Austin Amestoy: Welcome to the Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I’m your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We’ll answer your questions – large or small – about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans for Montana, this is The Big Why.
Reporter Edward O’Brien joins us again. Good to have you back, Ed.
Edward O'Brien: Good to be here Austin.
This episode of The Big Why features a challenging question that will likely sound rather coarse to some listeners’ ears. I just ask for a little trust and patience. Some great teamwork eventually revealed a sliver of Montana history that until now had been forgotten for generations.
I’m so excited to share this story!
Austin Amestoy: You know how to set a hook, Ed. What’s the question!
Edward O'Brien: Our listener, who requested anonymity, asks:
"How did Jew Mountain in Ravalli County get its name?"
Austin Amestoy: Jew Mountain. Wow. Where is it?
Edward O'Brien: It’s an 8,000 foot summit on the Bitterroot National Forest. It’s in rugged country east of Painted Rocks Lake.
Austin Amestoy: Ed, why did the listener ask this question?
Edward O'Brien: This individual told me he felt "shocked and sickened" when he spotted the name on a Montana map. His parents fled eastern Europe’s pogroms – organized attacks against Jewish communities – and immigrated to America in the early 1900s. The name Jew Mountain is a sore spot with this listener.
Austin Amestoy: Understandably so. What did you find out?
Edward O'Brien: This is a rather complicated knot to untie. My initial research revealed only a handful of facts: Jew Mountain features a few creeks, and until just a few years ago, one of them, this tiny unassuming tributary, bore the name of an abominable slur for Jewish people.
Austin Amestoy: Oh my. What else did you find?
Edward O'Brien: The name Milt Steinberg. Jew Mountain’s history had largely been lost to time, but his name popped up in several documents.
Austin Amestoy: Well a lead is a lead, I suppose. What did you learn after you dug in?
Edward O'Brien: Steinberg was described as a prospector with several claims in the area. That’s about all I could find, at least at first. But Austin, remember that name: Milt. It will be important a little later.
Austin Amestoy: Filing that away. So perhaps we should return to the creek with the offensive name. Did you research its origin?
Edward O'Brien: Sure, so I found an old report that said an unidentified local Forest Service employee named it. But the story of that creek took a fascinating turn in 2018 when this guy found it on a map.
Alex Froeter: This is Alex Froeter. I am a GIS analyst.
Austin Amestoy: A GIS analyst?
Edward O'Brien: Geographic Information Systems. Think digital cartographer.
Austin Amestoy: So how did he first encounter Jew Mountain and its offensively named creek?
Edward O'Brien: Froeter – who’s Jewish – had just graduated from the University of Montana, and he was leveraging those next-level map skills to scout out cool places to hike and ski south of Missoula in the Bitterroot range. Jew Mountain caught his eye. On closer examination he couldn’t believe it had a little creek bearing the name of such an awful slur.
Alex Froeter: So I kind of felt if anybody’s going to do something about this, I have the unique overlap of background and interests that would be the person to get this changed.
Edward O'Brien: He submitted a petition with the U.S. Board of Geographic names. Eventually, the name got officially changed. Today, it’s named Steinberg Creek – after the miner and his family I mentioned earlier.
Alex Froeter: It felt great. I was really proud of it. And as a Jew I felt like I was representing my people well out there.
Edward O'Brien: This started a larger journey for Froeter, too. He tried to research the Steinbergs, Milt and his wife Rachel, but he came up empty.
Austin Amestoy: Interesting. So we still don’t know much about this couple. Did you manage to uncover any more nuggets of information?
Edward O'Brien: Huge shoutout to the Forest’s Heritage and Archeology Program Manager Matthew Werle who hit the motherload. Werle’s research led him to historical newspaper accounts. He told me Steinberg would travel back and forth between Montana and Minnesota. His gold company did extremely well and he eventually sold and moved to Butte.
Austin Amestoy: The mining capital of the old west! You know, this historical talk has me thinking about the bigger picture here. I’ve heard lots about Montana’s early Irish settlers and others. But Steinberg’s story has me wondering: What do we know about Montana’s earliest Jewish settlers?
Edward O'Brien: I was curious about the exact same thing, so I reached out to Kaelie Giffel with the Montana Jewish Project. She said the state’s early Jewish settlers started coming here around the time of the gold rush in the 1860s.
