The Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) built this home circa 1897 as a company house. Its cross-gabled roof, three-part windows with stained-glass border panes, and turned porch posts mark it as a classic Queen Anne style cottage. The first known residents were William and Nellie Fisk in 1903. William Fisk was manager of the Valley Mercantile—the ACM company store—and Nellie stayed home with their children Roy and Page. In 1905, William became manager of the Hamilton Hotel, where the Fisks eventually moved after 1915. Various families, often associated with the Valley Mercantile or the Bitterroot Stock Farm, rented the home over the next twenty years. In 1936, widow Christina Kippen purchased the home from the Stock Farm and moved here with her sons from the family ranch. Her husband Marcus Kippen had been a surveyor at the Stock Farm for forty years. Christina was a fifty-year member of the Order of the Eastern Star and active with the Hamilton Presbyterian Church’s Ladies Aid Society. Among other family activities and social gatherings, her home was the scene of many card parties.
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