Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
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6 YEARS AGO • DECEMBER 19, 1918 SKATING POND IN THOMPSON FALLS Under the supervision of County Surveyor, John Brauer, the Town of Thompson Falls will have a skating pond that is not only safe but also very convenient. The new pond is being graded up across the street from the Thompson Falls Mercantile building (across the street from The Sanders County Ledger where Ron Turk used to have a service station).It is large enough to insure plenty of room, being 160 feet long by 63 feet wide. This is one of the best moves that we have seen the T...
8 YEARS AGO DECEMBER 22, 1988 67 YEAR LODGE MEMBER RECALLS EARLY DAYS When Chuck Duffield attempted to contact Franklyn Rutherford to invite him to attend his installation as Grand Master of the Thompson Falls Lodge Masons, he had a hard time getting through to him. Chuck reasoned that Franklyn may not be around anymore. The address and phone number were old and after all Rutherford had been retired for several years. Later he found out why he was so difficult to contact. In the summer Frank spends his time rockhounding on Rock Creek and in...
9 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 29, 1933 DEER ARE ENTERED IN BIG BUCK CONTEST The big buck contest, sponsored this hunting season by the Marshall Wells company of Spokane with the Union Market at Thompson Falls acting as local contest board, terminated with the close of the hunting season on November 15. This contest, sponsored to encourage the sale of Peters ammunition, offered $50 for the heaviest white tail buck and $50 for the heaviest mule deer buck killed in northern Idaho, western Montana or eastern Washington. There were several people who weighe...
4 YEARS AGO NOVEMBER 10, 1983 NONHUNTER BUSIEST IN HUNTING SEASON He favors tending his garden and yard over hunting and fishing, but he sure knows what to do with the game bagged by those who do hunt for meat for the table. Longtime Thompson Falls resident Norm Knudson is an especially busy man right now in the fall of the year. He has already processed 8,000 lbs. this season and averages over 20,000 pounds of wild meat a season! A recently retired meat cutter with Stobie’s IGA, Norm affirms he has not retired completely from meat cutting. ...
SANDERS COUNTY C.C.C. by Fredi Pargeter and Glenn T. Garrison Note: The Civilian Conservation Corps was developed as a relief agency during the Great Depression years. President Roosevelt convinced Congress to create the C.C.C. which provided conservation jobs for unemployed men, ages 18 to 25. Milton Butte Milton Roy Butte was born behind the store in Belknap on July 21, 1918, the grandson of German settlers Fritz and Mina Butte who purchased 160 acres after settling in 1904. The property is still in the Butte family. His grandfather and...
SANDERS COUNTY C.C.C. by Fredi Pargeter and Glenn T. Garrison Note: The Civilian Conservation Corps was developed as a relief agency during the Great Depression years. President Roosevelt convinced Congress to create the C.C.C. which provided conservation jobs for unemployed men, ages 18 to 25. When the CCC was established, there were strict requirements for enrollees: Male US citizen by birth or naturalization 18 to 25 years old Single From a family on public relief rolls Agreeable to allot $22 to $25 monthly of $30 wage to family These requir...
9 YEARS AGO • NOVEMBER 8, 1933 THOMPSON TO HAVE AN AIRPLANE LANDING FIELD Nick Mamer of the North West Airways was in Thompson Falls two days this week, establishing a temporary emergency landing field for high speed planes. The present Thompson Falls landing field is inadequate for the large high speed planes. A lease has been obtained from J.B McGurk and all markers and necessary leveling on the run-way has been arranged for the Forest Service and Chamber of Commerce which when completed will make one of the nicest landing fields between Mis...
TOWARDS BRIDGES AND ROADS From "Behind These Mountains" by Mona Leeson Vanek For many years John Fulks had operated the ferry at Noxon until one spring when high water tore it loose and it was gone, probably to be smashed to bits going through the Cabinet Gorge. Then a boat that had broken loose from the Green ferry upstream a year earlier was purchased from Riley Eldridge and others to be installed at Noxon for a ferry. The forest service at Noxon purchased the big cable and other paraphernalia on the Thompson Falls ferry from E. Preston and...
