In June 1926, David Angus “Kid” Johnston and his trained mountain lion performed several stunts for a Universal Film Corporation film crew in Manhattan, Montana. According to a Gallatin County Tribune and Belgrade Journal report, “Kid and the lion got out their Ford and with Kid driving and the lion sitting on the seat beside him they drove over on the northside of the track of the Northern Pacific where a nice plot of ground had been selected by the cameramen for the filming of the lion and his friend.”

Johnston was one of Gallatin County’s memorable characters. His parents, William and Isabella, were Scottish immigrants who settled in Ontario, Canada in the mid-1850s. David Angus Johnston was born in Ontario in 1860, the fifth of eleven children born to the couple (nine sons and two daughters). The Johnston family moved to the United States and eventually settled on a farm in Kansas. According to a history written by Doris Johnstone Block, David left home as a teenager. He quite literally “ran away with the circus,” when he joined a troupe that was traveling through Kansas. How long he remained with the circus is unknown, but acrobatic skills and a passion for training animals stayed with him for the rest of his life.

According to Johnston family history, David and his brother Thomas traveled by mule train to Montana sometime in the 1880s, where they settled near Salesville (now Gallatin Gateway). At that time, Bozeman businessman Walter Cooper was operating a major logging operation in Gallatin Canyon. Logs were harvested up the canyon and floated downstream from Taylor Fork north to sawmills at Salesville and Central Park (between Belgrade and Manhattan). David Johnston found work in the logging industry, where, according to the family story, he floated logs down the river. This was an extremely dangerous occupation, but no doubt his athletic ability and acrobatic skills gave him an advantage in this line of work.

During his early years in the Gallatin Valley, Johnston also found employment on area ranches. For several years, he worked for Charles Anceney, caring for stallions on what would later be called the Flying D Ranch. In 1899, Johnston successfully completed homesteading requirements and received title to 160 acres of land just north of today’s Gallatin Gateway, near where Gooch Hill Road intersects with Highway 191. About this time, Johnston purchased a saloon in Salesville, which he operated for a few years before moving on to Belgrade and then to Manhattan in the early 1900s, where he operated another saloon. In 1915 he built a theater, which swiftly became the community’s entertainment hub. Johnston’s Kid Theatre not only showed silent film and the first “talkies,” but hosted dances, plays, high school functions, and boxing matches.

Though not tall, Johnston had incredible body strength and developed a reputation as a fierce boxer. His nickname, “Kid,” is thought to have originated one of two ways. It could have referred to his small physical size. Another theory is that it came from the fact that, as Manhattan historian Francis Niven put it, “he always wore a pair of kid gloves to protect his hands, in case he should get into a fight, as he sometimes did.” He often used his theater space as a gym, training local boys to fight in the ring. Legendary stories of his feats of strength are amazing, if not slightly exaggerated. The Johnston family history claims that “he was known to hold his young son, weighing fifty pounds at that time, on his outstretched hand.” In a 1985 oral history interview with Joe Galle, a longtime Manhattan resident and friend of Johnston’s, Galle recalled, “On Kid’s 75th birthday I saw him take a small kitchen table, take three pop bottles and set them on top of the table and take a round back wooden kitchen chair, put three legs of the chair on the three bottles and then do a handstand with his feet straight in the air on the round part of that chair.”

During his life in Manhattan, Johnston kept and trained dogs, horses, mules, several bears, a mountain lion, monkeys, and other animals. The local newspapers often reported on his menagerie. On May 28, 1915, the Manhattan Record noted: “Kid Johnston yesterday returned from a trip to the Taylor’s Fork country, bringing back a young grizzly bear which had been captured there a few days before. The young fellow’s claws and tusks have been clipped and he is fast becoming a pet around the place.”

One of Johnston’s most popular animals was a mountain lion that, according to most accounts, came from Glacier National Park. Whether Kid acquired the lion cub himself or merely adopted it later is unclear. Joe Galle remembered the lion as well-trained, but still a bit wild and mischievous. “We had a hell of a time keeping him out of our hair. And it was a big lion. It was eight feet long from tail to tip and Kid Johnston had that lion until about 1930.” Early Manhattan residents remembered that Kid trained the lion to pull a small cart, much like a horse or a mule, and would go for rides around town. Johnston family information notes that though obedient to Kid, the lion was restrained or on a chain when in public. “At home he was confined within a high wall and also had free run of the house. The huge cat often slept across the foot of his master’s bed.”

According to historian Francis Niven, local resident Harry White had an unforgettable experience with Kid and his lion. “Kid met Harry on the street one day and asked for some help. Not knowing what Kid had in mind, Harry readily went along to the lion’s cage. Kid entered the cage and proceeded to hog-tie all of its feet. He then placed a short plank across the lion and asked Harry to stand on the plank. Kid then removed the lion’s eye teeth (canine teeth). When the job was completed, Harry asked: ‘now what are you going to do?’ Kid replied: ‘I’m going to turn him loose.’ Harry’s next remark was a very emphatic: ‘Let me out of here first!!!’”

A white mule named Maude was perhaps Kid Johnston’s greatest achievement. According to Joe Galle, “it could do anything. It was a good one. It was tough, this mule. It could jump a seven-foot bar in just one hop.” Johnston family history notes Maude’s maximum jumping height at closer to five-and one-half feet, which is likely nearer the truth. Galle remembered that Kid and Maude performed at area fairs, and one image at the Gallatin History Museum shows the pair demonstrating their jumping skills at the Bozeman Roundup.

In addition to jumping, Maude knew many other tricks and could even retrieve mail from a mailbox. Eventually, Kid sold Maude to a buyer out of state, but she continued her show business career. Galle remembered that Johnston traveled to California to visit the mule several years after he sold her. “He asked the trainer down there how it was doing and the trainer could get her to do all the tricks but one, but she just couldn’t do that. So Kid went out and saw the mule and spoke to it and started putting it through the tricks and she did that trick just like she saw him yesterday.”

In 1933, Johnston broke his hip in a horse accident, from which he never fully recovered. He passed away in 1938 and was buried in Sunset Hills Cemetery in Bozeman. For decades, the popular Garden Cafe in Manhattan occupied the old Kid Theatre building on South Broadway, and it remained a community gathering place until it closed in 2021.