Vignette Vol.2 No.2
Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
1917. Noxon. Excerpt--In 1917, Montana had about 150 sawmills. All but 12 having a capacity less than five million feet; 122 cut less than one million feet each. The small Montana operator usually "mined" the timber and moved on, leaving behind a ghost town of shacks, a sawdust pile, and denuded mountainsides.
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company [ACM] entered the lumber business early on, purchasing over half of the Northern Pacific Railroad's land grant in Montana.
By 1917, the Northern Pacific Railroad [NPRR] ACM, and "four relatively small owners" controlled about 80 percent of privately held timberland in Montana. Weyerhauser Lumber Company became the dominant timberlands holder in the same way, in Idaho.
William, 'Bill' Hayes
Dissention between sawmill owners and workers had been brewing for years and now was rapidly building to a major confrontation, and in larger mills, northwestern Montana employees were becoming more heavily involved. (*Industrial Workers of the World.) However, there were sawmills such as William 'Bill' Hayes' fairly large sawmill on the farthest place up Pilgrim Creek, in the mountains south of Noxon, that remained unaffected by the developing turmoil.
Evans, William, Martha, Water and Warren
In the lower Clark's Fork region, homesteaders mostly struggled to eke out a living in northwestern Montana. Near Noxon, Martha Evans and her sons, Walter and Warren, loaded their hand split cedar posts from the huge post decks they'd amassed, into their wagon. Martha steadied the team, holding their bridles as they were hitched up to haul load after load into Noxon. Most posts were bartered to store owners in exchange for necessities. When the rail yard held sufficient decked posts, boxcars were ordered. The storeowner hired men, usually post splitters, like Walter and Warren, who had also bartered, and together the men loaded the posts one last time, into boxcars for shipment to U.S. markets.
William and Martha Evans stand beside their wagon while sons, Walter and Warren load hand-split cedar posts from deck to wagon. They stack it as high as their team and the Noxon ferry can handle, for the journey to the Northern Pacific railhead in Noxon, circa 1915-16, courtesy Edna Evans Cummings collection.
Martha Evans and sons Walter and Warren alongside of their hand-split cedar posts, piled to await transport to the Northern Pacific Railroad siding at Noxon, Montana, Sanders County, Montana, circa 1915-16, courtesy Edna Evans Cummings collection.
Charlie Knutson
Miles upstream from Noxon, high in the Marten Creek drainage, lumberjacks, dissatisfied with wages and living conditions, began talking strike.
Charlie Knutson said, "I think the big White Pine Sash Lumber Mill strike started out in 1916. Yes, that strike lasted for a long time. I think they founded a book, "The Union", on that strike up there. I used to go up to Tuscor quite a bit to the dances held by N.J. LaRue, who run the store there. He gave dances all the time upstairs.
"I helped take the railroad [in Marten Creek canyon] out right after the strike. I believe A.C. White owned that mill.
"Coxey's Army, a kind of union type army came into Noxon. Oh, there was a big bunch of them. I don't know how many men went in the army, but there was a big bunch of them.
"There was a branch of them went all through the country. But Noxon didn't seem to favor them too much. They wasn't [sic] too keen on them. The army couldn't get out of there right away. So they greased the rails from Noxon on up, to stop the train, and got out of there that way."
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[Resource is also available free online @ Behind These Mountains, Volume III ]
Please visit often, and share with friends and acquaintances. If you find anyone with family ties, please leave a comment and contact information and share a memory to grow your family tree!
Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
1917. Noxon. Excerpt--In 1917, Montana had about 150 sawmills. All but 12 having a capacity less than five million feet; 122 cut less than one million feet each. The small Montana operator usually "mined" the timber and moved on, leaving behind a ghost town of shacks, a sawdust pile, and denuded mountainsides.
The Anaconda Copper Mining Company [ACM] entered the lumber business early on, purchasing over half of the Northern Pacific Railroad's land grant in Montana.
By 1917, the Northern Pacific Railroad [NPRR] ACM, and "four relatively small owners" controlled about 80 percent of privately held timberland in Montana. Weyerhauser Lumber Company became the dominant timberlands holder in the same way, in Idaho.
William, 'Bill' Hayes
Dissention between sawmill owners and workers had been brewing for years and now was rapidly building to a major confrontation, and in larger mills, northwestern Montana employees were becoming more heavily involved. (*Industrial Workers of the World.) However, there were sawmills such as William 'Bill' Hayes' fairly large sawmill on the farthest place up Pilgrim Creek, in the mountains south of Noxon, that remained unaffected by the developing turmoil.
Evans, William, Martha, Water and WarrenIn the lower Clark's Fork region, homesteaders mostly struggled to eke out a living in northwestern Montana. Near Noxon, Martha Evans and her sons, Walter and Warren, loaded their hand split cedar posts from the huge post decks they'd amassed, into their wagon. Martha steadied the team, holding their bridles as they were hitched up to haul load after load into Noxon. Most posts were bartered to store owners in exchange for necessities. When the rail yard held sufficient decked posts, boxcars were ordered. The storeowner hired men, usually post splitters, like Walter and Warren, who had also bartered, and together the men loaded the posts one last time, into boxcars for shipment to U.S. markets.
William and Martha Evans stand beside their wagon while sons, Walter and Warren load hand-split cedar posts from deck to wagon. They stack it as high as their team and the Noxon ferry can handle, for the journey to the Northern Pacific railhead in Noxon, circa 1915-16, courtesy Edna Evans Cummings collection.Martha Evans and sons Walter and Warren alongside of their hand-split cedar posts, piled to await transport to the Northern Pacific Railroad siding at Noxon, Montana, Sanders County, Montana, circa 1915-16, courtesy Edna Evans Cummings collection.
Charlie Knutson
Miles upstream from Noxon, high in the Marten Creek drainage, lumberjacks, dissatisfied with wages and living conditions, began talking strike.
Charlie Knutson said, "I think the big White Pine Sash Lumber Mill strike started out in 1916. Yes, that strike lasted for a long time. I think they founded a book, "The Union", on that strike up there. I used to go up to Tuscor quite a bit to the dances held by N.J. LaRue, who run the store there. He gave dances all the time upstairs.
"I helped take the railroad [in Marten Creek canyon] out right after the strike. I believe A.C. White owned that mill.
"Coxey's Army, a kind of union type army came into Noxon. Oh, there was a big bunch of them. I don't know how many men went in the army, but there was a big bunch of them.
"There was a branch of them went all through the country. But Noxon didn't seem to favor them too much. They wasn't [sic] too keen on them. The army couldn't get out of there right away. So they greased the rails from Noxon on up, to stop the train, and got out of there that way."
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Northern Pacific Railroad Engine No.6 on siding at Furlong, in western Sanders County, Montana, ca. 1915-16.
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[Resource is also available free online @ Behind These Mountains, Volume III ]
PDF copies of Behind These Mountains, Vols. I, II & III are available on a DVD - $50 S&H included, plus author's permission to print or have printed buyers personal copy of each of the approximately 1200 page books which contain about 1,000 photographs from homesteaders personal albums.
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Please visit often, and share with friends and acquaintances. If you find anyone with family ties, please leave a comment and contact information and share a memory to grow your family tree!
