Welcome

The goal of this blog is to help readers locate their lineage and discover the forces that motivated them, and learn how they lived their lives--told in their own words in the BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS trilogy, from the 1860s to the early 1930s. The indexed names will be published here frequently, along with an excerpt and a historical photograph if available. ** Scroll Archives at right.

Order Behind These Mountains, Vols. I, II & III [.pdf editions on DVD] via email to mtscribbler [at] air-pipe [dot] com OR email: ooslegman [at] hotmail [dot] com

Thank you ~~ Mona Leeson Vanek ~aka~Montana Scribbler



Thursday, October 16, 2014

Disaster for Ferries: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No. 9

Vignette Vol.1 No.9
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

Fulk, John
1915. Noxon. Excerpt-Sander's County history of spring-time high water spelled disaster for ferries. For many years John Fulk had operated a ferry at Noxon until one spring when high water tore it loose and it was gone, and probably smashed to bits going through the Cabinet Gorge, miles downstream.
John Fulk, Noxon ferryman, ca.
1920. Courtesy Benjamin F.
Saint collection.
Then a boat that had broken loose from the Green ferry upstream a year earlier was purchased from Riley Eldridge and others one December "to be installed at Noxon for a ferry." A bridge had been built at Thompson Falls so the ferry was no longer needed there. The US Forest Service at Noxon purchased "the big cable and other paraphernalia on the Thompson Falls ferry from E. Preston and moved it to Noxon "where it will be used by the government for ferry service across the Clark's Fork." Ed Hampton was to take charge of the ferry business.
 
Marion Larson gave a Valentine dance in Peek's hall in 1915, giving settlers an opportunity to gather, dance, laugh and exchange the latest news:

  • Jesse Gage, Noxon's only barber, was turning his business over to his brother, William.
  • A teacher's training and bible study class was organized to meet on Wednesday evenings.
  • Jess Beason's house burned down, bringing to town the insurance agent who inspected the ruins.
  • Charlie Ellis had had a narrow escape while coming down the bank to the ferry on the north side of the river with a load of ties. His brakes failed and he nearly ran into the river where the road turns to the ferry.
  • Reverend Lang preached twice a month at Tuscor. Prohibition, or the Booze Bill, was to be voted on in November 1916. However, not many believed it would pass.
According to Don Maynard the usual number of fights began on the upper landing of the outside staircase ascending to Peek's Hall and more than one tipsy fellow took a rude tumble down them, ending up fighting in the street before the night was over.
 

Visit: Five Star Review 
[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.
.
Order here:
Mona Leeson Vanek
13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243
Spokane Valley, WA 99216
 
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!

























































































































































































































































































































Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Lumberjacks' Social Status: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.2 No.4

Vignette Vol.2 No.4
Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]

Families joined through marriage
1920s. Noxon. Excerpt-The population, the majority being homesteaders who'd settled in the area scarcely a dozen or more years earlier, eagerly cooperated in any endeavor to benefit their community. They also gathered frequently to dance and socialize. However, there was no comparison between lumberjacks' social status and that of the settlers.

Acceptance into family circles resulted from suitable behavior. Unless personally invited by a stump rancher\logger or businessman to attend, temporary residents didn't set foot in social gatherings.

Some families joined ties through marriage, including inter-related groups around Noxon like the Bauers, Greers and Gordons, and the Saints, Fulks, Bartholomews, Higgins and Berrays, and the Huffmans, Hammons, Bucks and Ellis families. The Baxters and Weares united through marriage, too, as did the Evans and Raynors.


This group of young mothers and children are an example of family relationships, at Noxon, and includes [L-R] Freeman, Mable and Ruby Fulks, and sister, Golda [holding baby], Mary Hampton [holding baby], Fern Saint [with towel] and daughter, Montana 'Tana' standing between her and Mary, plus children, Bob, Dan, and Maude Saint, circa early 1920s, courtesy Ben F. Saint collection.
Families without a lot of interconnections were more numerous, and included the Hamptons, Browns, Engles, Lyons, and numerous other early settlers. Many young people, now grown to young adults with babies and youngsters, worked hard to stay and prosper. Most had lived through the devastating 1910 fires and found the courage, or the desperation, to remain.

