Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
Sorted by date Results 176 - 200 of 349
6 YEARS AGO • MAY 7, 1916 BREAKING THROUGH THE THOMPSON RIVER CANYON BARRIER SOON Thompson River Road Will Open About July 1 This is news, paramount news. The Thompson River road will be completed, A.H. Abbott, supervisor of the Cabinet announced officially, July 1. A write-up by Mr. Abbott concerning roads built in this district appears in this issue. For the past 6 years the Thompson River CCC camp has been blasting against the great rock barrier which blocks access to the Thompson River country. For miles and miles tremendous rock c...
THOMPSON FALLS From Architectural and Historical Surveys When the original town site plat was adopted in 1893, the street bordering the town’s “red light district” received the appropriate name of Maiden Lane. Thompson Falls and neighboring settlements formed because of very specific geographic and economic reasons: The proximity of their locations to the mining fields and the fact that the railroad and subsequent roads gave access to these points rather than into the goldfields themselves. Their reason for being was to outfit miners into...
THOMPSON FALLS From Architectural and Historical Surveys “Thompson Falls is the last town on the Northern Pacific railroad aspiring to be the outfitting point for the Coeur d’Alene mines,” wrote a correspondent to the Weekly Missoulian in April 1884. Because the railroad tracks beyond Thompson Prairie came closer to the mouth of Prospect Creek, eventual settlement occurred three miles west of the station along the bank of the Clark’s Fork River and near the waterfall that gave the settlement its name. Knowledge of the Prospect Creek route a...
TYPICAL LUMBER CAMP From interviews conducted by Mike Scott An attempt will be made now to portray a typical lumber camp as it existed shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century, the personnel required to operate such an establishment and some of the customs of the industry. After selecting a site with an eye to the relative level topography and the proximity of a suitable water supply construction of the several buildings was started. Building material consisted almost exclusively of...
"TIMBER-R-R-R OOP DA HILL..." From interviews conducted by Mike Scott "Timber-r-r-r oop da hill." With this traditional warning, a huge ponderosa began to sway and crack as the tree fell to the ground with a thunderous roar. "Yesus! That vere a big vun." The remark came from Ole Vickner, who with his partner, Ben Monas, formed a falling crew for the Montana Logging Company in the Lynch Creek operation from 1929 until 1940. An estimate of the amount of timber taken from western Sanders County...
6 YEARS AGO • APRIL 21, 1916 TIME TO CLEAN UP Spring is here, the snow has gone and the mud dried up, the annual season has again rolled around when it is full time for you to get out that garden rake and clean up the yard, prepare the ground for a little garden and burn up the trash that has accumulated during the winter. It is to be hoped that the mayor and city council will speedily lease or buy a small tract of ground, not too far from town that can be used for a city dumping ground. While it is true that old boards, paper, dead grass and...
4 YEARS AGO • APRIL 9, 1981 PIONEER MILL OPERATOR SWAN FLODIN PASSES Swan Flodin, 96 years of age died in Plains March 31. Swan was born August 9, 1884 on a farm near Sundsvaal, Sweden. His mother’s name was Emma Bjorkstedt and his father was Per (Peter) Flodin. In 1896 the family immigrated to Minnesota. Swan adapted quickly to the new environment. His father farmed in the spring, summer and early fall and worked in the woods during the winter. Swan started working in the woods with his father. Swan was good with horses and he was dri...
4 YEARS AGO • MARCH 26, 1981 HOMESTEAD – AN OLD WORD WITH A NEW MEANING By Fay Allen Homestead. An old term that is almost forgotten, a word of another day, and yet a term that has affected many of our lives. A picture comes to mind of a forlorn, tarpaper shack on the prairie. Many older people have expressed the very opposite. This was their life's ambition, their dream, a place to take care of them in return for their labor. Until the early 1900s, Sanders County was a part of Missoula Cou...
