Daniel V. and Mary Bean House
An unusual two-story angled bay ornaments the façade of this modified cross-gable home. Built circa 1900, the “Free Classic” style residence features Queen Anne characteristics including a large wraparound porch, turned balustrade, bay windows, and complicated roofline. Daniel Bean arrived in Hamilton in 1895 and moved with wife Mary and their family into this apple orchard-bordered property a few years later. The home still occupied an entire block in 1944. Ill-gotten gains perhaps paid for the gracious residence. Bean was a lumberman associated with copper king Marcus Daly’s massive logging operations, and in 1901 the government charged him and several other defendants with stealing publicly owned timber. By 1899, Bitterroot sawmills, including ones owned by Bean, collectively cut 100 million feet of logs into lumber annually, most of which was destined for Daly’s copper mines and smelter. Obtaining General Land Office permits for logging on public lands was easy, maybe especially so for Bean, whose wife’s uncle served as commissioner of that agency. Nevertheless, many lumbermen cut timber beyond their permits’ limits. In 1907 Bean and his co-defendants--including the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, James Haggin, and others--agreed to pay the U.S. government “$156,000 for timber illegally cut” (approximately $32 million in 2023 dollars). The Ravalli Republic newspaper reported that this was the largest timber trespass settlement to date. Daniel Bean died in 1910. By 1917, Casper Oertli, who operated a threshing outfit, lived here with wife Mary, three children, and Mary’s mother.
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