Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
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4 YEARS AGO MARCH 30, 1900 THOMPSON STREET BUSY IN 1900 From The Plainsman NOTE: At the time this article was written there was no Sanders County, which was established in 1906. What we now know as Sanders County was part of Missoula County. In addition, The Sanders County Ledger newspaper hadn't been established yet. The Ledger began in 1905, one year before Sanders County was born. The Plainsman was established in 1895. Readers also will note that the editor of the Plainsman referred to the...
13 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 25, 1936 GLIDDEN PASS ROAD APPROVED The boys at the CCC Camp F-52 (located at Snider up Thompson River) are pushing the road up the Wet Fork of Thompson River and will continue as long as weather conditions permit. The men are at present up to the mouth of Spruce Creek. This camp’s work will be largely on the West Fork Road and on the main road up Thompson River. The road construction on main Thompson River involves a great deal of hard work. Small crews of local men have been employed in maintenance and betterment work o...
13 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 11, 1936 ORGANIZING FIRE DEPARTMENT Earl Davis has been authorized by the town council to organize and promote a volunteer Fire Department. Monday night a meeting was held in the council chambers and a skeleton organization was drawn up. They are: Earl Davis Fire Chief, Roy Wright First Assistant Fire Chief, George Grandchamp Second Assistant Fire Chief. Other Assistant Fire Chiefs are: Chas. Hiner – Hose Captain, and Luce Hart – Hook and Ladder Captain. The regular cre...
4 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 19, 1981 FALLS RADIO OPERATOR TOURS WORLD BY SHIP Dewy Ross Duffel has seen more in the last 15 years than many of us will probably see in a lifetime. Duffel works as a radio operator on ocean-going ships. Duffel, 39, was born in Missoula, but spent his early childhood on the family ranch at the mouth of Swamp Creek. That ranch was submerged when Noxon Rapids Reservoir was filled. Duffel went to school in Noxon, Trout Creek and Thompson Falls. After a year at Montana State University, he went to Spokane Community College...
6 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 24, 1916 LEDGER PLANT BURNED TO GROUND BY STRANGE FIRE EARLY MONDAY MORNING Fire Broke Out at Two o'Clock No One in Building for Twelve Hours Insurance Covers About Two-Thirds of Ledger Loss and Only One-Third of Loss on Building PUBLICATION OF THE PAPER WILL NOT BE INTERRUPTED Owners Plan to Buy New Equipment and Open Fine Office as soon as Adjustment of Insurance is Made Now Seeking Building in Which to Locate Office Burned Building Will Probably Not be Rebuilt The...
6 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 17, 1916 AT THE HUNTERES’ CABIN The Cakes are Good But the Hunting is Rotten Ten Men to Get One Deer The official opening of the hunters’ cabin at the junction of Thompson River and Deerhorn Creek occurred last Saturday when “Slim” McNair and Frank Woodard arrived with a brand-new stove and an insatiable ambition for deer. Saturday H.O. Bond, W.T. Utz, H.C. Austin and H.A. White footed it up the trail and joined the gang around the supper table. Sunday “Doc” Miller resigned the drug store to “Skeeter” and arrived to get t...
4 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 8, 1981 MANY CHANGES OCCUR IN PLAINS' CENTURY by Lenora Brown With the Plains Centennial Celebration coming up, this reporter came out of a recent Chamber of Commerce meeting, looked up and down Main Street and tried to picture just what Wild Horse Plains was like 100 years ago. Here is the beautiful Clark Fork River running past town. Here are the railroad tracks where the wild horses used to roam. What was it like to come into town just after the railroad tracks were l...
7 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 31, 1951 LOGS TO GO THROUGH WEEKSVILLE RAPIDS About 700,000 feet of sawlogs are to be put through the Weeksville Rapids on the Clark Fork River near Plains soon by Thompson Falls Lumber Co., it is reported by Arden Davis, superintendent. The logs are to be floated through a few at a time to avoid jams on the jagged boulders in the river and then will be caught in booms below to be towed by Terry Payne down to the sawmill, a distance of about 20 miles. Tows of 10 to 15 miles on the river are not uncommon for the c...