9 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 25, 1933 SCHOOL NEWS There are 32 students in the dormitory this year: 16 girls and 16 boys. Of these students only six have not been there before. There are 13 freshmen, 29 sophomores, 17 juniors, 22 seniors and four special students attending the high school this year, making a total of 85 students. Many boys from the high school worked at various jobs this past summer. Neil Eplin, Adelbert Alvord, Wylie Garred, Roy Wright, Alvin Cobeen and Frank Puyear worked in different CCC camps this summer. Adolph Ovnicek was e...
9 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 11, 1933 PLAINS HAS FEVER There have been a number of typhoid fever cases during the last month in Plains, which apparently developed in the neighborhood where the Montana Logging Company conducted its operations this summer, on Lynch Creek four or five miles out of town. Mrs. Mike Garvey, wife of the manager of the Missoula Logging Company is at present critically ill in a Missoula hospital. The State Board of Health officials were in Plains investigating the water and other factors that might have given rise to the o...
4 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 6, 1983 JOE GARRISON Obituary Graveside services were conducted at the Thompson Falls City Cemetery for Joe Garrison, 96, pioneer resident of Belknap. Mr. Garrison was born September 15, 1887, in Enfield, Illinois. He moved to Belknap in 1905. On October 20, 1909 he married Clara Moen in Coeur d’Alene. The couple moved to Belknap in 1911. In 1918 they moved to the ranch near there. It became their permanent home. Garrison was a rancher, farmer and horse trader, and was a charter depositor in the First State Bank of Thomps...
3 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 7, 1993 CHARLES R. DUFFIELD OBITUARY Charles R. “Chuck” Duffield, 79, of Thompson Falls died of natural causes September 28, 1993. Chuck was born June 23, 1914 at Broadview, Montana to Warren and Martha Duffield. In the fall of 1922, the family moved to Great Falls. Chuck liked to tell how he and his friend, Ralph Buchanan, at the time ages 8 and 9 respectively, made the 71-mile trip to Great Falls from Geraldine by horseback on their own. In Great Falls Chuck grew up working alongside his cabinet-making father in their...
9 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 4, 1933 LOCAL SHINGLE MILL BEGUN AT TROUT CREEK Henry Kraus before settling at Trout Creek had operated a shingle mill in Wisconsin for years. He brought his mill along with him, dismantled, and it has only been in the last few months that he reassembled it and started operating it. Now Mr. Kraus tells us he has had so many orders ahead that he cannot make deliveries without delay until he catches up on his orders. Mr. Kraus is turning out a very good grade of shingle. Before Mr. Kraus started his single mill,the c...
13 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 1, 1947 BIG PAY Thompson Falls Lumber Co. that operates east of town, better known as Brown’s Mill, is a good place to work. Talk to any of the boys who work out there and they will tell you the pay is good, average around $300 a month, plenty of overtime at time and a half, and Arden Davis, the Superintendent, is fair and square.. The Brown mill pays tops over all the mills around, by 7 or 10 cents an hour. Some of the top men, such as the sawyers, etc., get almost $1.90 an hour. The sawyer is the key man in any mil...
9 YEARS AGO SEPTEMBER 20, 1933 ROADS IN MARVELOUS SHAPE Do you remember the way the roads were a couple of years back? Rough, rocky, bumpy, crooked and narrow. If you traveled over Montana roads much then you can hardly conceive as you glide along the oiled graded highways that are now evident that you are now in Montana. The Clarks Fork between Plains and Missoula, eighty miles, is now completed, graded, graveled, bridged with concrete, and now partially oiled. Before the year is out the entire stretch will be oiled. You skim along, smooth...
9 YEARS AGO • AUGUST 9, 1933 COMMITTEE FINDS SITE OF SALISH HOUSE Members of the David Thompson Memorial committee have discovered what is believed to be the site of the Salish House, the first building erected within the present boundaries of Montana. The Salish House or Flathead House, was a post of the North West Fur Company established by David Thompson in the fall of 1809. The exact site of the Salish House has long been a puzzle to students of early Montana history. Dr. Elliott Coues who edited the notes of Thompson and Ashley, p...
9 YEARS AGO • SEPTEMBER, 1933 THOMPSON FALLS WILL CELEBRATE Monument to David Thompson, Explorer, Will Be unveiled Today. Taken from the September 4, 1933 issue of the Spokesman Review, continued from last week: There were no rooms in the hotel (now the Black Bear) for a large crowd had come to the Thompson celebration (the unveiling of the David Thompson monument east of town by the high school turn off). Mrs. Shannon promised to have a room later in the afternoon. "I will leave my grip w...
