The Rathskeller at the Montana Club

The story

Before you try bluffing your way into Montana's old elite power structure, know that you can walk straight down the basement stairs without showing a membership card. The Montana Club was established in 1885 as a private haven for the state's wealthiest power brokers, housed inside a 1905 clubhouse designed by Cass Gilbert—the same architect responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court building. For more than a century, high-stakes political deals and timber and mining fortunes were negotiated behind those upper-floor doors.

The real soul of the operation, however, sat behind the bar. From 1893 to 1953—a 60-year stretch spanning Prohibition and two world wars—a bartender named Julian Anderson held court beneath the club floorboards. Anderson poured drinks for generations of Helena's political and financial brass, quietly curating a deep library of cocktail recipes that outlasted the Gilded Age that birthed them.

After roughly a year of renovations under new ownership, the building reopened in 2025, officially unlocking the subterranean Rathskeller to the public. The current drink menu resurrects Anderson's original recipes using fresh ingredients, letting you sip authentic 19th-century mixology in the exact basement vault where territory politics were once washed down.