4 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 8, 1981 FALLS SANDERS FAMILY STEEPED IN HISTORY Talking with J. Byron Sanders is like reading the rough draft of a history book. The stories haven’t been organized yet, but they sure are interesting. Sanders, who lives on Harlow Road, is related to Colonel Wilbur Fisk Sanders, after whom this county is named. He isn’t sure what the relationship is, adding that his father explained it to him but he has forgotten. Byron Sanders was born in the Bitterroot in 1908. He spent his boyhood there, working on the family farm....
6 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 22, 1916 NEW POST OFFIICE OPENED The post office was moved Sunday from Weber’s Store (now the laundromat) to the rooms formerly occupied by A.S. Ainsworth, which have been fitted up especially for the office. Being more centrally located and nearer to the railway station, the new office is an improvement. Mr. Moser, who was recently appointed postmaster by President Wilson, has been a resident of Sanders County for 24 years and of Thompson Falls for six years. He was sheriff of the county for two terms. Since his r...
FIRST WATER SYSTEM SIMPLE Excerpt from “Looking Back” Reflections of Orin P. Kendall A little bit of history concerning the Thompson Falls water supply might be appropriate at this time. I recognize that there are other people who know more about the system than I, but having served as a councilman and mayor for several years I am quite aware of the problems that the system has and have had ever since the beginning of the town. The first water system, if it could be called that, consisted of water being delivered to homes by the barrel at a c...
DIARY OF BESSIE FULLER REEDER Unedited excerpt from her diary regarding the trip from Hamilton, Montana to Whitepine By the spring of 1901 the folks decided they did not care to stay in Hamilton. Uncle Mark and family had gone on to Whitepine and had written to the folks and told them there was a lot of vacant land around Whitepine. My dad decided to go down there and look around. The land was covered with timber from which they could make a living. About the fourth of July we loaded up our things and started for Whitepine, cow, calf, an old...
LOOKING BACK By Orin P. Kendall I am sure that there is no record as to who made the first trip through Sanders County by automobile but I can imagine that the person who made it didn’t forget it for a long time. What is now Highway 200 was at one time Montana 3 and later Alternate 10 but for many years it was just a series of roads connecting the towns. The highway roughly parallels the old Kootenai Trail used by the Salish Indians and the early trappers and traders for many years. There is very little of old Montana 3 that is a part of 200 t...
16 YEARS AGO • 1924 THOMPSON FALLS BOASTS OF MODERN SCHOOL, NEW BUILDINGS Keeping abreast of modern school procedure, the people of Thompson Falls and vicinity under the leadership of trustees A.S. Ainsworth, J.W. Frisbie and Dr. A.W. Rew have enlarged their school plant and have enriched their school program. We have today one of the largest and best public school dormitories in the state, erected in the summer of 1922 at a cost of over $50,000 for building and equipment. The buildings of t...
2 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 23, 1911 A PLEA FOR THE FAIR The first Sanders County Fair will open at Plains on October 5 and will continue for three days. It is the desire of the management to interest every citizen of the county in making the fair a success and in order to do this I am printing this appeal to every citizen to be present at the fair, and to bring or send an exhibit, if it is only a small quantity of any grain, grass, vegetable or fruit. Bring any livestock, as there are premiums offered for all kinds of produce and stock. The...
Continued from last week... • Gem Peak – 8 miles SW of Noxon. It started as a camp lookout with a 15-foot pole platform. 1939, 20-foot pole tower L-4 cab. 1964, 30-foot tower with a R-6 flat cab. Staffed into the 1970s. Now available for rent on the Recreational Rental program • Government Mountain – 3 miles NE of Noxon. Established with a cabin in 1930. Fifty-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1931, abandoned in 1950. • Green Mountain – 8 miles N of Trout Creek. Developed as a camp in 1933, 50-fo...
LOOKOUTS IN SANDERS COUNTY It's hard to believe there were 82 lookouts in Sanders County. As a matter of fact, Montana's first two Forest Service lookouts were built in Sanders County. The first lookout stations to be established were Squaw Peak and Mount Silcox. There are a multitude of fire lookout designs and types used over the years. Very early lookouts were constructed mostly of wood or logs and didn't follow any uniform design as they were made with whatever materials were on the site at...
