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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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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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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Mona Leeson Vanek

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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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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?



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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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Order here:

Mona Leeson Vanek

13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243

Spokane Valley, WA 99216

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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.

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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.

.

Order here:

Mona Leeson Vanek

13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243

Spokane Valley, WA 99216

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Northern Pacific Railroad: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No.5

Vignette Vol.1 No.5
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

A.A. Fairbairn
1883. Noxon. Excerpt--A.A. Fairbairn became the first depot agent at Noxon, occupying the depot's living quarters. Noxon - " ... that curious name which is spelled probably like no other city or town in the world" ... was named after a Mr. Noxon, who was chief Construction Engineer on the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883. The tiny settlement was forming near the western border of a county nearly as large as the whole state of New York.



Susan B. Anthony
1883. Heron. Excerpt--"Among the three thousand people who have thus early found their way to the Coeur d'Alene mines, a large proportion are business men," the paper reported. "The 'girls' are here, too, and more of them come every day or two. Some of them dress stylishly and wear silks and diamonds. Some dress coarsely and slovenly. Quite a number wear men's clothes, and walk the streets in garments which would excite the envy of Susan B. Anthony."

Arrard, Henry
1908. Noxon. Excert--Henry Arrard was granted a saloon license at Noxon March 4, 1908. Women, determined to rear their children in a civilized environment, started the Union Sunday School. Mostly at the urging of the women, school trustee Shelton S. Brown convinced the other trustees to approve using the two-year old schoolhouse for Sunday school classes. The sports in the saloons nicknamed him "Sunday School" Brown. On the second Thursday of November the county newspaper reported Arrard opening the Blue Front Saloon, but the location is lost to history. Old timers say saloons were on the flats near the river so Arrard's may have been there.

Six weeks later, on December 30, 1908, the Northern Pacific Railroad's land commissioner reported to Howard Elliott, at NPRR headquarters in Minnesota. Elliott wrote: "I explained to you some time ago that the company owns all of the land at Noxon and that there has never been any town site platted there. A number of people have put up their buildings on our right of way. To relieve the embarrassment of the situation you authorized me to have a small town site platted there. Such has been done, and the plat is enclosed herewith, for execution. I have made the town site about as small as it is possible to do so, as there is no likelihood that there will ever be a town of any size at Noxon." As town sites go, it was very small, about a half-mile square.
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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.

 

 Order here:

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Company Store: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No.4

Vignette Vol.1 No.4
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

Bob Anderson
1888. Noxon. Excerpt--"The population in Noxon included a few settlers, railroad section gangs, and men freighting supplies from the railroad spur at Smeads Landing through the Bull River Valley to the Kootenai River Valley where the Great Northern Railroad was being built.

There were two sawmills, Frank Lyons' and Greenough's. Bob Anderson planted his orchard by the river. The trees thrived in the clearing he'd wrested from the forest using brawn, and dawn-to-dark use of an axe, a grub hoe, dynamite, and a spring-though-fall fire."

Tom Stanton
1891 Smeads. Excerpt--"The community of Smeads prided itself on having 8 to 10 houses, a Company Store and two saloons. County commissioners at Missoula were persuaded on July 9th to license James Rutherford to operate a ferry across the Clark's Fork River at Smeads Spur, his pay $40 a month. A week later, on July 16, the commissioners gave the ferry license to Carson Rutherford & Company. Rutherford, who'd had the ferry license at Smeads, had lost it to Tom Stanton. But when Stanton got into the freighting business, he could no longer operate the ferry, so in September 1891, John Williams took it over. Williams gave up the dangerous occupation in January 1892, when heavy snowfall, or plunging temperature, challenged ferryman and passengers. B.S. Baker bought the barge-like affair, and took up transporting heaving loads across the Clark's Fork River. Contractors and freighters were hacking out a "tote road" from Smeads, roughly following the Old Daly Trail, north through the Bull River Valley toward Troy."

Lucy Allan
Noxon. Excerpt--In 1904, 6-year old Lucy Allan, the youngest of seven children, came with their parents. Their covered wagon was pulled right down the railroad line by four horses. Their mother rode in the covered carriage pulled by two horses. The Allans had met the Raynors while they'd all been stopped near Missoula. When they arrived at Noxon, they crossed to the north side of the Clark's Fork River on the ferry Griffin owned and operated. His property fronted the south side of the river, east of the NPRR depot.

The Allans camped on the Raynor's place in Soldier Gulch while they looked over the land. A short time later they went to the James Bauer place for a few days before moving on to Heron, where they located and stayed for twenty years. Mrs. Annie Allan served the town as mid-wife, while her husband, Fred, was a constable for many years.

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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.

 

Order here:

Mona Leeson Vanek

13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243

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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Condemnation Proceedings: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No.3

Vignette Vol.1 No. 3
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
Judge W.C. Adam's 
Thompson Falls. Excerpt--"It was claimed he [Dr. Knapp] came across the state line from Idaho to Trout Creek to attend some cases of typhoid fever," the newspaper reported. Knapp was found guilty in Judge W.C. Adam's court, and fined $50.00. This affected all of the small towns in the west end of the county, since medical help was so scarce. Noxon had Mrs. George Buck, who it was rumored lacked only her surgical degree in medical training, before she came to Noxon. Dr. Peek was in Thompson Falls. Mrs. Annie Allan, at Heron, and Mrs. Stella Bauer, at Noxon, were midwives."

A.S. Ainsworth
Thompson Falls. Excerpt--"The Inter-State Power Company, represented by A.S. Ainsworth, began condemnation proceedings against John Pugh (and wife), J. Anna Kline, Lois Laffay (sic, LaFey), John and Lottie Colbert, W.J. Johnson and J.P. Olson to get land near Heron for the proposed dam. H.O. Bond, Esq., represented the people in District Court, 4th Judicial District, Sanders County. The power company won, and the court awarded Pugh $892.50; Laffay (sic LaFey) and Kline, $2,362.50; and Colberg, Johnson and Olson $246. These amounts were later reduced under appeal."

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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.

.

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

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