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Late at night on March 6, 1901, the Centerville Ghost made its first appearance in the Mining City.

According to The Butte Daily Post, two men missed the last streetcar to Centerville after attending a concert at an opera house. As they walked up Main Street, they saw a dark, robed figure emerge from an alley near Center Street. 

The figure walked in a sort of easy, floating manner between the car rails ahead of the men.

As if it was waiting for them, the figure stopped in their path. Then, it suddenly whirled to face them, and a ghostly hand flung a veil from its earie face.

The men got a glimpse of its unearthly features shining with blue streaks of Sulphur-like lights.

As the men froze with fear, the ghost screamed with piercing loudness, turned and fled down the tracks, moaning as it ran.

The newspapers in town carried the account of the encounter with the Centerville Ghost, and the city was overcome with fright. During the weeks that followed, the ghost roamed about Centerville, Walkerville and the Dublin Gulch.

Women would not leave their homes alone after dark, and men went about armed with guns.

The Centerville Ghost made sporadic appearances over the next few decades. But on Oct. 31, 1939, a story in The Butte Daily Post reported the truth.

Joe Duffy, then a lanky, 62-year-old Butte alderman, laundry truck driver, poet, author and practical joker, revealed that he was behind the ghost story.

Duffy’s friends Jim McGlynn and Joe Cooney bet him that he could not fool all the people in Butte at any one time.

So, Duffy made up the story of the two men. He won his bet with the “power of suggestion.”

That’s all he did. He wrote a letter to the papers reporting the first sighting, and imaginations ran wild.

It seems that it never has been too difficult to get the people of Butte all riled up.

Maybe that is why the Environmental Protection Agency, Atlantic Richfield Co., the State of Montana and Butte-Silver Bow have been so secretive when it comes to Superfund cleanup around town. 

Trying to sneak some contaminated dirt into the neighborhoods the Centerville Ghost once roamed seems to be the only possible explanation to the confidentiality in dealing with such a serious issue for the people of the Mining City.

That is exactly what the Consent Decree signed by former Chief Executive Dave Palmer was, too. It was secretive. It was negotiated in secret, and 3 and a half years later not one shovel has hit the ground to complete the cleanup work promised in the decree.

The reasons for that are, you guessed it, secret.

It seems like they have not settled on a place to dump the contaminated dirt they will be taking out of certain sites around town.

The Consent Decree is an agreement to finish the reclamation work in Butte, as if there really is an end in sight.

In 2020, some neighbors of Copper Mountain Park got word that the plan was to dump next to the park, which they still considered an open depository — even after the park and baseball stadium were built there.

The outrage expressed over  that short-sighted plan forced the EPA, ARCO, the state and Butte-Silver Bow to reconsider. Days after the outrage began, the groups announced they would not dump there.

The not-in-my-neighborhood meeting goers seemed satisfied with the decision. It wasn’t my neighborhood that would be affected, so I was in the group of not-in-any-neighborhood folks.

I raised my hand and asked what other places were proposed as possible dumping sites. I was in the back, and I didn’t get a good view of the map of such places that so briefly appeared on the powerpoint presentation.

I didn’t get a good answer, so I emailed officials of every organization. Weeks went by and I got nothing but the runaround from all of them.

Eventually, Jon Sesso, the former director of the Butte-Silver Bow Planning Department and former Democratic minority leader of the Montana Senate, called me to tell me why I got the runaround.

Sesso said they didn’t want me to have a copy of the map because — and I swear on the life of my children this is true — they didn’t want me to “write another column to get everyone all riled up.”

He told me that they were considering sites by the Williamsburg neighborhood — because “Williamsburg people don’t care about anything” — behind Montana Tech and behind the Granite Mountain Memorial.

He told me what I already knew, that they had a map of the proposed sites. But no matter how hard I asked, they would not give it to me.

At the meeting, it seemed like there was no difference between the state, EPA, ARCO and the local government. After that conversation, I knew that was true.

Hopefully, they had the best interest of the people at heart when they made their agreements. But if that was the case, why the ongoing secrecy?

It appears that even the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners is still in the dark about the proposed plans to dump.  That is why some proposed a resolution demanding transparency.

Without transparency, we can only fear the worst. That is why some people have begun to become riled up when they saw some officials sniffing around the Dublin Gulch neighborhood.

Is that where they are going to dump?

If that is the case, they better be ready to arrest a few people every day they try it — starting with me. That neighborhood should be rebuilt, not buried under toxic slime.

What an insult that would be to so many people whose families proudly came from “The Gulch.”

Why is it that Butte people don’t seem to matter to organizations like the EPA, ARCO and the State of Montana, anyway?

When they cleaned up the Milltown Dam, they shipped the contaminated materials to Opportunity. They never considered dumping near a neighborhood near Missoula.

In Butte they seemed to be just fine dumping it next to little kids playing on the swings.

When Judge Brad Newman ordered the cleanup of Silver Bow Creek, his order was simply ignored. Apparently, they are going to get away with ignoring that court order, too.

Don’t try that at home.

In response to the grumblings of some commissioners, the EPA set a community meeting for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Emergency Operations Center at 3615 Wynne Ave. That is the site where the Copper Mountain Park neighbors shouted down the possibility of dumping in their neighborhood.

The EOC is in the same building where you get your driver’s license renewed, and we should pack the place to let the officials making such a very important decision know we are watching.

One thing we have going for us is that we know that they don’t like it when we get all riled up. So, slip on your riling shoes and let’s hold the feet of all the officials and agencies involved to the fire.

This time, the EPA is promising to offer some transparency as it continues to move at a snail’s pace when it comes to doing its job, which is supposed to be putting the needs of the environment and citizens over the financial worries of a multi-billion-dollar company.

So far, though, we know those promises have proven to be as real as Joe Duffy’s Centerville Ghost.

— Bill Foley, who is always wearing his size 13 riling shoes, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 before that billionaire weirdo ruins it. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.