As you may be able to tell I’ve done a lot of traveling all over the United States and to several different countries. But honestly this is one of the most interesting historical stops I’ve made. I love to go to pioneer towns and historical villages and in Europe old castles. But the underground city in Havre, Montana has got to be the most interesting stop yet!
According to the tour guide from the local historical society: Havre was a thriving town. It was quite rowdy as it was on a railroad stop and had an Army fort nearby. It’s very close to the Canadian border. But back in the day it was apparently a typical Wild West town that you would imagine if you have seen any cowboy/western type movies.
If you have been watching the news lately you have probably seen reports about wildfires all over States like California, Oregon, and Montana and seen news photos of the devastation after the fire has passed. The wind is very strong in Montana typically and the prairie grass is very dry in the summer. It’s usually super low humidity in Montana all year round. So you can imagine grass fires can be a devastating problem… especially back in the early 1900’s when there were no helicopters with giant water buckets etc to help fight these huge, fast, rolling fires. This is compounded with the fact that many structures back then were made of sod or wood or other easily combustible materials. So it’s easy to also imagine how a whole town could be razed to the ground in one of these fast moving fires, and that’s exactly what happened in Havre Montana.
The entire town was burned to the ground in the early 1900’s. But that didn’t stop the citizens from continuing life in the community. Like many houses in Montana the ones in Havre all had basements. So the citizens made these basements into temporary living and working quarters until they could get the materials to rebuild their town. In those basements they made interconnected doorways. So one can enter from the street in a couple of different locations and like a maze, make your way from one basement to the next to whatever shop or neighbor you wanted to go visit. It is very maze like indeed… and I was super glad this was a guided tour because I could easily have gotten lost in that maze of shops and homes underground lol.
In order to have some natural light during the day they used small blocks of glass (about the size of a brick and made of solid glass) like skylights, which let in an amazing amount of light! I wonder if this was the first skylights invented and used lol.
Back then bricks had to be hand made, one by one out of clay, and then air dried etc… so it takes quite a while to produce enough bricks to rebuild an entire town, but the citizens opted to rebuild out of brick in case there was ever another prairie fire. They had learned from this experience the hard way! So it took a couple of years to rebuild. Meanwhile the underground Wild West town thrived!
Butcher shops, Ice Cream parlors, pharmacy, doctor, dentist, bank, church, bakery, grocery store (aka general store), a Chinese laundry… everything a normal town has/had except located in a maze of interconnected basement rooms. It even included the seedier side of a normal town and had a brothel, saloon, gambling, opium dens etc. all working side by side and sharing entrances. I wonder if to get to the bakery you might have to cut thru the brothel, or someone’s living room … because one would have to cut thru other businesses and homes to get to where they wanted to go. I can imagine it was quite an education in humanity.
The saddest location was by far the brothel. Where each lady had a cot only inches away from the next lady with a number painted on the wall above the bed on the wall. Crowded in and dungeon like in the center of the basement rooms with no windows or natural lights. A gentleman would pay his fee and be given a number of the lady he was to go “visit”. They could not ask for a lady by name. No favorites. And the ladies were moved from brothel to brothel frequently to keep the gentleman from getting a favorite. The owner of the brothel in Havre was better than most tho. If a lady contracted a disease she was retired with a payoff and a medical visit. Older ladies were also retired with a payoff. Think “retirement/severance check”.
To keep the church ladies and more upstanding people calm and so as to not shut down the seedier businesses like the brothels… many brothel owners paid for civic services such as the building of churches for the various communities. In Havre it was an education fund for children, this education fund (grant) is still being granted to the children of Havre today and it was started by… yep you guessed it… the owner of that brothel way back in the day… funded by the ladies working in that dungeon of a brothel. Which many ladies found themselves in the position of having to do, after a husband died for example, in order to stay alive themselves.
Anyway, if you find yourself in Montana it really is worth the drive to go to Havre and spend the day wandering thru this underground historical site. Take your time and imagine it full of the original occupants. Take a camera (I forgot mine dang it!) because there are some amazing antiques down there! It really is an awesome experience. It usually isn’t crowded, our tour consisted of myself and my adult son, and lil bit (my service dog). There is a lot of walking on this tour. If you are claustrophobic, I don’t recommend it (hence one of the reasons why lil bit was on this tour with me lol and I also carried a flashlight to calm my nerves lol but you really don’t need one… it was more of a “woobie” in my case lol and this visit was before Conestoga Chuck came to live with us and begin his Service dog training so he hasn’t been…. yet!)
They only do tours in the summer and I highly recommend calling ahead and making sure they have a guide available for the day you plan on going, since all tours are guided. No self guided tours allowed. The drive is beautiful to get there so try and pack a picnic and stop at a park along the way to enjoy the remote scenery.
Here is the link to the museum for more information: Havre MT underground city
Conestoga Chuck 