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The buffet line at the Bad Rock Grange, October 29, 1949. This photo was never published. (Mel ruder photo)
70 years ago
June 18, 1948
The Flathead Citizens Committee was looking for the “leanest” horse in the valley, ribs showing, for the Hungry Horse Dam July 10th official start of the construction of the dam. The lean critter was to have an important part of the ceremony, along with a big bag of oats. Employment at the dam was over 700.
60 years ago
June 20, 1958
They were testing TV signals on top of Teakettle Mountain. A Spokane firm had set up a generator, antennae and TV on the mountain and was getting good signals from channel 4 in Spokane as well as Missoula and even Lethbridge, Alberta. An old skid road was opened up to make away for the project.
50 years ago
June 21, 1968
There were nearly 100 new jobs at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. plant as expansion of the facility was nearly complete. Total employment was 827. Leonard Stutsman was airlifted to Loneman Lookout in Glacier Park. It was the Iowa man’s eighth summer at the Lookout, which is a long walk by trail from the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. Over all those summers, he never got a visitor except for the packer who brought him up supplies. There was still about seven feet of snow at the Lookout — more than normal.
40 years ago
June 22, 1978
Montana was considering new regulations for bighorn sheep horns and skulls to keep people from poaching the animals. Poaching was a big problem at the time on Wild Horse Island, as heads fetched $800 apiece at auction. One idea was to drill a hole in a legally taken ram and put lead in it to mark it as such.
30 years ago
June 22, 1988
Helicopter pilot Jim Kruger was charged with three misdemeanor counts of harassing grizzly bears in Glacier National Park after self-described bear expert Doug Peacock claimed Kruger flew his helicopter too close to the bears, which were in the Fern Creek drainage. Kruger denied the claim and said he was being harassed by environmentalists, with which he’d had past differences.
20 years ago
June 18, 1998
A plan to expand parking at Avalanche Creek in Glacier National Park was stopped by a federal judge after a lawsuit by the Coalition for Canyon Preservation and the Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads filed suit, claiming the Park had miscounted the number of trees that would be removed for the project. Bear expert Charles Jonkel objected to the removal of grizzly bears in Glacier Park that were linked to the death of Craig Dahl. The Park had shot the bears, but Jonkel said the evidence the bears actually killed Dahl was “thin” and “circumstantial.”
10 years ago
June 19, 2008
Heavy snows in Glacier’s high country had set back park plowing efforts. Upwards of two feet of snow had fallen and avalanches were making plowing difficult. Crews had to work through 12 avalanches that had come down over the road. Matt Triplett won the state high school bullriding championship as a sophomore. Today, Triplett competes in the Professional Bullriders series and has been ranked as high as 7th in the world.