Remember When

40 YEARS AGO • FEBRUARY 25, 1982

SHE WATCHED CHANGE

In her lifetime, Edna McCann has watched Trout Creek go from a "wild and Wooly" railroad division point and prospector town to Huckleberry Capital of Montana, and everything in between.

In 1905, when she was three, McCann's father, Floyd Cox, packed the family and belongings into a covered wagon and, accompanied by two other families, left Salt Lake City for Trout Creek. The family settled a homestead on the flats just west of present-day Trout Creek. Mr. Cox had a sawmill and sold ties for the railroad.

Once a month they brought the wagon to town to buy supplies from the single grocery store. The five children were admonished to stay in the wagon, which gave them a ring-side seat to the goings-on. McCann said they saw a lot from that seat, including the day a prospector brought his partner into town draped over a horse, after having shot him dead in an argument.

"Fellas didn't fool around" in those days, McCann said. She knew several who wore guns, never took them off and never sat with their back to the door. And mineral discoveries in the Coeur d'Alene area brought many such men to the Trout Creek area in search of their fortunes.

The Cox children attended grade school in Trout Creek. High School was a five-mile horse ride from the homestead. McCann said that one while fording a stream on the way to school, she allowed the horse to pause for a drink. The horse decided to take a bath, and both arrived at the school soaking wet.

The winter of her senior year was too severe to ride, so she was not able to finish school. She did some coyote trapping after she was out of school, selling the pelts to Stevens Fur Co. in Colorado. After WWI, she married A.W. McCann, who often ran pack trains for area sheep ranchers. When her father died, the McCanns moved to the old homestead.

While she didn't like the result McCann was not surprised at the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980. After all, many years before she had found lava rock while prospecting in the local mountains. She said she often hired a babysitter for the day and rode off on horseback to look for gold, copper, silver and lead. She said she liked the game of "finding good spots" and filed several claims at the Sanders County Courthouse. Unfortunately, she did not have the money to develop her claims and eventually lost them.

McCann approves of present-day mining operations in the Cabinet Mountains, saying that she cannot see leaving the ore in the ground when it can be used, especially just because it happens to lie under grizzly bear habitat. McCann suggested with a chuckle shooting "Those doggone" grizzlies. She added that there is no need to destroy anything to mine the needed ore.

McCann has seen many changes in the area; the first being the 1910 fire. She said that everything was disrupted by that fire. She recalled waking up one morning and seeing what looked like a "big red blanket" draped across the sky. She said her father started backfires in the direction of the fire and the railroad started backfires in the direction of the homestead. Things were pretty hot for three days, but the homestead and all its occupants escaped unscathed.

Although she doesn't mind the dams that have been built in the area, McCann thinks it's ridiculous for the state to have allowed them to be built without fish ladders for migrating salmon. She said that salmon fishing in the Clark Fork used to be pretty good, but now when the planted fish are gone, so is the good fishing.

She was also sorry to see the railroad taken out of Trout Creek. "It used to be, you could catch a train here," she sd. "Now the freight trains don't even stop. There's no transportation available.

But McCann has always been able to take care of herself. She once knocked the hat off of a suspicious-acting character near the homestead with her .30-.30. He took off running and McCann vowed she'd aim lower if he had come back. She also once fired over a man rummaging through h car. She still keeps a loaded gun in the house.

"What good is a gun if it's not loaded?" she asks.

Two of Edna's siblings who stayed in this area were A. Ben Cox of Belknap and Mrs. Donald Saint, Thompson Falls.