admin | October 22, 2010
Oct. 22, 1929 Urban Diteman of Billings, dubbed the “Flying Cowboy from Montana,” takes off in a monoplane from the airstrip in Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. He is presumably headed for New York. Only his wife knows differently. Diteman hands the manager of the airdrome a sealed letter marked, “Open after departure” to give to a [...]
admin | May 25, 2010
The yellow sign in the rearview mirror said “No Regular Maintenance: Travel At Your Own Risk” and I had to laugh. From the stories I’ve heard, Lt. John Mullan probably should have been required to post such signs every few miles or so when he came through here with his road-builders in 1860 and 1862. [...]
admin | May 9, 2010
The Mullan Road conference, marking the 150th anniversary of the road’s construction, is May 20-22 in Fort Benton and there’s still time to register. They want the registration forms by May 17 for those who want to take part in the whole shooting match, which includes what should be a great bus trip to the [...]
admin | March 25, 2010
If not for Benjamin Rush, there might not be a Travelers’ Rest State Park out by Lolo. Rush was one of our nation’s founding fathers, he signed the Declaration of Independence, and in 1812 he famously soothed the bruised feelings between former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and got them talking — or at [...]
admin | March 20, 2010
In the post below, I noted that Gary Moulton is working on a narrative of the day-by-day travels of Lewis and Clark. At a conference called “Science & Humanities: Inseparable by Nature” last Sunday in Great Falls, he talked about another research project concerning Sacajawea. How many times, he asked an audience that was clearly [...]
admin | January 25, 2010
Carl Haywood of Thompson Falls (“Sometimes Only Horses to Eat”) sent this note in last Thursday: Wanted to share an exciting bit of information with friends and relatives I think might be interested. An hour ago I received an e-mail inviting me to present a paper on Explorer David Thompson (the subject of my book) [...]
admin | December 8, 2009
We’re in the early stages of the 150th anniversary of construction of the Mullan Road (see story in Missoulian, Dec. 5) and if you’re like me you get to wondering what it was like around here in 1859-60. George Weisel’s trusty “Men and Trade on the Northwest Frontier,” a remarkable study based on the ledger [...]
admin | November 19, 2009
Thought I’d trot this one out again. We ran it in the paper in the lead-up to the 2001 “Brawl of the Wild.” Not everyone in Montana gives a damn about the Grizzly-Bobcat football game. But folks from all walks of life do, and don’t our peculiar walks define us? I’ve long thought the home [...]
admin | November 10, 2009
Thanks to Carl Haywood for tracking this down. If you missed the initial showing of the PBS documentary on David Thompson last week, here’s the info for the next one. If anybody knows when else and where else it’s showing, let me know. WHAT: Uncharted Territory: “David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau” WHEN: Wed, Nov [...]
admin | November 9, 2009
OK, does this sound familiar? Yesterday was a day of misty weather, cloudy but fine in the Thompson Falls area. Today is a fine day again, but unmisty and not so cloudy. It’s what folks in T-Falls are experiencing this morning in 2009, and what David Thompson encountered exactly 200 years. It wasn’t easy at [...]
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