The majority lived in log homes, used kerosene lamps, outhouses, and icehouses. And, year in and year out, consumed enormous woodpiles. Families grew sizeable gardens, and carefully preserved the produce, shot and ate venison, caught fish, and gathered and preserved large quantities of wild berries from surrounding mountains.

Visit: Five Star Review

 [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.
.
Order here:
Mona Leeson Vanek
13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243
Spokane Valley, WA 99216
 
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!
 

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Speakeasies and Moonshine: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.3 No.3

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

Doneita Pringle
1924. Noxon Tittle-Tattle. Excerpt-After the Eighteenth Amendment ushered in Prohibition, Noxon had a lady beauty operator and barber for a little while. During the era of flappers, speakeasies and moonshine, young people in the Clark's Fork Valley were as susceptible as anywhere else to its changes. After finishing school at Noxon, Doneita Pringle attended the Schultz Beauty School in Spokane, Washington. Then she returned and did beauty work in her hometown. There was no such thing as a beauty shop in Noxon then. No electricity for permanents and such.

Doneita wrote Beauty Parlor Notes for The Sanders County Independent Ledger, telling readers about hair care and waves. She visited often with her parents, Mr and Mrs. Burnie Winter. Donieta had her barber chair in the barbershop in a front room of the Lena Baxter building, downtown on Main Street in Noxon. George Jamison and his kids, Laura, Loren 'Lanky', and Walter 'Tag' were among Doneita's many customers. 

Charlie Knutson fell in love with Doneita, and built a snug little house on the hill between the schoolhouse and the businesses 'downtown.'24 Shortly thereafter, the sweethearts married.

Lanky said, "But, Charlie's folks, Andrew and Mary Knutson, wouldn't have anything to do with Doneita. And wouldn't attend the wedding, either. Mrs. S.S. Brown's group met one afternoon. Mrs. Knutson, and Katie Engle and the whole group. They knew Mary had no use for Doneita so Grandma [Mrs. Brown] asked Mary if she'd been up to see the bride.

"Mary said, 'Why no!' "Fanny Hampton was there, and she said, 'Well shame on you.'

"Mary Knutson took her glasses off and wiped them on her apron. They wore aprons when they come to visit," Lanky said.

"After she [Donieta] and Charlie married, the barbershop was also a moonshine place. It was a short-lived marriage. Well under those circumstances, it couldn't last. Doneita left Noxon."


Sheldon S. Brown bought the barbershop building from Lena Baxter after Doneita left. George Jamison helped Don Maynard move the barber chair out, taking it to Clarks Fork [Idaho] where Maynard opened up a barbershop.


Sybyl Smith said, "Jamison [Lanky's dad], not generally a drinking man, couldn't drink much. When they brought him home he was really drunk. While moving the barber chair they'd found some moonshine."
  The "tittle-tattle" that circulated constantly among townsfolk and homesteaders alike was undoubtedly overheard and absorbed by some youngsters and surely young Charles and Ruth Thomson, who lived in the Bull River Valley far from Noxon and attended Pilik School, were nevertheless attuned to some tales whether they understood the gist of them or not. Essie Thomson Mercer 1924 photograph, courtesy of her daughter Ruth Mercer McBee collection.
   Laurence "Larry" Cox, dressed up here in his Sunday best and possibly on his way to church or a Sunday school class, wasn't immune from rumors and truths because his mother was active in community betterment organizations where news circulated most unrestrainedly, June 1924 photograph, courtesy Laurence "Larry" Cox collection.
 Because Julia and Arthur LeGault's children, Blossom, Leonard and Bernice, were related to the Saints and Fulks families, lived in Noxon and attended school there most assuredly they heard all manner of "tittle tattle", ca. 1925-26, courtesy Ben F. Saint 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
 
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! 

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Forest Management Pollicies: Settlers of Sanders County Montana: Vignette Vol.1 No.8

Vignette Vol.1 No.8
[Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
Weare, Clifford R.
1911. Noxon. Excerpt-Cliff Weare, Ed Donlan, Frank Lyons, and Joseph Moderie were the primary sawmill men in northwestern Sanders County in 1911, each struggling to survive a serious slump in lumber sales. Forest management policies that were irritating before the 1910 fire now infuriated them. They objected to the forest service pushing sales of timber upon a broken market. But the dictates of the government were explicit. Federal instructions dictated:

"All timber sale work is urgent; standpoint of economic utilization; increasing revenues of the service; without jeopardizing the fundamental principles of stumpage rates, advance payments, close utilization and proper silvical treatment of the timber stands.

