Francisco Tharp

When I was a kid, Saint Patrick’s Day meant searching out and pinching the green-less, followed by going to the local Catholic school with my parents to eat corned beef and cabbage. Throughout college I found new false idols: a shot of whiskey and Bailey’s dropped into a Guinness, cheap green Budweiser, and glittery “Kiss Me” shamrocks.

Yesterday, however, I did little more to celebrate the Americanized holiday than wear a green plaid shirt to work (for fear of being pinched), and say things like “Ay, luck o’ th’ Irish to ye’!” (and I probably sounded more like a Hollywood pirate than an Irishman). But throughout the day I did get to wondering–myths and false idols aside–what’s Irish about the West?

Many of the West’s mining towns–like Leadville, Colorado, for example–have a rich Irish heritage as copper miners from Ireland’s County Cork crossed the Atlantic looking for places where a working class could put down roots. But Butte, Montana, a place some call “Ireland’s fifth province” or “The Ireland of the West,” probably saw the greatest number of Irish immigrants west of the Mississippi. The gold, silver and copper mines that have culminated in the nation’s burliest superfund site attracted Irish settlers by the thousands. Yesterday, folks in Butte went all out at their annual Saint Patty’s Day parade (click the Montana Standard’s video link for footage).

Utah saw its fair share of Irish, too, but in a predominately LDS area, the Catholic Irish who populated mining and military towns are often overlooked by historians, according to a Desert Morning News report.

And what would the West be today without whiskey and fiddle music? We can thank the Irish for these Wild West staples, as well as those old lonesome cowboy tunes sung around crackling campfires.

If you’ve got bit of Irish Western heritage to add to the mix, drop it in a comment below. And happy (belated) Saint Patty’s Day.