Nuggets from Helena: Challenge seeking peak performers becomes Queen City tradition

For this article of the Nugget, we go back 107 years to April 29, 1916, in downtown Helena.

This Mount Helena photo is from the book, “Post Cards from Helena,” by Tom Mulvaney, published by Farcountry Press. 

Tom Mulvaney collection, Farcountry Press

You are standing on the sidewalk at 51 N. Main (now called Last Chance Gulch) and are looking across the street at the Gold Block building (today you will see the Rialto).

There are eight men wearing running shoes, and they are standing in front of Moore’s Book and Stationery store at 50 N. Main St. One man, E.S. Thomas, wears a suit with a tie. He is the athletic director at Helena High School (Helena’s only public high school at the time) and he will start the runners on their race to the top of Mount Helena and back to Moore’s.

Please do not cross the street without looking carefully both ways, as the electric trolleys frequently travel between 6th Avenue and Broadway. In the past 10 years people are buying and driving this new thing, an automobile, which doesn’t

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