Your Best Source For Sanders County News
Your Best Source For Sanders County News
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5 YEARS AGO • MAY 9, 1974 SWIMMING POOL PROPOSAL STUDIED The possibility of constructing a junior olympic size swimming pool with half of the cost being funded by Bureau of Outdoor Recreation funds was explored Monday evening at a meeting of the city, school trustees and representatives of various local civic organizations. Fred Statson, swimming coach at the University of Montana and Tom Greenwood of the Montana Dept. of Fish & Game, which handles BOR fund allocations in Montana, explained the program whereby a new pool 45 by 75 feet could b...
4 YEARS AGO • JULY 5, 1984 RESIDENTS REVEAL FAVORITE LOCAL ATTRACTIONS A lot of folks enjoy a vacation or business trip to the west to get into the mountains and the trees. For the folks in Thompson Falls who like to show off the area it’s trees, mountains and lots more. The Ledger queried local residents this past week to find out some of the attractions nearby that draw visitors here for a visit, campout or hunting trip. Norma Draszt, past president of theThompson Falls Jaycee Women, likes to take visitors to the Sanders County Fair, the...
6 YEARS AGO • JUNE 18, 1964 CHERRY CREEK BRIDGE ORDERED Repairs to county roads and bridges damaged or washed out by last week’s flood are being made as quickly as possible, County Commissioner Jesse W. Lee reported this week. Lee said he ordered material Monday for a new bridge across Cherry Creek and that it will be built as quickly as possible. The Curran and Saint families now can reach their homes only by a temporary footbridge erected last week by county employees. A culvert washed out at Bear Creek on the Blue Slide was being rep...
6 YEARS AGO • JUNE 18, 1964 FLOOD DAMAGED ROAD REPAIR WORK STARTED Local bulldozers and operators employed by the Forest Service will begin an onslaught today to repair flood damage to the Graves and Deep Creek roads, District Ranger Irwin Puphal announced. Puphal said Jim Carrico and Dick Nichols will begin work this morning on the Graves Creek road which has 20 known washouts and the second bridge gone. In addition, much of the road’s surfacing has been washed away by side streams. Carl Hillquist is to begin work today with his dozer on the...
6 YEARS AGO • JUNE 11, 1964 RAGING STREAMS CAUSE MAJOR DAMAGE TO ROADS, BRIDGES With smaller streams slowly receding, efforts in Sanders County Wednesday were being turned towards repairing damages to roads, bridges and culverts while attention was being maintained on the main Clark Fork River. The flow of the river over the Montana Power Co. dam Wednesday morning had reached 117,500 cubic feet per second and was still rising. Only the 1950 and 1948 high water flows surpassed Wednesday’s flow here and the report is, “more is coming.” 1948 wa...
11 YEARS AGO • JUNE 9, 1960 TF SWIMMING POOL TO OPEN WEDNESDAY Thompson Falls’ heated community swimming pool will open for the summer Wednesday. Miss Nancy Friday has been employed as lifeguard and John Duffield will be an assistant. The pool will be open for three two-hour shifts daily Tuesday through Sunday of each week. It will be closed Mondays for cleaning. Children up to 10 years old who are able to take care of themselves will swim daily from 1 to 3 p.m. Boys and girls 10 years and older will swim from 3 to 5 p.m. and adults and familie...
6 YEARS AGO • MAY 14, 1964 MAIN STREET FILLED WITH BUSINESS SHIFTS Spring is time for a change and nowhere is change more evident this spring than in the business community of Thompson Falls. This week announcements were made of two major shifts - sale of the Big Pine Tourist Court (most recently known as Little Bear) and the scheduled move of the Stobie Shopping Center (from the building now housing True Value) to the former’s Vet Club Hall this weekend. These changes are but two among more than in the past 12-month period involving 20 whi...
6 YEARS AGO • FEBRUARY 1964 CITY TO DONATE SCHOOL SITE The city council Monday agreed to make available to School District 2 from 20 to 25 acres in the old golf course area as a future school building site. Before a formal transfer of ground is made to the school district, the city council will have to have a survey made to determine the number of available acres remaining on the old golf course. Other details of the transfer would have to be worked out between the city attorney and the school district’s legal council. The council ind...
