History: The stories behind the stumps

As the Flathead Valley was growing, and area towns were developing, there was a serious yet good-natured competitiveness that existed between the towns, each town wanting to be the center of attention in the blossoming mecca of the Flathead.

Columbia Falls and Kalispell competed to be the division headquarters of the Great Northern Railway’s new Kalispell Division when the railroad first entered the valley. The following year, these two towns competed to be the county seat when Flathead County was established. Columbia Falls touted itself as the “Gem City,” while hanging the derisive tag of “Alkali Flats” on Kalispell.

When the Great Northern relocated its main line from Kalispell to Whitefish, Whitefish and Columbia Falls competed to be the new division headquarters of the railroad. In the end, Kalispell won the county seat, Whitefish took over Kalispell’s former position as the mainline headquarters of the Great Northern Railway’s Kalispell Division and Columbia Falls remained, as always, wondering why.

Having lost its mainline status, Kalispell became known as “stub-town,” Columbia Falls became “junction-city,” being the place where the Kalispell branch, or stub line, and the main line connected, and Whitefish was referred to by those outside the town, somewhat tongue-in-cheek and jealously, as “stump-town” due to the significant number of stumps that remained around the townsite in those early years.

One of the most challenging obstacles to early day development in the Flathead was the clearing of the land, much of which was heavily timbered. Once the merchantable timber was harvested from the townsites and homesteads, the valley was littered with stumps which had to be removed before the land could be made productive. One old-timer recounted that removing the stumps was, while quite challenging, not the worst part. “Once the stumps were out we had to fill in all those holes!”

Stumps were left behind for several reasons. The stump end of the tree contained most of the sap adding that extra weight to the stump end. In the early days, when logs were floated down the waterways to the mills, this extra weight could cause the log to sink. Many did anyway. The tall tamarack trees suffered from a condition known as “wind shake.” The movement of the tree in the wind over time caused stress in the stump end of these trees. When the stump end dried after being cut, the wood would split and separate and so was of no use, except as firewood. Much of the logging of the early days was done during the winter, the snow and ice making it easier to haul the logs to the rivers. The snow would not be shoveled away from trees before they were cut. With up to several feet of snow in the woods the sawyers had to cut above the snow.

Removing all the stumps took years of effort and involved a wide variety of manual, mechanical and chemical methods. This challenge was not unique to the Flathead. Communities throughout the Northwest had to contend with the same circumstance. Numerous stump pulling contraptions were developed and put into service over the years. As new and better methods were developed in one area those methods soon found their way to other areas where residents were facing the same challenges. Stump removal equipment manufacturers, explosives experts and even the railroads traveled the area demonstrating what each believed to be the most effective and economical methods of stump removal.

One of the earliest methods used for removing stumps was blasting with dynamite. This method was expensive and could be dangerous. An eastside farmer planted a dynamite charge in a hole under a stump, near the old steel bridge east of Kalispell, and lit the fuse. When nothing initially happened the farmer peered into the hole to investigate the problem just as the charge finally detonated. The reporter covering the incident concluded, “He was fortunate to have lost only his coveralls, both eyebrows and the sight in one eye.” Frozen dynamite was often a hindrance. A Smith Valley farmer found his dynamite nearly frozen and decided to thaw it out so he could do some blasting. He laid out a dozen sticks on the open oven door of his wood burning kitchen stove to thaw and headed to the barn to start his chores. A few minutes later the farmer’s house disappeared in a substantial explosion.

After World War I, surplus government “powder” was made available to the public at a reduced cost. This less expensive and more effective explosive accelerated the pace of land clearing and stump removal. Railcar loads of pyrotol and sodatol were ordered and shipped to the valley. This powder was stored and distributed from a powder warehouse near Ball’s crossing south of Kalispell.

Manual winch systems were developed that would allow a man to leverage a stump out of the ground. Teams of horses attached to either chains or cable and pulley systems offered another alternative. Chemical treatments intended to kill the root systems were experimented with. Another chemical was used to accelerate the process of burning stumps. One enterprising local gentleman rigged a gasoline engine on a wagon with a complex winch, pulley and cable system. The wagon and engine were anchored to a stump. The pulley and cable system would be connected to half a dozen stumps at once, pulling them out one at a time. The rig could then easily be re-positioned to work on the next batch of stumps. Several local men became quite expert at the process and went into the stump pulling business.

Eventually most of the stumps disappeared from the streets of the cities and the fields of the farms. The stump is not extinct, though. As you travel around the back roads of the valley relics of the old days can still be seen on occasion, many still bearing the scars left by being notched for the sawyer’s spring-board, and Whitefish still proudly bears the moniker “Stumptown” bestowed more than a century ago.