admin | June 8, 2010
It’s safe to say that if you’re going to follow the footprint of the original Mullan Road this summer, you’ll probably have one of those moo-ving Montana experiences. You know, the kind that occurs when your backroad is blocked by languorous broods of red or black bovines. Admit it: you’ve leaned out the window and [...]
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 | March 9, 2010
Just a note: Today marks the 130th anniversary of the entrance of the first railroad into Montana (Territory). On March 9, 1880, the Utah and Northern laid tracks over Monida Pass. In their book “The Battle for Butte,” Michael Malone and William Lang wrote of the occasion: “Butte folks sipped champagne and listened joyously to [...]
admin | January 29, 2010
Thanks to Minie Smith for pointing this out. She’s been researching the Fires of 1910 for the Fort Missoula museum and came across a large ad in the Aug. 20, 1910, Missoulian (the day the fires took off). There’s a photo of the Merc in the middle top with “1885″ on one side and “1910″ [...]
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 | September 1, 2009
One of my late dog’s favorite places to romp was through Tunnel 16 1/2. It’s the train tunnel on the abandoned Milwaukee Road above what once was the Milltown Dam. In the 1990s until dam cleanup workers gated it off a few years ago, it was a palette for surprising splashes of “street art,” much [...]
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