Catastrophic Fire: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.3 No.2

Vignette Vol.3 No.1
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
Georgia Knott MacSpadden
1921. Heron. Excerpt--Throughout 1921, the Sanders County Independent Ledger continued to report mining news and local comings and goings, but for some unknown reason failed to report the worse wide-spread disaster in Sanders County, Montana, since 1910—the catastrophic fire that burned Heron, and surrounding areas that had not burned in the earlier conflagration. Georgia Knott MacSpadden wrote in her diary,

"In 1921, sparks got into a sawdust pile at the sawmill on Elk Creek. Fire got away and burned right up to the Heron Store. When the wind changed, firefighters were able to save the store by keeping the roof wet."

Georgia, a young girl at the time, had gone to get the mail in Heron. Returning to the Knott ranch near the mouth of Elk Creek she saw the fire begin growing up the mountain. By night, it had engulfed the entire hillside. Smoke hazed the sun for three months. The Knotts had gravity flow water from a spring, with little force to it, but it was the only place in Heron that had running water in the house.

Georgia's aunt Bessie had just purchased a new mattress, made in sections. The Knott family hurriedly took it out to the garden and spread green grass sod over it. Household dishes, silver, and everything they could bury were spaded under the garden soil.

"Heron stores and saloons burned," Georgia said. "The NPRR backfired at the wooden trestle to save it, and that kept the fire from reaching the Knott's ranch. On our front porch, at midnight, you could read a newspaper with the light from the fire."

Ruth Dettwiler said, "Our cousins were visiting from Plains. We saw the big black smoke from the fire across the river. There were coal storage buildings in Heron and they blackened the sky as they burned. Our parents weren't home, but they'd instructed us what to do in case of fire. Take all the furniture into the cellar. Put wet towels over our heads and get out into the fields away from any buildings that might burn."

The 1921 fire destroyed more than one sawmill, and thousands of acres of the finest timber standing. Flave and Jesse Lee lost 40,000 cedar posts. By the time the flames died in 1921, very little was left of Heron.

Sawmills were never rebuilt. The timber was destroyed, and many families left the area. However, the greater loss to 32-year-old Patrick Duffy was his wife.

Duffy's daughter, Katie, then a 3-year-old, clearly remembered;

"My mother was crying and screaming in the back bedroom when the last baby was born in 1921. It was when there'd been a forest fire. When I asked where the baby come from, he [Dad] said the poor little thing was out watching that fire. For years and years I believed him! Dad raised us nine kids but never remarried again. He had a wonderful sense of humor."

Due to the fires' havoc, the timber industry underwent drastic changes which in turn impacted young and old alike.

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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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Abolishing the Games: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.2 No.3

Vignette Vol.2 No.3
Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
Charley Maynard1918. Noxon. Excerpt-Ever since men arrived in the Clark's Fork Valley, card playing had been a favorite pastime. Rummy and solo were played for drinks, cigars or chips in saloons. At Noxon, Charley Maynard's pool hall on Main Street was just east of the store Henry Larson bought from Dr. Peek in 1918. Lumberjacks from logging camps on Rock Creek hiked to town and enjoyed fellowship with town dwellers, playing games of chance in the evenings, and also on Saturdays and Sundays.

The pool hall issued "hickies," small, pasteboard chips worth a nickel apiece, as winnings for the games. Rummy and pangeni were preferred over poker and other games.

"Kids, whose mothers weren't particular where they spent their idle time, used to hang around the pool hall real handy. Some of the fellows, winning a handful of chips, was bound to share generously", Carmen Moore said.

This scene from an always popular local entertainment at Noxon is titled "Stick-'em-up" from the play titled "D.F, Tablu Beer Joint", with Kelly Thomson seated at center of the table being the only identified member of the cast in the unidentified location that could have been in Brown's Pool Hall, date unknown, courtesy Ruth Mercer McBee collection.

Enforcement of the law meant abolishing the games, or the proprietors could face a stiff fine and imprisonment. Included were monte, dondo, fan-tan, studhorse poker, craps, seven-and-a-half, twenty-one, faro, roulette, hokey-pokey, pangeni or pangene, draw poker or the game commonly called round-the-table-poker, or any game of chance played with cards, dice or any device.

Outlawing slot machines, punchboards and other devices followed, under the anti-gambling law. Sheriff J.L. "Joe" Hartman warned that raids would be made. The penalty was a $100 fine, with imprisonment for not less than three months nor more than one year, or by both fine and imprisonment.

Under the provisions of a law passed by the legislature, and approved by the governor on March 3, 1918, it became a misdemeanor for any proprietor of a saloon, drug store, pool hall or other business establishment to permit these games to be played on his premises.

Opinions were voiced cautiously. To speak out in protest of a law was to risk censure, or even being branded as a traitor. Patriotism fever flamed as hot and charring as kerosene lamp wicks, during 1918 when valley men were being drafted to fight WWI, and loosed self-serving attitudes and actions.

Deviation from majority sentiment brought swift penalties.

