Remember When?

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 young man following his coming to Montana in 1877.

Joe Boyer, walked into “town” nearly 70 years ago when this village of approximately 800 persons was only a promise, and the Northern Pacific Railroad had not yet arrived.

“When I first came (about 1877) there were no roads here. Indians all around. There were about 150 teepee lodges on the east side of Deemer Creek and another favorite Indian camping location was about three miles west of town by Lynch Creek, on the bench.

“There was at that time only two white families permanently settled at “Wild Horse Plains” the name by which the present townsite was originally known,” Joe reports.

Chief provisions were “sow belly” beans and sour dough bread. Of the early pioneer families who stopped at Plains most of them left after a few years, but the Neptune Lynch family remained. Large numbers of the early settlers came from Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

On June 4, 1883 Boyer married Mary Lynch, daughter of Neptune Lynch, who brought his family to Plains in November, 1870.

The Lynch family came originally from Oberlin, Missouri, crossing the plains in a covered wagon drawn by oxen in 1862. They first traveled to Denver, Colorado, then to Boise, Idaho, and came to Montana in the spring of 1864. The Boyers’ honeymoon trip was made over an Indian trail to Hot Springs, Joe recalls.

The first hotel in Plains was built by Joe back in 1884. In 1913 a second hotel (Northern) was operated by Mr. and Mrs. Boyer at another location. The hotel built by McGowan was on the site where the McGowan store now stands but was later moved and burned down in 1914 or 1915.

Boyer said that 250-300 meals were prepared and served at the McGowan Hotel in a 24-hour day to train passengers. The train crews would telegraph ahead and let the hotel manager know the number of people that were to be fed upon arrival.

After being up all day they would get up two or three times a night to meet the trains carrying passengers westward and back. Willis says in 1910 when registration for reservation land was taking place there were about six trains going through Plains each way, each day.

Boyer also operated the first saloon in town.

“I sold more whiskey in a week in those days than these fellows do in a month,” he said and added, “a 48-gallon barrel of grog and 20 to 25 cases of the stuff were disposed of weekly. The saloon business brought in about $300 a night but that money never did any good.”

On three occasions Joe said he saw men shot by women. “They were sure tough customers.”

“Cowboys used to come to town, get drunk and then shoot up the town with their .45 Colts raising a fuss occasionally. The best whiskey sold for $3.50 a gallon and $1.50 a quart. Patrons could pour their own two shots for 25 cents.

The first store in the vicinity was built early in the winter of 1882 by a Mr. Hennessey, Joe recalls. It was located nearly two miles east of the present Plains townsite, and was sold the next spring to Charles Lynch and Jack McDermitt. It later burned down. The first sawmill was operated by W.B. Russel and was located at Eddy. Timber around Plains was floated downstream to the mill for an output of 50,000 to 60,000 board feet a day. Later, two mills were set up across the river from Plains, one of them at the foot of Pat’s Knob. The first school opened in 1884, Boyer said, with nine pupils taught by Ida McCormick in her home. Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. J.A. McGowan collected the money for logs and arranged for the first school building in Plains which was completed in 1885. The building is still standing.