History committee gearing up
The North Fork Landowners Association has established a history committee, and their current project is to do oral interviews with North Fork old timers. It's too bad the project cannot include original homesteaders of the area, all of whom have now passed over the Great Divide. Good thing is that today's old timers knew the homesteaders.
That knowledge, coupled with the written interviews of homesteaders done by the Forest Service, Park Service and Hungry Horse editor Mel Ruder, should make a more complete picture of North Fork history from homestead days up to the 1960s.
The history committee is proposing to do as professional a job as possible. They'll ask to buy a high quality recorder with funds from the recent auction. They've compiled a list of folks to interview and have obtained information from the Montana Historical Society and others on how to do the interviews.
Persons to be interviewed will be asked in advance and will be informed about information they'll be asked to share. Obvious information will be on how folks were attracted to the North Fork, life style, social activities and how events like fire affected residents. There is also a lot of interest in how the North Fork has changed from homestead days to the present.
In my mind, the biggest change is the type of people who live here - full time or part time.
Original homesteaders were mostly ordinary folks with little or no formal education who were attracted by the prospect of free land and the hope of improving their lot in life and leaving their children better prospects than they had enjoyed. They expected to work hard in a primitive area, and they did.
Today, there is no free land. Although prices vary, one-acre lots are sold for $25,000, and larger parcels commonly go for $10,000 per acre. If buildings are on the property, the price goes up. Ditto if there's a well - no one today packs buckets of water from the river, creek or spring.
By 1990, there were summer homes valued in hundreds of thousands of dollars, and more are being built every year. The owners refer to these homes as "cabins," but I doubt if that's what homesteaders would call them.
Like most people on the North Fork, I have a well, generator, satellite TV and indoor plumbing. I have a wood cookstove and heating stove, but they're backed up by a propane furnace, propane lights and a propane refrigerator. All things a homesteader could not even imagine in 1915.
Today if you bought 20 acres at $10,000 per acre, you would still have to drill a well and build a dwelling. Very few ordinary working folks can afford that.
As a result, most North Fork landowners are college graduates, either with big incomes or hefty retirement income. Quite a change from the original homesteaders. We're not likely to see their equal again. But it's important to remember and honor them. What do you think?
P.S. Folks who would like to see how homesteaders lived are invited to stop by my cabin anytime. I have albums with photos taken by Matt Brill, Harry and Lena Holcomb, Tom Reynolds, as well as others.