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PR Gorham Early Life

Prosper Raymond “PR” Gorham was born November 22, 1887 (or 1888 or 1889) in Minneapolis, Minnesota and he was one of ten children of Cyprian and Rose Anne Lavallee Gorham. His father was a teamster and the legend is that as a youth PR started with what he knew, bought horses and earned passage of both the horses and himself on the train to Montana. A big burley French Canadian he went out to the Shelby-Sunburst area of western Montana in the homestead days. In 1906 he homesteaded at Sunburst. Using his team and wagon he also kept busy doing some hauling of freight and soon set himself up in a small country store. During these years he got to know a lot of the people in the area, especially farmers, who came to trade at his modest establishment.

Family He married the daughter of the local dentist and hotelier, Anna Beaupre on June 26, 1913. The marriage was not a happy one and they lived apart for many years before Anna’s death. He fathered 3 children; Frances, Patricia and Henri “Bud”. The family lived in Sunburst where PR had a country store, and lived there during the oil boom. As those who knew PR over the years came to realize, the big fellow was always open to engaging in a variety of ventures which came into his field of vision. Some of these ventures were not profitable, but despite that, he generally made more good deals than bad ones. He was not a timid man in this respect.

Oil in Kevin- Sunburst area about 1921 A promoter named Tip O’Neil anticipated oil in the area and he obtained oil leases, as many as he could, and to the extent he could interest moneyed investors. O’Neil made a deal with PR to go visit the farmers and obtain leases. The price was not big, but in the post WWI period there was serious credit depression, so farmers were delighted to pick up any extra cash. PR got a lot of leases for O’Neil. Thus began the successful development of the Kevin-Sunburst oil fields. There were shallow wells, and lots of them as the Shelby area soon became the boom area in Montana. Meanwhile the fortunes of the big French Canadian, PR Gorham, by dint of hard work and dogged determination, also were on the rise. He was becoming wealthy.

Scobey - 368 miles east PR’s daughter, Pat, said that he went up to Scobey on business of some kind and had to sleep in a granary. He decided that would be a very good place to build a hotel. Scobey at that time was the world’s largest inland wheat market; inland because there wasn’t any railroad there. PR also learned how the gutsy town, which had so much going for it, wanted a modern hotel. He talked with some of the influential people and learned they were prepared to go to some lengths in promoting the project.

The work progressed well thru 1928 and into the spring of 1929 before it was completed. The town provided the land and PR built northeastern Montana’s finest hostelry. A large, well furnished lobby with numerous overstuffed chairs with a view thru picture windows on the north was further garnished by an impressive column in the center of the lobby which rose to the high ceiling, encircled at the top by a cage of lovebirds. A tank by the lobby windows contained a young alligator, and a large parrot also made its abode there, leaving its cage more and more to inspect the lobby and its occupants with appropriate squawks from time to time. The first floor also housed the post office, a fancy restaurant, and an apartment that PR used when he was in town. In the full basement was a two-lane bowling alley, just off of which was a room which came to be known as “the Hole”, where many poker games were held.

To the south of the bowling alley was the hotel laundry where PR himself, from time to time, would do those voluminous daily chores involving hotel’s linen, and even be seen during the early thirties, barefooted, mopping the lobby floor, stopping from time to time to climb up to the lovebirds cage and coo to his little feathered friends inside the circular cage adjacent to the ceiling.

During the early years of his stay in Scobey, PR brought his two daughters, Frances and Patricia, and son Henri “Bud”, to live in Scobey, all were married there.

There were the numerous poker games in the apartment off the lobby when PR would invite in his old friends, and supply the lunch; he was a better than average chef. PR would bank the game and hand out the poker chips, then he would lean back in his chair, thinking, and suddenly rear up and reach out to take a certain amount of chips off each stack and inform of the players, with the growling remark, “You guys don’t think I can furnish the food and pay for the lights and space for nothing do you?” as he glowered at them around the table. Placing the recaptured chips in his vest pocket, play would then commence.

At the end of one of these sessions, well into daybreak, PR was cashing in the players’ chips, writing checks to most of them, because that evening he was a substantial loser. He didn't complain, however, during the transactions until after everyone was paid off, PR leaned back in his chair, puffing on his cigar, musing philosophically as he hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. Suddenly, he let out a big bellow. “The lunch money’s gone!” He had forgotten he had used all the lunch money chips during the course of play.

Like a man demented, yowling about the missing lunch money, he kicked over a couple of chairs, and with crashes and tinkling of broken glass he swept the glasses and ash trays off the table, and kicked them across the rug out into the lobby, uttering a series of blood-curdling oaths, giving vent to the variety of injustices in this world. Those who knew PR knew he was enjoying himself.

