Step into Helena’s heritage with the Historic Julian Anderson Cocktail Trail, a curated journey through drinking establishments, restaurants, and a craft distillery paying tribute to Julian Anderson—the legendary barman of the historic Montana Club. Anderson tended bar in Helena for roughly six decades beginning in the 1890s, earning a reputation for refined, “better than the finest” drinks and for educating patrons’ palates long before the modern craft revival.

Born in Virginia around 1860 to enslaved parents, Anderson moved West as a young man and eventually made Helena his home, working at the Broadwater and Merchant’s hotels before finding his place mixing drinks at the Montana Club’s elegant reading room and lively Rathskeller. He became a beloved fixture of the Club, serving notable guests — like Mark Twain and President Teddy Roosevelt — and developed a house style that blended classic technique with personal flair, such as garnishing his mint “julips” with mint from his own garden.

In 1919, Anderson published Julian’s Recipes, only the second cocktail book by a Black bartender in the United States (following Tom Bullock’s 1917 The Ideal Bartender). The slim volume captures his approach to juleps, martinis, punches, oyster cocktails, and more, and has since been reissued in a centennial edition.

This trail launches as Helena celebrates the Montana History Celebration & the renovated Montana Heritage Center, inviting locals and visitors to toast the city’s past and present with seasonal specials that rotate and a set of year‑round signatures at each stop. Explore, connect, and experience a taste of our history—glass by glass.