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70 years ago

Feb. 11, 1949

It was air mail to Polebridge and Trail Creek. Pilot Don Peterson flew the mail to MacFarland’s Quarter Circle MC ranch in his airplane and then dropped it out of the plane to postmistress Madge Cooper at Trail Creek. But bad weather grounded him at the ranch, which had its own airstrip. Today, remnants of the strip are still visible in Glacier National Park’s Big Prairie, but the McFarland spread is mostly government owned now, the family owns just a few acres immediately around the cabins.

60 years ago

Feb. 11, 1959

“Champion” snow shoveler in Essex was C.H. Brawley, a retired Great Northern Railway engineer. At 83 years old, he was still shoveling out a walk at was about a half black long. The snow depths that winter were 59 inches at Essex. He started working for the railroad in 1899 and retired in 1946. A photo of Brawley showed the snow up over his head.

50 years ago

Feb. 14, 1969

A story featured 72-year-old Tm Reynolds, who lived a mile from the Canada border up the North Fork. Reynolds was a retired Forest Service cook, trailman and scaler. He had one window in his house covered in cardboard after a moose charged it.

40 years ago

Feb. 15, 1979

Avalanches tore out railroad tracks as well as the U.S. Highway 2 bridge at the Goat Lick. The highway between Essex and Summit was closed indefinitely. The last major avalanche in that area had been in 1975, when a slide blocked the road east of the bridge.

30 years ago

Feb. 15, 1989

Cabin fever Days 30 years ago featured snowmobile drag races, snowshoe softball and of course, bar stool races. Ginny Santisteva was the first woman to win the non-steerable bar stool event. Glacier Park was going to plow the Inside North Fork Road so salvage logging on the Red Bench Fire could continue.

20 years ago

Feb. 15, 1999

Researchers were hoping to unlock the genetic code that allowed bears to sleep most of the winter. A bear, noted researcher Charles Robbin, produced only 50 milliliters of urine over the course of its winter slumber — a feat that could have implications to treat kidney disease as well as facilitate deep space travel if it could be applied to humans.

10 years ago

Feb. 12, 2009

Bill Coleman was named the Columbia Falls High School head football coach. Despite it being January, Columbia Falls had a lot of robins flying around town. The robins were taking advantage of the host of fruit on the trees that was left over from the fall.