Kaelie Giffel: They’ll do things like mining, they’ll be cowboys, they’ll be butchers, they’ll be merchants. It’s a really rich range of work they would do.
Edward O'Brien: Big picture, these folks came here like so many other immigrants, striving to make better lives for themselves.
Retired congregational Rabbi Laurie Franklin in Missoula helps put a finer point on it. Franklin said settling in America offered Jews a sort of freedom from the harassment and discrimination they experienced overseas. Yes, things were likely tough here too, but back in Europe:
Rabbi Laurie Franklin: They were historically not allowed to join guilds, not allowed into colleges, not allowed to advance professionally unless they renounced their Jewish identity. The fact that that didn't hold here in a formal way was really attractive and important.
Austin Amestoy: Wow, I could see us mining this vein of history forever, but in the interest of time, let’s pivot back to Milt and Rachel Steinberg. It sounds like they had a pretty good run in Montana?
Edward O'Brien: Milt! Thank you for reminding me! Yes, here is where we get to a major twist in this story. Bitterroot National Forest Heritage and Archeology specialist Matthew Werle did some research, and he came back with the name Morris Steinberg. Not Milt at all. But this new discovery led me somewhere I never expected.
And that discovery started when I turned this newly uncovered name – Morris Steinberg – over to Alex Froeter, the mapping specialist who named Steinberg Creek.
Austin Amestoy: What happened then?
Edward O'Brien: As much as Alex loves maps, his brother Joe loves genealogy. So they dug in. Don’t underestimate the Froeter bros, they’re resourceful guys.
Austin Amestoy: Was Joe able to reel in anything interesting?
Edward O'Brien: Turns out Morris and Rachel Steinberg – not Milt – had several kids. Milt was one of their sons. After the Jew Mountain gold mine operation shuttered, Morris moved the family to Butte, where he died in 1917. He’s buried there today. After his death, his wife Rachel moved the family to Los Angeles where they apparently opened a kosher meat market.
Austin Amestoy: Wow! So Milt wasn’t the original proprietor of the mine on Jew Mountain after all. His father was! That’s a pretty significant discovery!
Edward O'Brien: But wait, there’s more. Meet Rachel and Morris Steinberg’s great, great granddaughter:
Ann Fogler: My name is Ann Fogler. I’m a 32-year-old English teacher/opera singer. That’s a little bit about me.
Edward O'Brien: The Froeter bros found Fogler and reached out to her to share the whole story of Jew Mountain, Steinberg Creek, relatives she’d never heard of – the whole megillah . She agreed to hear them out.
Austin Amestoy: What did she think about all this family history in Montana?
Ann Fogler: So, I think I kind of like read it and I was like, ‘Jew Mountain? slur Creek?!’ I was kind of like, ‘I don’t know what to say!'
Edward O'Brien: After comparing family trees, Fogler says she’s 90 percent confident she’s a direct descendant of Morris and Rachel Steinberg.
Austin Amestoy: It seems like one thing really stuck out to almost everyone you interviewed for this story – and to me, too. the name "Jew Mountain." After all this, was there any consensus – is it offensive or descriptive?
Edward O'Brien: I wouldn’t call it a consensus. It's complicated. Alex Froeter, who spearheaded the effort to name Steinberg Creek, says he’d need to see evidence Jew Mountain was named maliciously before he’d support an effort to rename it.
Our anonymous question-asker says he’s ashamed the label "Jew Mountain" remains intact on Montana maps.
Here’s retired Rabbi Laurie Franklin’s take:
Rabbi Laurie Franklin: The word Jew, to me, in itself is not a slur. To call something ‘"Jew Mountain" sounds like a slur. It feels wrong. It feels like it’s singled out an identity and pinned it to a feature – a geographic feature – it seems like a misuse of the identity word.
Edward O'Brien: Ann Fogler, the great, great granddaughter of the family for whom the mountain is most likely named, has mixed feelings. But she deeply appreciates the Froeter brothers’ hard work reconnecting that lost branch of her family tree, and Alex’s effort to rename that little creek with the tremendously offensive name on Jew Mountain.
Ann Fogler: Names and words matter.
Austin Amestoy: Indeed they do. Thank you for this fascinating investigation, Ed!
Edward O'Brien: Austin thank you.
Austin Amestoy: Now we want to know what makes you curious about Montana. Submit your questions below, or leave a message at 406-640-8933. Let's see what we can discover together! Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and help others find the show by sharing it and leaving a review.
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