No headline

70 years ago

Feb. 28, 1947

Feature story above the fold was about Sunshine the cow elk. In June, 1945, Marion and Ruthie Voss were chasing away a black bear from their herd of sheep up at Nyack when they came upon a starving elk calf. They took it to John Dalimata who bottle-raised the calf and Sunshine became a rather famous pet. They even “milked” her, though she didn’t give milk. Sunshine survived two hunters who thought she was wild and she also once got into a scrap with a herd of wild elk, where she took a beating and ran back to home to her mother, Mrs. Dalimata.

60 years ago

March 1, 1957

The Wellman family, which included E.G. Wellman and his sons, Dalton and Robert E., bought the Izaak Walton Hotel from the Great Northern Railway. The hotel planned on serving railroad workers and other guests, just as it had in the past. It would be open 24 hours a day. Three Sno-cats were going to take several Flathead dignitaries and other folks up the Lake McDonald shoreline to Lake McDonald Lodge on a “show-me” trip. Glacier Park was interested in seeing trips into the Park by snowmobile at the time. The Sun Road wasn’t plowed to the lodge. Today, snowmobiles are banned in the Park.

50 years ago

March 3, 1967

February was a dry, mild month. The valleys were bare, but there was snow in mountains. Lumber and logging firms spent $122,000 on roads up the North and South Forks of the Flathead River — roads, the newspaper noted — that were used by tourists in the summertime.

A new Glacier View Ranger Station was planned for construction on Railroad Street at Third Avenue West. The Glacier View ranger station at the time was the top timber producer in the Flathead, with 30 million board feet a year produced over its 339,000 acres up the North Fork in the Whitefish Range.

40 years ago

March 3, 1977

Tragedy in Columbia Falls as fire struck the David Shaffer residence just northwest of town. Killed by smoke inhalation in the fire were Kandie Marie Shaffer, 2, and Warren Gordon Peterson, 4. Shaffer was a Columbia Falls junior high math teacher. It was believed at the time that Warren somehow started the fire after he stoked the fire in the woodstove with a stick and somehow caught clothes in a nearby closet on fire. Red delicious apples were four pounds for $1 at B&B stores.

30 years ago

March 4, 1987

The “camper cage” at the Many Glacier campground in Glacier National Park was going to come down. The wire fence enclosure was put up for tent campers after a woman was killed in the campground by a grizzly bear in 1976. At the time, it was the only tent camping site in the campground. Park superintendent Gil Lusk noted it was a contradiction for the Park to have a metal enclosure in a wilderness area. He noted backcountry tent campers did not have enclosures around their tents. Lusk noted the Park would provide food storage lockers for tent campers who didn’t have a car, because food in camp was still a major concern.

20 years ago

February 27, 1997

Ruben Hart, 79 and Peg Oehrtman, 75, got married on a frozen Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. Hart was Glacier Park’s chief ranger from 1966 to 1974, when he retired. This was the couple’s second marriage — their previous spouses had both died. Coach Cary Finberg made good on his promise to shave his head if the boys basketball team made it to state. The boys did — and Finberg got the haircut, courtesy of barber Randy Bocksnick.

10 years ago

March 1, 2007

Snow was flying, but crews were still hard at work fixing bridges that were damaged or destroyed by floods the previous fall in Glacier National Park. Crews were working to fix the Kelly Camp bridge and the Park had plans to use a military-style Mabey bridge to span a big washout on the east side of the Sun Road near the East Side Tunnel.