Yesterdays: Tumblers get ready for the big show
70 years ago
April 4, 1947
Glacier National Park was hiring 70 men for blister rust control in the Park. The control program included the eradication of currant bushes, which were a host for the rust, a fungus that decimates five-needled pine trees. The qualifications were that a man must be 18 years of age and physically sound. The pay was 90 cents to $1 an hour. Tents were furnished and meals cost 60 cents each. It was a 48-hour work week, with 8 hours overtime pay.
60 years ago
April 5, 1957
A group of Columbia Falls High School tumblers were getting ready for a big show in Columbia Falls, doing tricks and stunts on both a trampoline and the rings. Girls included Zela Allen, Rita Anders and Joyce Barnhart; boys included Earl Beaman, Clarence Bertino and Albert Carter to name a few. Glacier Park ranger Roy Hutchinson rode a snowmobile from Logan Creek to Mineral Creek in a day to do a snow survey. The trip on skis used to take four or five days. Snowmobiles are banned in Glacier today.
50 years ago
April 7, 1967
Roger Elliott was elected mayor. He beat incumbent Lloyd Aldrich 242-156, for the seat. Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield stopped by the Flathead. Among other things, he said he thought the creation of Flathead Community College was a good idea. The Hungry Horse News won the Department of Interior’s Conservation Service Award. The award funding was donated, like the Pulitzer Prize winnings before it, to the school district.
40 years ago
April 7, 1977
The Going-to-the-Sun Road opened to Avalanche Creek to motor vehicles. Divorces topped marriages, with in Flathead County, with 83 marriages and 97 divorces for the first three months of the year. District Judge James Salansky noted that divorce had become part of society and the law no longer required a reason for a divorce between couples. The story also noted there were many more wives who worked and they wouldn’t put up with men who had serious drinking problems.
Salansky also said there were fewer concessions between couples to make a marriage work. Glacier posted its first grizzly bear warning of the season, as tracks were discovered on the Autumn Creek Trail near Marias Pass.
30 years ago
April 8, 1987
Photographer Burt Inabnit managed to get a photo of a black bear sow with four cubs walking along the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park. The rare four-cub sighting actually happened the year before in June. But the bear came to a bad end. One of the cubs apparently died. Then the sow got into trouble and was moved to Lee Creek in Glacier on the east side. It wandered the 100 miles or so back to Whitefish where it got in trouble again. It was captured and relocated — this time with just two cubs — to Maragaret Creek up the Hungry Horse Reservoir. Then a teenage hunter on his first bear hunt shot the sow. It’s illegal to shoot a sow with cubs. The cubs followed the sow as the hunter and the game warden dragged it back to the truck. The game warden fined the hunter $100. The two remaining cubs had a 50-50 chance of making it through the winter.
20 years ago
April 3, 1997
Highway 206 resident Mary Arnold was fighting with county officials. Arnold’s home was surrounded by high water from spring runoff and she wantyed to pump it up and over the road. There was no culvert to drain the water away. The county did give her a permit to drill under the road, but Arnold said she couldn’t afford that. She had to take a canoe across her driveway to get supplies to her house.
10 years ago
April 5, 2007
A story on Glacier Park’s wolverines noted there were probably only 45 wolverines spread out over Glacier’s 1 million acres. One ambitious male wolverine from the Park traveled to Libby, where it was caught and killed by a trapper. The study also found that dead mountain goats were a large food source for wolverines.