9 YEARS AGO • SEPTEMBER, 1933 THOMPSON FALLS WILL CELEBRATE Monument to David Thompson, Explorer, Will Be unveiled Today. Taken from the September 4, 1933 issue of the Spokesman Review: The monument to David Thompson, early explorer in western Montana will be unveiled at Thompson Falls at 10 o’clock today. The monument was completed last week. It is constructed of stream-worn boulders gathered from the region of David Thompson’s Salish House. A.H. Abbott and J.M. Frisbie will have charge of the unveiling ceremony today and a special progr...
7 YEARS AGO • JULY 29, 1953 NEW FLOOR POURED The concrete was poured Saturday for the floor of the new 4-H Club building at the Sanders County Fair grounds at Plains. The building is 24 feet by 54 feet. 4-H Club members will serve complete meals and soft drinks. Tables are now being built for the building. The outside of the building will be white asbestos siding with green trimming. This is expected to be complete in a week. This building is commonly known as the Pavilion at the fairgrounds. The old 4-H kitchen and dining room was directly w...
3 YEARS AGO • JULY 14, 1993 SOPHIE MOLES ARRIVES IN AREA AS A GIRL, 17 Continued from last week… Sophie and Bert raised seven children on the homestead: Leo, Lester, Clarence, Wilfred, Tuffy, Altha and Louie. Today Altha and Louie live in Belknap, and four sons live in Libby, Indiana and Louisiana. Their eldest child, Leo, died 15 years ago. A trip back east by train was to keep Sophie busy for a while after Bert's passing. “I was a pretty green traveler,” she admits, “but went to Ontario to visit my husband’s family and on to Maryland to...
3 YEARS AGO • JULY 14, 1993 SOPHIE MOLES ARRIVES IN AREA AS A GIRL, 17 Land for Sale: $12 per acre; some pieces available for $3 per acre. Firewood: Cut, split and delivered, $3 per cord. Where? Thompson Falls, Montana - 1914. Certainly prices back then sound more than desirable to today’s land lookers and wood burners. On the other hand, average wages in the same territory ran about $8 a month or maybe $60 a month if you could saw a cord of firewood a day - with a crosscut saw! Sophie’s husband could and did. Sophie Moles of Belknap, grand...
4 YEARS AGO • JULY 14, 1993 FALLS FIRM OFFERING CONCRETE STRUCTURES Concrete Services, Inc. of Thompson Falls is now providing precast concrete structures, according to co-owners Gary Campbell and Terry Traver. The new firm has been named Concrete Services Precast. Concrete Services had been producing a few precast septic tanks as a sideline to their other work. Now they have purchased a site just east of the W-I Forest Products mill and have set up a small plant to fabricate various concrete items. Hottest item for their market so far is a p...
6 YEARS AGO • JULY 25, 1918 BELKNAP CROPS RUINED BY HAIL Many Ranchers Lost Everything in Severe Storm Roofs Broken Down and Young Chickens and Turkeys Killed A hail storm that for violence and damage inflicted was the worst in the history of the county visited the neighborhood of Belknap Tuesday evening and in the space of half an hour wiped out all of the small grain and fruit and severely damaged the root crops over a considerable area. Roofs were broken through, young chickens and turkeys killed and the crops which were almost ready to h...
7 YEARS AGO • JULY 22, 1953 MAJOR CHANGES ON MAIN STREET The main street of Thompson Falls, which is also the route of the U.S. Highway 10-A (now Highway 200) through town, is in the opening stages of a major change. The entire street is being widened to a uniform width, adding up to 12 feet in some sections. The additional width is being taken from the railroad right-of-way on the north side, by arrangement with the Northern Pacific Railroad. The two main approaches to the street from the resi...
7 YEARS AGO • JULY 1953 RECORD BREAKING 109 RECORDED HERE People of Thompson Falls and the Clark Fork Valley had a perfect right to complain about the heat last Sunday, July 12. The official temperature according to U.S. Forest Service instruments was a sizzling 109 degrees. This reading was reached at 3 p.m. In recent times a record high of 107 degrees was recorded on August 11, 2018. This reading as far as we know made Thompson Falls the hottest spot in the nation. According to Monday’s Missoulian it reached 105 there, being bettered only by...
