Butte celebrates another St. Patrick’s Day in a manner worthy of its reputation
By Bella Butler EBS CONTRIBUTOR
Butte, Montana — At 10 ‘til midnight on March 16, a white-haired gentleman in a black tweed flat cap aimed a blaring leaf blower toward the wet asphalt at the intersection of Broadway and Main streets in Butte, Montana. A combination of rain and snow had made the ground an imperfect canvas for the annual painting of the giant shamrock, a decades-old tradition that serves as the unofficial kick-off to St. Patrick’s Day in the historic mining town. The leaf blower did little to dry the street, but the painters remained armed with green-stained roller brushes, waiting for their cue.
Then, at 12:01 a.m. on March 17, a pipe and drum band donning green plaid kilts stepped into the intersection and began playing Irish Set, and the roller brushes hit the ground, one drawing the outline of the clover leaves while the others hurriedly filled it in. A crowd of spectators began to cheer, some raising cans of Guinness in the snow-speckled air. On the flanks of the dark city, old mining headframes, usually lit red, glowed green. St. Patrick’s Day had begun in Butte, America.
The Midnight Shamrock is just one of many traditions that celebrate the famous holiday in Butte, a town that proudly claims the highest Irish-descendant population per capita in the country (a fact that has become more anecdotal than statistical in recent years, but with nearly a quarter of the city’s residents claiming Irish descent, the sentiment remains). Butte has a reputation for gathering crowds in the tens of thousands on March 17, many traveling from around the state (or further—some internet blogs tell tales of Emerald Isle natives making the trip overseas for the occasion), for a raucous celebration that includes a legendary parade and bleeds into uptown’s many Irish-themed bars until the wee hours of tomorrow. But for many of the town’s residents, it’s a day to stoke the fire of their heritage. It’s an unrivaled celebration, but above all, it’s an expression of pride.
On the morning of the 16th, a handful of members from Butte’s Ancient Order of the Hibernians share coffee and a shot of Irish whiskey at the east end of Broadway Street after painting the road for tomorrow’s parade. Smoke from their cigars is indistinguishable from their frozen breath as they take turns recalling their personal histories—they’re all Irish Catholic and all from Butte. They don’t say how old they are, instead joking that they’re sometimes called “the order of ancient Hibernians.” More seriously referred to as the AOH, the Irish Catholic fraternal organization was established in New York in 1836 and initially helped Irish immigrants relocate to the U.S.
Today, Butte’s chapter is less focused on establishing Irish-American culture and instead driven to keep it alive. Their signature effort is restoring the city’s St. Patrick’s Cemetery, but they also play a supportive role in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, even marching as the procession’s leaders behind the Butte Composite Squadron, which presents the flags.
“I think every year, St Patrick’s Day revives the presence that the Irish had in Butte—and still have—and I think it reminds people of their history here,” said Con Sullivan, president of the Butte AOH. “[The Irish] literally built Butte back in the day.” Indeed, during the copper boom of the 1860s that put Butte on the map, Irish immigrants flooded to what was becoming known as the Richest Hill on Earth. And many of them stayed.
Butte’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade was in 1882, when 800 members of the AOH marched in -30 F temps from Walkerville south to Butte, according to the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. From the beginning, the event was a stage for a cause: In the late 19th century, it was tied to Ireland’s fight for independence from England, and after the turn of the century, Butte’s chapter of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick added a banquet to the parade that raised funds that were sent to Ireland for civil war relief
While war was waged in Europe, Butte used the parade to respond. According to the Archives: “In 1915, the Butte Daily Post reported that ‘one thousand Irishmen and their invited guests, the German and Austro-Hungarian societies’ marched ‘under skies tinged with a summer brightness.’” In 1918, when the mayor of Butte denied the parade’s then-sponsor the Pearse-Connolly club a permit to march amid wartime and a pandemic, a riot broke out, and 56 men were jailed. Celebrations in the years following continued but in a quieter fashion until pride prevailed, and the annual jubilations swelled into the storied events of today.
Minutes before this year’s parade started its crawl down Granite Street, 11-year-old Colie Mulcahy practiced her Irish jig in front of the An Ri Ra Montana Irish Festival float and Tiernan Irish Dancers, which would soon prove to be a crowd-pleaser. Colie, who lives in Butte, joked that her favorite part of the holiday was watching the more spirited and imbibing attendees. Her mom, Lindsay Mulcahy, teasingly scolded her. “What about your favorite part of St. Patrick’s Day is dancing and handing down the heritage?” she offered instead, to which Colie replied: “Yeah, that, too.”
Across the street, the Butte Central High School Pep Band rehearsed “I’m Shipping up to Boston” by Dropkick Murphys on top of a trailer. Guitar player Perry Curry, 16, said this was his fifth year in a row playing with the band in the parade.
“Honestly, seeing the look on people’s faces [is my favorite part],” he said. “It’s usually pretty surprised, because you don’t really expect a rolling rock band to roll through, especially not in this weather, but we’re committed.”
Curry motioned to the snow flurries swirling around them and the 99 other groups and floats that made up this year’s parade. Despite the holiday falling on a weekday—and a blustering one, at that—participation and attendance were not lacking. Parade director Alysia Guzman, 26 and from Butte, was thrilled with the turnout. “I love how much the entries decorate more for St. Paddy’s than they do for the Fourth of July,” she said, laughing. Guzman works for the Butte, America Foundation, which has run the parade since 2017. As of EBS press time, crowd numbers had not been reported, but the packed streets uptown were proof enough of a successful showing.
Among the crowd were first-time parade goers Lynn and Lynn Benfield from Dillon. Since moving to Montana a year ago, they’ve been told it was a must. They especially liked the pipe and drum troupes, which this year included the Anaconda AOH as well as the Edmonton Police Service Pipe and Drums, the latter of which has been traveling from Canada to play in the parade since the 1980s.
“I just think the sounds of them are so neat,” one Lynn said. “The sound—that is my heritage,” said the other Lynn, adding that his Scottish family fled to Ireland before landing in the U.S. in 1756.
Benfield’s reflection on his family heritage is no mere musing—it’s by design. For the people of Butte understand that an elemental part of pride is respect, and each of the city’s many St. Patrick’s Day traditions are an act of it. Take the Midnight Shamrock, for example: the painters are simply a group of friends who started painting the intersection more than 40 years ago when they were kids (“The police used to chase us away because we were young and vandals, and then eventually they started blocking it off for us,” one painter said). Now, they honor the painters amongst them who have passed by painting their initials on the edges of the clover.
Each tradition—the midday hurling match that brings Ireland’s national sport to the Montana Tech pitch, the AOH’s group march to morning mass, the sparkling Irish garb adorned by horseback parade participants—is a call and an echo of heritage.
At noon on St. Patrick’s Day, 12 hours after green paint and bagpipes called in the holiday, the March sun parted the squalls as a procession of Irish dancers, AOH brothers and sisters, bagpipers, high school bands, military rigs, horses, a bishop driving a vintage car, a congressman and many, many other proud celebrators in green began their parade through uptown Butte, backdropped by the mine many of their ancestors immigrated for more than a century and a half ago. Today, pride is a shade of green.
Bella Butler is a part-Irish writer based in Bozeman. She is also the managing editor of Mountain Outlaw magazine, another publication of Outlaw Partners.
