Archives West Finding Aid

William R. Allen was born July 25, 1871, in French Gulch, southwest of Anaconda, Montana. His father, William N. Allen, travelled to Alder Gulch from Missouri as a pioneer in January 1864. In 1865, he moved to the French Gulch placer mining district. Allen's mother, Cordelia Waddell Allen, died when William was a small boy. Since winters in French Gulch were especially severe, the family acquired a ranch at Mill Creek near what later became Anaconda. They spent the winters there cattle ranching and the summers at French Gulch mining. Young William attended Deer Lodge County schools. Initially he had intended to go East for college but decided instead to go to Helena Business College, from which he graduated with honors in 1891. After graduation, Allen returned to French Gulch to mine with his father. He also became associated with Marcus Daly in his Electric Light, Street Railway, and Water Works department. After his father's death in 1898, Allen began to develop his Elkhorn Mine at Brundy (later renamed Coolidge for the President). The Elkhorn Mine became a major producer with a large processing mill. For eight years, starting in 1903, Allen also was a timber developer. He then began branching out into other enterprises, becoming involved in real estate, fire insurance, banking, and railroads. During most of the nineteen-teens, Allen lived in Boston, Massachusetts, where he established important business connections, which he used to finance his Montana enterprises. In 1913 he established the Boston and Montana Development Company. A subsidiary, the Butte, Wisdom, and Pacific Railway Company, was incorporated to build a rail line into the Big Hole Valley from the Oregon Short Line at Divide. Nothing came of this project, however, until after World War I, when the Montana Southern Railway Company--a reorganization of the Butte, Wisdom, and Pacific--started construction of a narrow gauge line. This was completed to Allen, Montana (later renamed Wise River) and then turned up the Wise River to the Elkhorn mines at Brundy. Since the railroad was totally dependent on the prosperity of the mines, when they declined in the 1920s, the railroad also declined. After several reorganizations of the railroad and its parent company, both fell victim to the Depression and to the decline of mining in the 1930s. William R. Allen was a Republican. He was elected to the Eighth Legislative Assembly, 1903, and the Ninth Legislative Assembly, 1905, and then served as Lieutenant Governor, 1909-1911, under Governor Edwin L. Norris. In 1920, and again in 1924, Allen was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He came out of political retirement in 1940 to run for Congress, but was defeated by Jeannette Rankin in the Republican primary. Allen married Elizabeth Berkin of a pioneer Boulder family. Their first child, a son named Leslie, died in early childhood in 1893. The Allens had three other children: Mildred, Esther, and Ruth. After Elizabeth's death in 1917, Allen remarried, to Ethel Louis deMar, in Boston. They had two daughters and one son. William R. Allen died at the age of 82 on October 31, 1953.