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 [Resource is also available free online @ Behind These Mountains, Volume II ]


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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TO HAVE AN EXCERPT PUBLISHED IN BYGONE MONTANANS ABOUT A PERSON WHO MAY BE MENTIONED IN THIS REGIONAL MONTANA TRILOGY Email mtscribbler@air-pipe.com

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Bitteroot and Cabinet Mountains: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No.7

Vignette Vol.1 No.7
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
Berray, Caspar and Jim
Late 1800s. Noxon. Excerpt--Three hundred and fifty mining claims, dating from 1887, were recorded in the 62-square mile area located on the Idaho-Montana border between Lightning Creek and Bull River. Many mining claims were in the southern Clark Fork Mining District, plus deposits near Spar Lake.(43) Occurrences of gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper had been reported.

Caspar "Cap" Berray and his brother, Jim met a placer miner who had been shot at repeatedly during the Coeur d'Alene miners' war. The yarn swapping helped prevent them from getting the mining fever.(35) but the placer miner was still looking for trouble.

At Noxon, Jim Freeman, Jim Miller, and Clark recorded the first mines in the area. Freeman's prospect was at the head of Copper Gulch, Clark mined at the head of Rock Creek, and Jim Miller developed his mining prospect on Pilgrim Creek, about three miles southwest of Noxon.

This mine in Rock Creek was to the left of the Salisbury Mine, ca. early 1900s. Identity of miners and exact location of the mine are lost to history, Earl Engle family picture, courtesy Stewart and Agnes Hampton collection.

Two mine dumps in the Pilgrim Creek area are on the north side of the road, opposite the Stover, or Mountain Home Ranch, on Pilgrim Creek. The abandoned adits are located about on the section line between Sec. 26 and Sec. 35, T. 26 N., R. 33 W. The sum of the work Jim Miller did on another claim, located on Prospect Creek near Thompson Falls, Montana, is recorded in Bulletin 34, May 1964, by Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, Butte, Montana.

Downstream from Noxon, at Smeads, a man named Haycock now owned the shingle mill. William H. Smead had built. He was peg-legged, having lost his limb in a mining explosion. A dynamite accident had blown off both his hands and blinded one eye. His partner took care of him just like a baby. They had an old team and continued to prospect.

Most of the miners left the mineral outcroppings in the Clark's Fork Valley. The initial frenzy resulting from early prospectors' discoveries in these Bitterroot and Cabinet Mountains had begun to fizzle. They had proven to be sporadic and misleading because numerously faulted rock formations had broken the minerals into scattered, unreliable veins. Rich minerals ended after only a few feet of exploration; dashing a prospector's first giddy belief that unending wealth would be easily taken.

Captain Peter Weare and his wife, Emma, came to Noxon in 1900. Weare, a 50-year-old veteran of the Indian Wars in Nebraska wanted to prospect the mountains around Noxon. Emma was 45. When they came to Noxon they left behind two grown sons, Major and Clifford R., who, with his own family, was living in Minon, Wisconsin, working in the lumber business.


Cabin at Rock Lake Meadows is believed to be built by Earl Engle, courtesy Wallace "Wally" Gamble collection.

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"Behind These Mountains, Vols. I, II & 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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The Prohibition Era: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No.6

Vignette Vol.1 No.6
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

Adams, C. H.

1911. Missoula, Montana. Excerpt--"In addition to six U of M professors, class instructors included Supervisor Dor Skeels of the Kootenai National Forest, Supervisor Mason of the Deerlodge forest, C.H. Adams, Assistant District Forester in charge of Grazing, J.T. Jardin, Grazing Inspector, F.E. Bonner, Chief of Geography, R.B. Adams, Superintendent of Telephone Construction, and Messrs, Henderson and Clark, Assistants to the Solicitor in District No. 1."


Abbot, Billy

1918. Sandpoint, Idaho. The Prohibition era was beginning. Excerpt--"The Wisconsin bar also served hot drinks of clam juice broth, tomato bouillon, oyster cocktail, and similar soda fountain delicacies. The Exchange bar and Billy Abbot's were closed tight and didn't plan to reopen. The Palace Hotel bar was also "making no attempt to fall in line with the new drinks."

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[Resource is also available free online @ Behind These Mountains, Volume I ]

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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Anaconda Copper Mining Company: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.2 No.2

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."


 

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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Bull River Valley: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.2 No.1

Vignette Vol.2 No.1
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

Situated in the Clark's Fork River Valley and surrounded by mountain ranges Noxon, Montana is a spectacularly beautiful scene any time of the year and especially so when it appears serenely blanketed with fresh fallen snow, circa 1916-20, courtesy Harry and Sarah Tallmadge collection.

Shiller, John
1917. Noxon. Excerpt--Picks swung vigorously in the frosty January air. Three men carved out a grave for John Schiller. He had the audacity to die when the ground was frozen as solid as the rocky Montana mountains sheltering the wee cemetery, hewed from shrub covered forestland a half-mile up Pilgrim Creek Road from Noxon.

