Butte’s Bygone Ballrooms

Butte, Montana is home to several hidden, mostly forgotten ballrooms that rollicked with the joy of life back in the Mining City's heyday of the 1920s through the 1960s and beyond. My book, "Butte's Bygone Ballrooms: A Social History," will bring to life the formal dance clubs and their elegant, historically and architecturally significant ballrooms, where folks congregated regularly for dances -- often to big-time national swing bands such as the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

The idea to write about the history of Butte's fascinating ballrooms first dawned on me as a reporter at The Montana Standard, when photographer Walter HInick and I toured a few of the better known spaces around Butte. My feature story touches upon the Pioneer Club above HeadFrame Spirits, a dusty, underused Elks Lodge ballroom and the Masonic Temple ballroom where Big Bands thrilled local audiences like during the Swing Era of old.

Weaving Butte-laden oral histories into my narrative, I will capture the richness of the bygone era of formal ballrooms, their colorful inhabitants and their formal social rituals. We will two-step to our hearts' content and learn some new dance styles while imagining the dance culture of old. So fill your dance card and join me as we fill our dance cards and revive the forgotten history of social dance in beautiful ballrooms for older, younger and future generations.

Pioneer Club ballroom photo by Walter Hinick.