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70 years ago

April 2, 1948

Grass and dry ground helped youngsters as they went on an Easter egg hunt near Columbia Mountain. There were 323 eggs put out, some had tickets to the Royal Theater. Flathead National Forest had plans to plant about 96,000 ponderosa pine trees. They were planned for Fool Hen Ridge, Teakettle Mountain and Desert Mountain. A nanny mountain goat that was rescued by Dan Huffine near Essex after it was caught in an avalanche wasn’t expected to make it. Huffine had tried to nurse the injured animal back to help for several weeks, but it was expected to die.

60 years ago

April 4, 1958

A wolverine was found killed in the road between Nyack and West Glacier by Bobby Voss. It had been hit by a car. About $500,000 in new construction was approved for Glacier National Park through the Mission 66 program. The big ticket item was $330,000 to pave the new Babb-Many Glacier Road for 12 miles into the Many Glacier Valley. The term “Mission 66” was the 10 years between 1956 and 1966 for Park Service improvements. All told, Glacier was slated to get about $13 million for roads and another $9.9 million for buildings, which included new homes at Park headquarters.

50 years ago

April 5, 1968

Ranger Jerry DeSanto noted 185 whistling, or tundra swans on Lake McDonald as well as 600 ducks. The Sun Road plow crews were seeing about two-thirds as much snow as normal, but more ice. Front page of the newspaper featured photos of Mexico and a visit by editor Mel Ruder. He compared it to vacationing in Hawaii, noting Mexico had lots of sun and pleasant temperatures during his 12-day stay.

40 years ago

April 6, 1978

Phone rates were going up. The price of a one party line was up from $5.80 per month to $7.25 per month in Columbia Falls after the state Public Service Commission approved a rate hike request by Northwestern Telephone Systems Inc. Most of the company’s stock was owned by Pacific Power and Light. A telephone operator, meanwhile, made $5.58 an hour, while a repairman made $8.16 per hour.

30 years ago

April 6, 1988

Wet weather was helping the snowpack. The snowpack had been as low as 64 percent of average, but recent snow in the higher terrain brought it up to 77 percent of average, though Glacier Park was about normal at its four snow survey sites and one site was 130 percent of average. A plan to feed bald eagles at Lake McDonald was working. The Park was feeding the birds because of construction at the Lake McDonald Lodge might disturb their normal hunting areas along the lake. The birds would swoop down and grab the dead fish the park had previously caught.

20 years ago

April 2, 1998

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Columbia Falls was dedicating its new church at 640 Seventh Street West. The church started in Columbia Falls in 1955. Friends of a buddy, a black lab who was killed in a Conibear trap, were lobbying for “common sense” trapping laws that would ban trapping in “high use recreation” areas.

10 years ago

April 3, 2008

A study in Alaska that examined human-bear encounters where bear spray was used found that 90 percent of the time bear spray was effective in deterring bears and in 98 percent of the cases, the person walked away uninjured. The study looked at 83 cases from 1985 to 2006 in cases where bear spray was used.