Back in northwest Montana; Heavyweight title Boxing match. One night in a poker game in Shelby, when the town was booming due to the oil development, there got to be a discussion about how to further promote the town of Shelby to bring investors from the east to supply funds for promising oil and gas development, and it was then the idea came up of promoting a prize fight. The town population, at that time, was only 1500 folks. Among those in the poker game that night were some important men in the community. During the course of the discussion the idea grew and burgeoned at the thought of having a heavyweight match in which Jack Dempsey, the reigning champion, would defend his title against Tommy Gibbons.

PR Gorham, in the poker game at that time, chipped in to get the promotional fund started. From then on it became a community project and Dempsey’s manager, Jack Kerns, leading fight manager at the time, demanded a huge guarantee. At any rate, the fight was held in Shelby on July 4, 1923, and Dempsey won the decision. But it was a financial disaster in Shelby, and caused more than one bank to go broke.

Years later, PR Gorham told about his part in that historical fiasco, “I didn’t mind losing what I’d put in,” PR said. “But the local people in charge of the seating and gate admissions simply were not experienced enough to handle it right” when the clamoring crowd outside the temporary arena crashed thru the fences and swarms rushed in without paying a nickel. Mr. Gorham said he had no regrets, despite it all, and that he, along with the others that night in the poker game, felt it was a great idea. He recalled with satisfaction that he had been in on things at the very start.

Other businesses During the late thirties, PR also decided to extend his hotel holdings to a site at one end of the Cooke City highway near Yellowstone Park. Built of massive logs it was an impressive edifice. His daughter Pat explained that the great big log building was the Gorham Chalet.postcard And when he built it in 1933 it was supposed to have cost $25,000 –which was lots of money at that time but ended up costing $50,000. “And to this day I don’t think those logs have settled a bit. It’s still in great condition. His nephew Ralph Nelles and son Bud Gorham helped build that Chalet. They hauled logs and helped build that old log furniture that they had. Dad ran that until just after World War II started. And then there was no traffic, no nothing, so he closed it, and then at end of WWII he sold it.”

Around the time they struck oil in the Sunburst area, PR moved to Great Falls and owned a Grizzly gas station.

PR owned and operated the Casino at Wheeler [a wild boom town] in the Fort Peck dam construction days of the late 1930s. Prosper continued his interests in oil fields near Sunburst and also real estate and banking interests in Scobey.

PR Gorham also bought the leading taxicab company in Billings, much later giving it to his son, “Bud”.

His granddaughter, Ann remembers when he gave his grandchildren shares in a new idea, which unfortunately fizzled out. That venture-in the 1950s- was ahead of its time – it was called Can-A-Pop.

Personality An early clue to one of his personality traits was when he was arranging for the new restaurant to open. In buying supplies for the new restaurant, PR believed buying in quantities was the thing. One of the items was pepper. He lay in five hundred pounds of it. Although his foresight was premature, the pepper would become a premium item in World War II and the inevitable rationing.

Once, driving between Scobey and Billings, PR stopped in Circle to get a couple cups of coffee and a sandwich. But somehow his late model car, unbeknownst to PR coasted down a slope close by, and upended in a new basement excavation, nearly half full of water. Returning to where he thought his car was, PR then walked over and saw what happened. He went over to a car dealer showroom, bought another car and proceeded to Billings.

Another time a drunk in the lobby got sick and made a mess on the floor. PR left his card game and seeing the mess and the cause grabbed the drunk, rubbed his face in the mess then threw him out the lobby door, giving him a kick in the pants enroute. The resulting cries of pain from PR were caused because when he kicked the forcibly departing offender, PR in his carpet slippers happened to strike a mickey bottle in the drunk’s hip pocket and broke a couple of toes.

OR the time when an interesting card game in the apartment, PR was interrupted from time to time by people wanting change to use the pay phone in the lobby. When the game broke up about daylight, another fellow asked if he could use the pay phone, and was directed to where it was – or rather had been. Without any fuss, PR had torn the pay phone from the wall earlier, as loose wires hung from the wall, mute evidence PR would not have to make any more change.

His nephew Ralph Nelles said, “Oh, he was domineering and aggressive and what he said went. You didn’t argue much with P.R. But I know I was one of his favorites. …He gave me the ring I’ve worn for years. You see I told him when he came to dying, I would like to buy the ring, you know, pay his estate. Well, one Christmas while we’re opening gifts, Flora hands me a cigar box all covered over with postage stamps. The whole box was covered from one end to the other with stamps. I opened the box and the 2.5 carat diamond ring was inside. I called P.R.’s attorney a few days after Christmas and said, “You remember I wanted to have P.R. put the ring in his will and I’d pay the estate.” “Well,” the attorney said, “It’s in the will and it was to be yours for a dollar. P.R. decided to give it to you early.” P.R. was quite a guy.

Compiled from family legends, newspaper articles and family members.