Yesterdays: Flood of '64 turned trails to trenches

70 years ago

Sept. 3, 1954

It had been a wet August, with Desert Mountain Lookout getting 1.75 inches of rain and the Coram Ranger Station seeing 4.4 inches of rain. Glacier Park was building a 96-foot long foot bridge over Two Medicine Creek near the campground. The old foot bridge was wiped out by an avalanche the winter before.

60 years ago

Sept. 4, 1964

Crews were still dealing with trail damage from the Flood of ‘64 in June. One trail up the Middle Fork of the Flathead was so eroded a trail crew member could stand in it and it was a ditch over his head.

50 years ago

Sept. 6, 1974

The state Board of Health was prepared to give the Anaconda Aluminum Co. five years to comply with state air pollution standards. The goal at the time was to capture 85% of the fluoride being emitted by the plant and 70% of the “particulates.”

40 years ago

Sept. 6, 1984

Rains fell, quelling area wildfires. All told about 19,500 acres burned regionally, costing about $4.7 million to fight.

30 years ago

Sept. 1, 1994

The Park Service didn’t think it was an 800-pound grizzly that mauled a British Columbia man in Many Glacier. They found evidence that suggested a much smaller bear, perhaps, even, a black bear. Still, the bear managed to claw the man’s chest and bite his head while he was hiking the Ptarmigan Tunnel/Iceberg Lake Trail earlier that summer.

20 years ago

Sept. 2, 2004

Glacier National Park had put out a prospectus for operating the Sperry and Granite Park chalets. The estimated revenue from the operation of both was about $434,000 the document said.

10 years ago

Sept. 3, 2014

F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber said it was curtailing production at its mill from 80 hours per week to 60 hours. The company blamed a recent court ruling that curtailed timber harvests on the Stillwater State Forest.