Weaver captured early Flathead on film
Photo looking south on Main Street from the intersection of Main Street and Second Street, an unknown occasion. Distinguishable businesses are Jack’s Tavern, Winkler’s A Store for Women, Army Goods Store, Alton Pearce Drug Store, JC Penneys, Robbin and Robbin Men’s Clothing, Conrad National Bank, Antiseptic Barber Shop, Jordet Clothing. Photo by Ray Weaver, courtesy of Northwest Montana History Museum.
The staff of Todd’s Bake Shop in Kalispell next to a cake baked for the 50th anniversary of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, taken around 1954. Photo by Ray Weaver, courtesy of Northwest Montana History Museum.
A crowd of people looking down Main Street in Kalispell, but at what? We’ll never know. Veterans and dignitaries posing for a picture next to the “doughboy” sculpture when it was in Kalispell. (Today it’s at the Montana Veterans Home in Columbia Falls.
Men standing in front a 38-star American Flag.
Those are just some of the photographs on display at the Northwest Montana History Museum taken by Kalispell photographer Ray Weaver.
Raymond “Ray” Weaver returned to Kalispell from World War I in 1919 with permanent lung damage from a mustard gas attack in the trenches of France.
On returning home, he picked up a camera and seemingly never put it down. Weaver’s sharp eye and strong sense of composition come through each image.
Weaver was born in 1892 and died in 1964.
A dozen of Weaver’s images will be on display through the winter months at the Northwest Montana History Museum, 124 Second Ave. E., Kalispell, thanks to Rand and Linda Robbin and museum volunteer Jane Renfrow.
Rand Robbin, a printmaker, rancher and talented artist in his own right, made the prints for the display. The families back in the day were good friends, he said, and he eventually came into possession of Weaver’s negatives. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. For more information visit nwmthistory.org or call 756-8381.
The staff of Todd’s Bake Shop in Kalispell next to a cake baked for the 50th anniversary of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, taken around 1954. Photo by Ray Weaver, courtesy of Northwest Montana History Museum.