8 YEARS AGO • MAY 24, 1944 HIT OR MISS Running a newspaper is getting to be a tougher job every year. Part of the reason is bookkeeping. Years ago when we first started in we didn’t have to keep books. Whatever we took in we threw in the jack-pot, and then kept drawing out of the pot until it was empty. Of course most of the time the pot was empty, but we didn’t have to make any accounting. Now it is different - every dime you take in you have to keep a record of for income tax deduction purposes. No ifs, ands or buts! At that our recor...
THE HOT CORNER BUSINESS IN DOWNTOWN THOMPSON FALLS Compiled by Patrick J. Sullivan A corner lot on Railroad Avenue, now known as Main Street or Highway 200, across from the railroad depot is possibly the most continuously occupied business space in Thompson Falls. The corner first hosted the two-story Harrison Hotel, a wooden building, during the prospector boom days of 1884 known as the "Coeur d'Alene excitement." Dr. E. Peek arrived in Trout Creek in 1901 and by 1905 had also opened a drug...
6 YEARS AGO • MAY 8, 1919 IMPROVING LARGE RANCH The Clarks Fork Land and Cattle Co., of which H.A. White is manager, is preparing to do considerable development work on their large tract of land east of town on Woodlin flat. Mr. White has opened up a camp and has two tractor plowing outfits in operation at this time, a number of teams, and expects to have another tractor working by the end of the week, and seed at least 100 acres to alfalfa during the summer. It is the intention of the company to stock their ranch, which comprises some 5...
4 YEARS AGO • MAY 17, 1984 GOVERNOR PROPOSED SIX COUNTY WILD AREAS Six roadless areas in Sanders County national forest lands have been recommended by Governor Ted Schwinden to Congress for designation to the Federal Wilderness System. Of the six areas in Sanders County, four areas are additions to the established Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and two others - Scotchman Peaks and Cube Iron - would constitute new wilderness. Sanders County areas recommended for wilderness status in addition to the 45,115-acre Scotchman Peaks are: Lolo Forest -...
6 YEARS AGO FEBRUARY 27, 1919 SUCCESSFUL TELEPHONE MEETING AT WHITEPINE A great deal of interest was shown in the telephone meeting at Whitepine Saturday evening. Fred Foote reported that he had secured 17 signers for the telephone in the vicinity of Belknap and Big Beaver. Four people from across the river are also ready to put in telephones. The report of the committee was followed by a lively discussion in which various ideas were presented. A motion was made, seconded and carried that a co-operative phone company be organized. After more...
7 YEARS AGO • APRIL 29, 1954 FEASIBILITY OF NOXON RAPIDS DAM TO BE DETERMINED THIS SUMMER The Washington Water Power Co. expects to determine feasibility of the proposed Noxon Rapids dam sometime this summer according to a spokesman for the utility. He also declared that it was possible that another 350,000 kilowatts of new power could be developed at the site. Currently three diamond drilling rigs are drilling tests for possible wing locations and to check the clay blanket along the reservoir shoreline. Last week the churn drilling rigs h...
4 YEARS AGO • APRIL 26, 1984 FOREST SERVICE CHOOSES PLAINS Orville Daniels, Supervisor of the Lolo National Forest, announced the decision not to seek a new lease for office space in Thompson Falls. That decision came after four months of exploring possibilities of how best to operate the combined offices of the Plains-Thompson Falls Ranger district. Last November, the forest service announced that they were reconsidering an earlier decision made to move the district headquarters to Thompson Falls. They felt economics favored the move to P...
4 YEARS AGO • MARCH 29, 1984 EDNA HILL LEADS A RUGGED REWARDING LIFE by Linda Shaffer Continued from last week… During her childhood in Trout Creek mainly - a few years in Polson - Edna recalls all eight grades being housed in one room. “There were three of us in the eighth grade. I still have my report cards.” It was a frame building sawed out by her granddad, she says. High school for Edna was in Thompson Falls, boarding at the dorm during the week and riding the train home on Fridays. “We liked catching the #3 train back to Trout Creek on F...
4 YEARS AGO • MARCH 29, 1984 EDNA HILL LEADS A RUGGED REWARDING LIFE by Linda Shaffer Mainly, she is a mountain woman. And she has been all her “39 years.” Edna Hill at her ranch in Trout Creek smiles amidst trophies of elk and other wild game she has hunted and photographed over the years. And hunters she has guided have warned others about her. “Watch out for that woman in Montana…she’ll walk you to death,” they say. Hill has been guiding new hunters in Sanders County’s rough mountain country for over 40 years of her adult life. And if th...