10 YEARS AGO • FEBRUARY 20, 1975 ROD BYBEE WINS FIRST IN STATE The Thompson Falls wrestlers placed eighth in the state tournament held in Miles City last weekend with 26½ points. Earning most of the points for the Hawks were Don Breitenbach and Rod Bybee. Breitenbach, a freshman, came on strong at the latter part of the season and placed first at the divisional tournament held in Superior. At the state meet he was defeated only once and earned a spot in the consolation match. Bybee along with Jim Kaphammer and Fren Warenka of Superior were th...
4 YEARS AGO • MARCH 5, 1981 LOUIS LaROCK BUYS HOTEL BAR IN TF Louis LaRock, partner in the firm which has operated the Thompson River Ranch since January 1964, has purchased the Hotel Bar from Mrs. Joy Reynolds and plans to reopen the establishment later this week. The change of ownership was effective Thursday. The reopening of the bar is subject to approval of the State Liquor Control Board, which is expected to be received by mid-week he said. The Hotel Bar has been closed for the past f...
6 YEARS AGO FEBRUARY 25, 1916 IT'S OUR BIRTHDAY! The Sanders County Ledger, with this issue, celebrates its 11th birthday, entering upon the 12th year of its existence. Established in 1905, the first issue made its appearance on February 24. J.T. Spencer, its founder, was also publisher, manager, superintendent, foreman and editor-in-chief, and for about five years Mr. Spencer conducted the paper and did it well. In January, 1910, the paper was sold to E.H. Rathbone, who ran the plant about a...
7 YEARS AGO • JANUARY 17, 1951 WWP GETS APPROVAL ON CABINET GORGE; CONSTRUCTION WILL BE PUSHED The Washington Water Power company has received the “go ahead” signal on its request to build the Cabinet Gorge dam. Heads of the company received word from Washington, D.C., that the federal power commission had granted a permit to construct the high power dam which will provide an additional 200,000 kilowatts of power to serve the company’s customers. For the past few weeks contractors for the company have been constructing access roads to the dam...
JOE BOYER TELLS HIS STORY From an interview by Bert Minwegen in the mid 40’s Excerpt from Wild Horse Plains Centennial Issue - 1983 Getting the upper hand on his 92nd year, Joe Boyer of Plains today remains as one of the more remarkable old timers in western Montana and the northwest. Showing no sign of mental slipping in his old age and physically in excellent condition except for failing eyesight, Joe’s recollections are told vividly and with a keen sense of humor. Born in southern Oregon Joe worked on the Northern Pacific railroad as a you...
20 started off with snow – a lot of it! In three days Thompson Falls got 17 inches of snow. The following week, more snow fell bringing the depth to 30 inches. The week after that the weather warmed up and Thompson Falls received almost an inch of rain on top of the snow. 30 YEARS AGO • JANUARY 17, 1991 RAIN COLLAPSES MUSEUM ROOF Recent heavy snows coupled with a continuous rain worked to collapse the roof on the Old Jail Museum in Thompson Falls and sent worries of doubt to museum directors as to the future of the popular attraction. Mus...
LOTS OF INFORMATION IN NORTHERN PACIFIC LEDGER Excerpt from Wild Horse Plains Centennial Issue - 1983 On February 12, 1883, 35 bales of hay were shipped by Northern Pacific freight from Thompson Falls to J.L. Hallett, Plains, three days after the first NP locomotive arrived in the vicinity from the west over newly-laid railroad tracks. The ledger was found several years ago in the attic of the original Plains depot when it was torn down to make room for the present newer structure. A study of...
I have heard people say that last week’s storm was unparalleled in the past, not so, read on. 50 YEARS AGO AUGUST 12, 1971 WINDSTORM DAMAGES ROOFS, SNAPS TREES The worst wind and hailstorm to strike western Sanders County hit the Plains, Thompson Falls and Trout Creek areas Thursday afternoon stripping roofs, breaking large trees like matchsticks, and peppering the Trout Creek area with hail the size of marbles. Some observers described the strong winds as “twister type.” Ranger George Leighton said actually two storms struck the area almos...
THE MARTIN QUINNS WERE AMONG THE EARLY SETTLERS Excerpt from Wild Horse Plains Centennial Issue - 1983 One of the more prominent of the early day settlers in the Plains area was Martin Quinn who came to western Montana as a miner but spent the greater part of his adult life as operator of a resort area known, and still operating at the present time, as Quinn’s Hot Springs. Quinn, a native of Ireland, and his wife of a few years, a native of England, arrived in the area a year after the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed in 1883. They start...
