social and charitable work. Mary Brown managed Butte’s African-American Mining Company in the early 1920s. Herb’s daughter Rachel became the first Black cheerleader at Butte High, and Hiawatha’s daughter Frances became the first Black physical education teacher at Butte High.
For now, the Brown boarding house site will fall silent once again. Next year’s field school will be in a ghost town near Virginia City. “We have all we can find up here— now we need students to come up and lead. Preferably I’d love to have an archaeology student to do the dig here,” Swartz said. She’s handing the Brown project over to a graduate student at Montana State, Kristen Steadman, who specializes in African American women’s history.
The Rochfords have listed their elegant home on the Evening Star lode (and Lina Von Horn’s Chalet) for sale. “Fourteen grandkids we’ve raised on going up there,” Cheryl said. “They absolutely love it up there.”
“They’ve grown up,” Jack said. “We’ve got kids in Nevada, South Dakota, Georgia, Washington, and for us in our 70s it’s getting to be quite a bit of work.” He reminisces over the construction of their cabin, neighbors like Randy Brown and the spark of delight at each discovery they’ve made over the years. “It’s not irreplaceable,” he says, “but it’s damn close.”