Remember When?

50 YEARS AGO • OCTOBER 31, 1968

A FIRST

Success of a Montana Fish and Game Dept. bighorn sheep planting program about eight years ago was demonstrated this week when two Sanders County hunters bagged rams in the first hunting season permitted since the transplanting. Melvin Hoy, one of Thompson Falls' top sportsmen bagged the first legally killed ram Saturday after stalking this specimen 2½ hours on Bad Rock Mountain between Thompson Falls and Eddy. Ram has almost a full curl. Allen Krebs of Plains, who also received one of the four permits issued to hunt the sheep, got a ram on Koo Koo Sint Ridge near Eddy over the weekend. Horns on Hoy's ram measured 35-3/4 inches and on Krebs' 39-3/4 inches. Hoy is having his ram's head mounted. Sheep have flourished since planting and each spring the flocks wander down close to Highway 200 where they are viewed easily by passing motorists.

SWAN SWANSON VOTES

FOR 18TH PRESIDENT

Swan Swanson, a resident of the Whitepine area since before the turn of the century cast his 18th presidential election year vote here Tuesday afternoon and can lay claim to being Sanders County's oldest continuous voter. He hasn't missed casting a vote in a general election since he started in 1900.

Swanson, who is 90 years old, still splits cedar shake shingles regularly and lives alone. "I've got some mighty fine neighbors who keep a watch on me and don't let me want for anything," he observed gratefully. Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Hall drove him to the polls at the Whitepine Grange Hall Tuesday.

He has voted at four different locations at Whitepine. In 1900, the first time he voted in a presidential election, he recalls the polling place for the Whitepine precinct was located in a saloon near the mouth of the Vermilion River. Later the polls moved to the Whitepine store and still later to the Whitepine school, which since has burned to the ground. The Grange Hall here is the fourth location.

For a few years, Swan served as an election judge at Whitepine, but says after the bitter fight over the election to locate the courthouse at Thompson Falls or Plains, he was never reappointed.

He recalls that when the polls were located in the store that a jug of whiskey was a bit of extra-curricular election equipment and that voters were frequently offered a swig. He recalls serving, however, with two tee-totalers once and one jug didn't even get opened at that election.

Swanson was born in Pennsylvania and when a young man was sent to Sweden by his father to join the Swedish Army. He and several young Swedish soldiers returned to America in 1898, but arrived too late to participate in the Spanish-American War. A short while later he came to Montana and has resided here since

He admitted to voting for one democrat Tuesday, but didn't disclose his choices for any office.

Swanson, the son of a Swedish immigrant, was born in Pennsylvania in February, 1878. Before the turn of the century he moved into the Whitepine area and started working for the Northern Pacific Railroad as a sawyer cutting ties. After the 1910 fire he worked at reproducing replacement ties destroyed in the holocaust.

Through the years he had largely been associated with wood products, and he operated a post and pole mill on Whitepine Creek for several years and later had a cedar post site in Big Beaver Creek. In 1940, he started making cedar shakes, and continued doing so until his death.

Swan homesteaded in the Whitepine Creek drainage, and married Virgil and Guy Hall's mother. However, they later separated.

A corncob pipe was seldom out of his mouth, but Swan always helped his neighbors and was active in the construction of the Whitepine church.