The old, gray haired, German had lived up along Bull River, the ribbon-like northwestern Montana valley two miles as the crow flies from the buildings huddled near the Noxon Depot on the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks. But twenty-miles by cold sleigh, and colder ferry ride across the Clark's Fork River, up the riverbank, across the flats and railroad line. A stop at Charlie Maynard's Saloon. Warmed inside and out, the driver snapped reins on tired horses, and a growing crowd followed the sleigh to the cemetery.

Two feet of pure white snow muffled the laughter of the burly, young homesteaders, recounting John's most daring exploits. He was one of their own.

"Old Man" Green, with his wife and three little kids, "Dutch" Henry Scheffler, a butcher from Helena, Montana, who kept a passel of dogs, and Pete Hatch, a man referred to as "Old Man" Hatch, had been Schiller's neighbors for a time. Schiller, a frequenter of dances in Heron, had also brought beef to market there in earlier days. Until the forest service had "reserved" part of Marion Cotton's homesteader lands, and built a ranger's headquarters next to his place, in 1908.

The pick handlers recalled McJunkin had been the first one living and logging in the Bull River Valley, sixty some miles south of the Canadian border, before Schiller wandered in. Before the forest service existed. Before there was any road at all.

McJunkin had a sawmill. Doc Smith acquired the place when McJunkin pulled up stakes and left. Smith let Green and his wife have it. Greens burned out and moved to Heron. Marion Cotton and his partner, Tom Moran took up the place next. Then the forest service snatched it away from them eleven years ago. John had neighbored with them all.

Now a cold arctic storm had ushered in 1917. And they were burying "Old Man" Schiller in the Noxon cemetery.

Bull River Valley would never be the same.

But then, would anything be the same?



Visit: Five Star Review

[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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Order here:

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Spokane Valley, WA 99216

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TO HAVE AN EXCERPT PUBLISHED IN BYGONE MONTANANS ABOUT A PERSON WHO MAY BE MENTIONED IN THIS REGIONAL MONTANA TRILOGY Email mtscribbler@air-pipe.com

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Black Indian: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.3 No.1

Vignette Vol.3 No.1
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

McClung, Walt
Late 1920s. Noxon. Excerpt--After Walter Lake left forest service employment and moved to Noxon, Walt McClung was Ranger Benjamin F. "Ben" Saint's man at Bull River.

H.R. Bob Saint, Ben's son, said, "[Walt] McClung was a big, black Indian. Just as black as they come. His brother was great big man, too, only he was blonde and blue eyed. Their dad was full-blooded Irish and their mother was full-blooded Indian.

"He [Walt] built the road into the Heidleberg Mine with a pick and shovel and a box of powder. He worked for my dad for years and years. He was an excellent worker as long as he kept sober. He had the Indian trait that he could not handle liquor.

"Clyde Scheffler lived just above the Bull River Guard Station, right at the mouth almost, or just up on the East Fork of Bull River," Bob said.

"[Walt] McClung used to tell about when they came to town one time in the winter. They come in on the sled. And, of course, Scheffler got drunk. Walt said they started up the canyon [Bull River Valley]. 'My God,' McClung said, 'about every half mile Clyde would fall off the sled. And he'd lay there and yell until I'd stop and go back, pick him up and help him up on the sled.'

"Walt simply got tired of it after about four times. About the fifth time Clyde slipped off again and started yelling, Walt said he just took the axe off the front of the sled, you know, and went back and said, 'I might just as well kill the son-of-a-bitch here as anyplace'.

"Walt said, 'You know, Clyde got onto his feet and got onto the sled and no more problem until we got home.' It just tickled McClung to death."

Clark, Jack
1929. While building the first highway through western Sanders County, west of Trout Creek. Excerpt--Clifford R. Weare said, "Jack Clark's folks lived on the north side of the Clark's Fork River, in a big white house at the bottom of the hill on the mouth of Swamp Creek. When they were building the highway, Jack's dad got into a row with the state engineers. He didn't want them to go through his orchard. So he planted Mason jars of dynamite out there. Buried it." Years later, when Weare recounted the story, he laughed heartily. "Hahaha."

"When they plowed that first jar of dynamite out, they quit! Hahaha. Everybody got off Clark's land! He was an ornery old cuss. I knew him. That was as far as the road came west from Trout Creek for a long time, right there. They quit right there."

During the years residents pushed for a highway through western Sanders County, throughout the year, summer or winter, residents nearest the Montana\Idaho border, like these unidentified ladies, crossed from the south side to the north side of the Clark's Fork River in the traditional way, on the Heron ferry, courtesy Melvin Reginald collection.

Visit: Five Star Review

[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.

.

Order here:

Mona Leeson Vanek

13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243

Spokane Valley, WA 99216

Email: mtscribbler@air-pipe.com

 

TO HAVE AN EXCERPT PUBLISHED IN BYGONE MONTANANS ABOUT A PERSON WHO MAY BE MENTIONED IN THIS REGIONAL MONTANA TRILOGY Email mtscribbler@air-pipe.com

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!