Congress expects the service to make good its promise to bring up the total of its revenue to equal that of its gross expenditures. The USFS now furnishes only 1/50 of the total (timber) cut in the United States. It seems reasonable that cut might be increased sufficiently to supplement present revenue without seriously affecting general market conditions."
Ranger Granville "Granny" Gordon
Although the Forest Service was having almost more problems than they could handle, a sense of humor was evident on the Cabinet National Forest. While Ranger "Granny" Gordon poured grain into his horse's feed stall, which was nothing more than a wooden box attached to a tree a short distance from his tent in a forest campsite, he consider how to sum up his 1911 annual report.

  USFS Ranger Granville Gordon breaking camp with the horses packed with tents and gear ready to head for the Ranger Station, ca. 1911, Granville Gordon photograph, courtesy of his daughter Blanche Gordon Claxton collection.

When Gordon returned to his headquarters at the Bull River Ranger Station the report he penned said,

"All funds short due to 1910 fire. We who are left of the Cabinet force this winter (1910-11) are hardly more than a corporal's guard and from present state of finances, it looks as though we might have to live on salt char and hominy before grass grows.

We HAVEN'T HAD A RANGERS MEETING FOR THREE YEARS, and the outlook is not good for one in the near future. There have been two reasons for not having more rangers meetings - when we had money enough, we didn't have rangers enough; and when we had rangers enough, we didn't have money enough, and now we have neither one. However we are going to have one before next Christmas if we have to catch char for our meat, kill bear for the grease, shed tears for the salt, and assemble on foot."
Spring work at the Bull River station consisted of Ranger Gordon exerting some of his energies on the 'Jungle,' which in future years is to be called a clearing.

Also, during that first quarter of fiscal year 1911, 29 timber sales were made, valued at $5,550.21 (consisting mostly of fire-killed timber). 3,220,000 feet saw timber, 1,241 cedar poles, 70,152 cedar posts and 16,332 railroad ties. They were mostly small sales to local parties, except for the sale of 2,700,000 feet of fire-killed timber on Marten Creek, which was sold to G.S. Burrill of Sandpoint, Idaho. Burrill began with a large crew, also cutting a large private timber sale.

R.A. Lauderdale of Norman, Washington, bought a large sale on the East Fork and Upper Bull River; estimated at 1,271,000 feet of saw timber, 3,144 cedar poles, 175,000 cedar posts and 7,971 cords shingle bolts. The forester optimistically wrote in the journal, "He undoubtedly will put a large crew to work soon."

  It's unlikely any of this Noxon area group of friends and relatives worked for Lauderdale busy as they were establishing their homesteads. The group includes Harry Wilson, George Gardner, Granville Bauer, Chess Greer, Jess Beason and daughter, Nora, Clayton Bauer and Earl Lockman, ca. 1912-14, courtesy Clayton "Clate" Bauer collection.
 

The first ranger meeting on the Cabinet National Forest took place June 2l, 1911. Rangers Brown, Clark, Gordon, Scarlett, Saint and Bushnell spent 4 days going over fire problems, tools caches, fighting, patrol and fire reports, office files and procedures.
 

   USFS Ranger Granville "Granny" Gordon (on the left) is the only identified man in this group of foresters at Thompson Falls Ranger Station, ca. 1912, courtesy Granville Gordon collection.

Visit: Five Star Review 
[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.
.
Order here:
Mona Leeson Vanek
13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243
Spokane Valley, WA 99216
 
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! 

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

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.

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
 
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!

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

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

Vignette Vol.2 No.3
Resource: BEHIND THESE MOUNTAINS ]
Charley Maynard
1918. 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.


Visit: Five Star Review

 [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.
.
Order here:
Mona Leeson Vanek
13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243
Spokane Valley, WA 99216
 
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!

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

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.

 Visit: Five Star Review
 [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.
.
Order here:
Mona Leeson Vanek
13505 E Broadway Ave., Apt. 243
Spokane Valley, WA 99216
 
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!