7 YEARS AGO • MARCH 11, 1999 REALIZATION OF DREAM EVIDENT IN NEW CENTER The realization of a long-held dream was shared with over 140 people when the Thompson Falls Senior Citizens formally dedicated their new center east of town. Members of the group were understandingly beaming as they freely gave tours through the building for the many guests. Elthea Butcher, the secretary for the group, said the structure was financed primarily from their savings from years of fundraisers and dues and then the package was completed by a zero-interest l...
THOMPSON FALLS IN THE YEAR 1894 There was a newspaper published in Thompson Falls in 1894. It was called the Weekly Montanian. H.A. Hendricks was the publisher. The Montanian went out of business, and shortly after the new County of Sanders was established, the Sanders County Ledger appeared (1905). We make comments from its columns: Advertisements then appearing were: J.A. Allen, “Fine Kentucky and Monongahela Whiskies,” Joe Webber, “Boots and Shoes,” Preston’s Livery and Feed Stables, Barnes and Lutton, “Wines, Liquors and Cigarettes,...
8 YEARS AGO • APRIL 5, 1944 Obituary NELSON GRANDCHAMP, Pioneer Nelson Grandchamp, the son of Joseph and Petroniel Grandchamp, was born March 19, 1870 and died March 29, 1944. In 1884 the family traveled by an old narrow gauge railroad to Salt Lake City and came north to this region. They got off the train at the old Woodlin station (east of Thompson Falls) and remained on the Woodlin Flats for a number of years where they operated the first of several sawmills there in the midst of a stand of magnificent timber. Nelson helped his family in t...
13 YEARS AGO • MARCH 8, 1939 EDDY ASKS RURAL ELECTRIFICATION LINE TRANSMISSION The directors of the Clarks Fork Power Association met with heads of families living in the Eddy section last weekend to discuss the possibilities of extending the powerline from Thompson Falls to Eddy and vicinity. Eighteen potential electrification line customers were present at the meeting which took place. So far about forty have signed up asking for the power line extension. It is hoped that conditions will permit the extension of the line to service this l...
WHERE IS SWORD RIVER? There were established trails across this continent before the Europeans explored here. One of the greatest of these being the trail from Montreal to the mouth of the Columbia River. This trail ran through what is now Sanders County, this particular section of it known as the Kootenai Trail. This trail, near the present site of Dixon on the Jocko River, called “Sword River” by the Indians, and closely paralleled the Flathead River which it crossed near its junction with the Missoula (river). From that point, the trail cont...
5 YEARS AGO • FEBRUARY 7, 1974 GRADER OPERATOR UNHURT AFTER FIVE ROLLS DOWNHILL Harold (Dutch) Lentz rode a road grader down a mountainside as it rolled over five times Monday morning before daylight and he walked away with only a few scratches and bruises. His black dog survived the trip with him. Ben G. Cox, for whom Lentz works, said Lentz was backing his grader near a curve where a truck was parked when it went off the road and took the wild, tumbling ride down the mountain. The site was in Everson Gulch, near where James (Bronc) M...
8 YEARS AGO • FEBRUARY 2, 1944 HISTORICAL RECORD The article below is a recopy of a historical memorandum for the record transmitted to the local supervisor’s office by Regional Forester, Evan W. Kelley of Missoula. Contents may be of interest to many locally. MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD: “Ed Donlan was in my office on December 30, and as usual, he engaged in reminiscing about older times down in the Thompson Falls country. He alleges that he built the first sawmill below Thompson Falls near Belknap in 1904 (there were sawmills preceding this...
7 YEARS AGO • JANUARY 7, 1954 COUNCIL TO INSTALL TWO STREET LIGHTS Installation of two additional street lights - one at the corner of Ferry Street and Third Avenue and at the depot steps (these steps were located directly across from True Value Hardware and guided pedestrians down the steep slope from the train depot to Main Street) - was ordered by the Thompson Falls City Council in its regular session Monday night. The council issued two building permits - one to Claude Gray for a chicken house and the other to Leonard Kelly for an extensio...