6 YEARS AGO • AUGUST 11, 1916 HOYT AND PETERSON BLOCK NEARLY COMPLETED H.A. Burke of Missoula, who has the contract for the plumbing and installation of the heating plant in the Hoyt and Peterson new brick block, spent the first of the week here looking after the work. He reports that work on the plumbing is now completed but it will take some three weeks longer to finish equipping the heating plant. W.A. Darling of the Power City Jewelry company moved his stock from the old location in the Herriott building into the east side of the store ro...
4 YEARS AGO • AUGUST 6, 1981 MULES STILL PERFORM VITAL WORK FOR FS By Pat Sullivan Over the last 70 years the Forest Service has replaced telephone cables with wireless radios, cut back on lookout towers due to the range of fire finding airplanes, and stacked two-handled crosscut saws away in favor of pull-start chainsaws. Foresters have even redesigned the shovel. But, with all the modern technology and equipment that has altered and expanded the duties of Forest Service personnel, no one has...
5 YEARS AGO • AUGUST 4, 2016 OVER 400 CALLED TO FIGHT BIG BLAZE Copper King Fire balloons to over 700 acres in big run At a public meeting Monday, District Ranger Dave Hattis said that he and a crew from the Passport in Time program were on Big Hole Peak Sunday when they noticed a smoke plume rising to the west near Thompson River drainage. A short time later a helicopter flew the area and reported back that there was no real concern yet, it didn’t appear to be going anywhere. Hattis then told the audience at the information meeting that 30 min...
4 YEARS AGO • July 16, 1981 EDDY PEAK GETTING NEW LOOKOUT TOWER by Pat Sullivan Crews from the Lolo National Forest at Thompson Falls and Plains began construction Monday on a combination lookout tower and electronic site on Eddy Peak, with two helicopters carrying over 20,000 pounds of concrete up the 6,957-foot mountain. The idea to build a fire lookout station atop a concrete basement on Eddy Peak, 20 miles southeast of Thompson Falls, has existed for almost 10 years. But it wasn't until 1...
6 YEARS AGO • JULY 21, 1916 NO SPEEDING WITHIN CITY LIMITS At the regular monthly meeting of the town council held Monday evening a discussion came up regarding the speeding of automobiles through the streets of our town and a resolution was passed that three large signs be ordered and erected, one at the extreme eastern railroad crossing, one at the extreme western railroad crossing and one at the south approach of the county bridge (now the Gallatin Street bridge). These signs will caution all chauffeurs and automobile owners that they m...
6 YEARS AGO • JUNE 23, 1916 RIVER RAISES FOOT A DAY – TRACKS THREATENED Floods All Over the Northwest – Highest Water Since 1894 – Freak Storm Raises Havoc With several days of extreme hot weather last week when the thermometer reached 90 degrees on Thursday, 92 on Friday and 98 on Saturday, Palouse dust storm on Sunday followed by the big thunderstorm of Sunday night, rain all day Monday followed by a foot of heavy snow Tuesday afternoon and night, nobody, whether he be Eskimo or Mexican has anything on us for variety of weather. The Cla...
7 YEARS AGO • May 2, 1951 FISHING REGULATIONS Pursuant to an order of the Montana State Fish & Game Commission, the following fishing regulations shall apply in Sanders County for the 1951-52 season. Regular Open Season: May 20 to November 15. Regular Closed Season: November 16, 1951 to May 17, 1952. Hours of Fishing: open from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., in all waters unless otherwise specified. The daily limit on all species of trout, char, whitefish and salmon shall be 15 fish, not to exceed 10 pounds and one fish. This daily limit shall not i...
7 YEARS AGO • JUNE 27, 1951 OLD-TIMERS FETED ON FATHER’S DAY Continued from last week Every town has a real fisherman, and Thompson Falls has one in the person of “Swiftwater Bill” who has caught bigger and better fish than any one he has ever met. Born William Knowles on February 22, 1875, near Rice Lake, Wisconsin, he arrived in Thompson Falls in June of 1894 on the third to the last train to come for three months, due to high water. From Pioneers and Early Settlers of Thompson Falls: Clarence “Swiftwater Bill” Edward Knowles was 19 year...
