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70 years ago

Oct. 31, 1947

Elk hunters were having a tough time up the South Fork. So far they’d shot 147 elk, nine grizzlies and seven black bears. The prior year they’d shot 272 elk. An ad in the paper said “More people are smoking Camels than ever before.” It featured trapeze artist Rose Gould, holding a cigarette.

60 years ago

Nov. 1, 1957

Glacier Park ranger A.D. Cannavina and management assistant Jack Anderson found that two beavers had dropped a couple of small cottonwood trees near the Going-to-the-Sun Highway near Sprague Creek. The beavers were cutting up the trees to take down to a lodge on the lake, so the men changed a “Men at Work” sign to “Beavers at Work” sign and placed it along the road.

50 years ago

Nov. 3, 1967

Glacier Park was buying up private lands inside its boundaries. In the 1940s, the story noted, there was about 20,000 acres of private land in the park. In 1967, there was about 2,100 acres. The largest inholding the Park was going to buy was the 542- acre McFarland Ranch up the North Fork at Big Prairie. The purchase price was about $181,000. Another large inholding — the McCarthy Ray Robinson holdings were bought for $65,000 for 130 acres.

40 years ago

Nov. 3, 1977

An Oregon man was shot to death in the parking lot of the Blue Moon Tavern. Warren Boyd Ingram, 39, was shot with a .357 magnum pistol after he came to the aid of a friend in a fight with Ben Bowerman Jr. 31. Bowerman was charged with deliberate homicide. It was the fourth murder in Columbia Falls in three months. Blue Moon owner Dick Sapa said he was on the bandstand playing at the club when the shooting occurred and heard the shots.

30 years ago

Nov. 4, 1987

The Flathead Hotshot crew was coming off a long fire season. They had spent near 60 days on the Silver Complex fire in Oregon. The water table in Glacier was at historic lows. Lower McDonald Creek was two inches below it’s previous lowest point and biologist Riley McClelland, who canoed the stretch to count eagles said it was the lowest he’d ever seen it. The lower section of Avalanche Creek from the Sun Road to the gorge was also pretty much dry.

20 years ago

Oct. 30, 1997

Old growth forest in the Flathead would be protected under an amendment to the Flathead National Forest plan. The amendment would ban logging in old growth. Old growth was defined as an area where old trees with a diameter of 20 inches or more dominate. Research indicated that about 15 percent of the Flathead Forest was old growth.

10 years ago

Nov. 1, 2007

Reconstruction work on the Going-to-the-Sun road was going full bore, with crews drilling large bolts into the rock face above the road to stabilize it.