3 YEARS AGO • JANUARY 3, 1991 WEATHER PLAYED ROLE IN ANNUAL KEG BOWL by John Hamilton It didn’t matter that the thermometer was hovering around 25 degrees below zero, the calendar told all die-hard football players that it was time for the Keg Bowl. The Silver Bullets downed the O No Boys 36-20 Saturday to win the 10th annual Keg Bowl Saturday. The extreme cold and two feet of snow that blanketed frozen Ainsworth Field did not deter the hard-core participants, most of whom were former Blue Hawk gridders. “This was by far the coldest weath...
7 YEARS AGO • JANUARY 3, 1951 LAUNDRY IS YEAR’S FIRST NEW BUSINESS A laundry is Thompson Falls’ first new business of 1951. The EZ Way Laundry, to be operated by Mrs. LeRoy Hanson in a building adjacent to their home, and across the street from the county jail, opened for business January 2. Equipped to do washing but not finished work, the all electric laundry boasts of five automatic washers and one small dryer all set up. Another large dryer is supposedly on its way. Mr. and Mrs. Hanson extend a welcome to all who care to come and inspe...
9 YEARS AGO FROM KNOW MONTANA “We spent a happy Christmas by the side of a blazing fire and forgot the sufferings we had endured in our dreary progress through the woods of the new territory we were exploring.” So wrote Ross Cox in a book, “Cox’s Adventures on the Columbia River,” published in England in 1817. Cox arrived with a few companions December 24, 1813 at McMillan trading post near the present site of Paradise in Sanders County. They had come from Astoria on the Pacific Coast. “On Christmas morning Cox and his men prepared fo...
5 YEARS AGO • DECEMBER 25, 1970 During the last months Mrs. Kathryn E. Fessler lived as she rode down Main St. with her daughter, Mrs. Ermel Hanson, she said, "Aren't my trees beautiful?" "Her trees" are the stately conifers gracing the north side of Main Street. When she came to Thompson Falls where her husband, Dr. Fessler, set up his practice, she decided to beautify her home and the then building of the Big Pine Tourist Camp (now Little Bear). Wherever she lived, she planted a tree, so s...
7 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 29, 1950 OUR PROBLEMS ARE MANY We heard a number of local citizens gripe because an N.P. freight blocked all three crossings in the town for at least half an hour Tuesday morning, just at the time when those employed should have been getting to work. We understand the sheriff was called and asked if he would have the engineer move the train on at least so that one crossing could be used. At times like this, especially in the wintertime, one realizes how handy an underpass...
4 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 13, 1980 CABLE TV PLANNED FOR FALLS, PLAINS Cable TV reception including 24-hour-a-day reception from four national superstations along with two local (Spokane and Missoula) stations and pay TV monies may be offered to viewers in Thompson Falls, Plains and Ronan in the near future by Lawrence J. McCarthy and Associates. McCarthy last week applied for a license from the Thompson Falls City Council to operate the cable system here. He said he has also applied for licenses in Plains and Ronan. Obtaining licenses in the three...
8 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 13, 1940 SPONSORS CONSTRUCTION OF SKATING RINK The city of Thompson Falls is sponsoring the construction of a skating rink on main street opposite Weber’s general store. This project is entirely a city activity. In past years, the rink was not successful because the water seeped away and left gaps in the ice. This year a large amount of sawdust has been spread over the ground to form an insular coat and prevent seepage. The dormitory boys and other high school students are cooperating by donating their labor. It is h...
8 YEARS AGO • NOVEMBER, 1940 FIRST THREE-TERMER This precedent shaking campaign has finally resulted in the WILL of the people speaking, and thus ROOSEVELT continues on as President of the United States of America. Let us stand UNITED as the name of our country implies, the United States of America, and determinedly with FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT at the helm face the perils of a war torn, desolate and disorganized world. Hail! Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first President of the United States ever to be elected for a third term. This is our p...
