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Picnic benches in the Bad Rock Canyon, June 1961. The photo was taken because the Class of '61 has scratched the rocks and painted an outhouse that used to be there.
70 years ago
June 6, 1947
The Hungry Horse News announced it was opening its own print shop, with Harold Tolley as the print foreman. But the eight-ton linotype press was being stored in the Davall warehouse until “this newspaper obtains more adequate quarters.”
A bear was at the Belton tennis courts. According to the story, he sat outside the fence like a dog, following the ball back and forth with his eyes as people played tennis inside.
60 years ago
June 7, 1957
It was a busy time in Glacier. The Going-to-the-Sun Road opened May 27 and the west entrance saw 297 cars from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. while St. Mary saw 206 cars. The city was eyeing a plot of land north of town to dump old car bodies. The plan was to have a centralized dump rather than several small dumps throughout town as was the current situation. Junk car owners would have to take cars up to the dump, or the city would do it and charge the owners.
50 years ago
June 9, 1967
Drilling of the 7-mile long Flathead Tunnel was on schedule through Elk Mountain near Libby. About 352 men were working on the tunnel, which re-routed the Great Northern rail line to make way for what would become the Koocanusa Reservoir. Mrs. Lee Rost was fixing fence near Bigfork when she was charged by a big bear that came after her and her dog. The bear bit the dog’s back legs. Rost fended it off by threatening it with an ax. The bear made several charges, but she was uninjured. The sow had a couple of cubs up a tree nearby.
40 years ago
June 2, 1977
Glacier Park rangers shot “Old Scarface,” a sow grizzly that had treed three hikers on the Avalanche Lake Trail the year before. Three rangers initially tried to hit the bear with tranquilizer darts so they could move her to a different location. But two missed and the third didn’t penetrate the bear’s skin. The bear charged Jerry Bell and the rangers later shot her. The Park had been trying to trap the bear for three weeks and she showed no fear of humans and chased them as well.
30 years ago
June 3, 1987
Doug Washatko was the victim of an armed robbery at the Circle K store on Nucleus Avenue. Scott W. Keys, upset that he couldn’t buy beer after 2 a.m., allegedly pointed a gun at Washatko and told him to give him all the money in the cash register and a 12-pack of Budweiser. Keys got $29 and the beer and then shot his gun into the air. He was arrested later that morning by Whitefish and Columbia Falls police after family members in Whitefish tipped off police.
20 years ago
June 5, 1997
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks announced it would stop stocking kokanee salmon in Flathead Lake. The program was halted because non-native lake trout were eating the young salmon as fast as they were put in the water. The salmon runs are non-existent today. A study showed that lake trout ate nearly one-third of all the stocked salmon in the two months after they were stocked.
10 years ago
June 7, 2007
British Petroleum announced it was considering coal bed methane development in the Canadian Flathead and Elk River drainage. Coal bed methane drilling was considered worse than even coal mining, because it used a number of wells and a network of roads as well as millions of gallons of freshwater per well site.