Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
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1+ Years Ago - November, Part II: The front-page news in the Jefferson Valley Zephyr on November 18, 1898, was one sad story followed by another. Multiple deaths in the Butte and Anaconda area mines, suicides by morphine in Butte, a rancher's wife near Red Lodge burned and later died trying to clean up spilled kerosene by lighting it on fire, deadly clashes between whites and blacks in North Carolina, and a listing of the death toll from the Civil War: those who died of disease and other cause...
1+ YEARS AGO - November, Part I: Even 126 Years ago, people grew tired of constant political messages before election day and the social unrest on the East Coast. U.S. Government handouts in Cuba were making it difficult to get people back to work. A mine that employed 500 people before the war struggled to keep 150 people on the payroll because miners did not need to earn money for food. U.S. soldiers who returned from the fighting in Cuba were dying by the dozens of typhoid fever. The...
The second half of October 1898 was a mixed bag of events and weather. Springfield, Missouri, experienced the earliest snowfall on record (for the relatively short time European immigrants had lived there). The cold front plunged into the deep south and, on its way, left Kansas City with over three inches of snow. On October 18th, the first American flag was raised in Puerto Rico. Future Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, William O. Douglas, was born on October 16th. Otherwise, late...
Members of the Whitehall Rotary Club delivered much appreciated cases of canned food to the Whitehall Food Pantry last week. All of the canned goods were purchased by the club at Jefferson Fresh Foods. The Rotary club has been helping the Food Pantry for many years in various ways including monetary donations, case goods donations, and helping deliver food baskets at Christmas time for some of the people who do not have a means of picking up a basket on their own. The club holds regular...
Our Town 100+ Years Ago, October Part I: By the fall of 1898, the Jefferson Valley Zephyr highlighted news of the upcoming election and the increase in property values in the 24 Montana counties. Silver Bow was on top with $11,401,665, and Jefferson was well down the list with $1,330,921 for all land, real estate, improvements, town sites, mining claims, telegraph and telephone lines, and railroad property. Still making front page news was the horrible death toll of American soldiers from Typhoi...
The Jefferson Valley Museum is sponsoring a tour of the Whitehall Cemetery on Saturday, October 5th, and Tuesday, October 12th, at 3:30 PM or 6:15 PM. Each tour will last 60 to 75 minutes. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about some of the dearly departed who have played a role in developing our community and valley. Those taking a 6:15 PM tour are encouraged to bring a flashlight since the final portion will have limited natural light. The tour will involve walking through the cemetery and over uneven ground. The ticket cost is...
The Jefferson Valley Museum is sponsoring a tour of the Whitehall Cemetery on Saturday, October 5th, and Tuesday, October 12th, at 3:30 PM or 6:15 PM. Each tour will last 60 to 75 minutes. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about some of the dearly departed who have played a role in developing our community and valley. Those taking a 6:15 PM tour are encouraged to bring a flashlight since the final portion of the tour will have limited natural light. The tour will involve walking through the cemetery and over uneven ground. The...
8+ Years Ago - September, Part II: Headlines in the second half of September 1898 continued the news from early September. Our soldiers returning from the war in Cuba were being misplaced and lost in a broken government system. More than 20,000 children in New York City were turned away from schools because there was not enough room in the now overcrowded buildings. Murders in Red Lodge, Silver Bow, and Meaderville were also front-page news, as was the collapse of a three-story building in...
Early September 1898 in the Jefferson Valley. Children are back in school, and crops are being harvested. Life here seemed pretty good considering news being printed in the Zephyr. A severe wind and hailstorm north of Webster City, Iowa, left $50,000 worth of damage in an area three miles by 12 miles. Soldiers at Montauk Point were battling severe sickness and less than efficient care. About 40% of the 832 deaths of soldiers at Chickamauga were from typhoid fever, including a young man from Butt...
8+ YEARS AGO - August, Part II: The second half of August had a little more joy with the end of the Spanish-American War and Cuba free from the rule of Spain. Randolf Hearst had perfected "yellow journalism" with accounts of the war stating, "You furnish the pictures, and I will furnish the war." Instead of focusing on factual details of what was happening in Cuba, papers were running sensational headlines and shocking details of the battle. But all was not lost to war headlines. Caleb...
8+ YEARS AGO - August, Part I: There were plenty of headlines in August 1898 to entice readers to stay engaged with the paper. American troops serving outside our borders were succumbing to Yellow Fever, with hundreds reported sick. Here in the U.S., typhoid fever was the enemy. A letter from a Butte soldier serving with Troop L at Chickamauga said, "Twenty men in our troop are reported sick this morning, and two more deaths are expected. There are 500 cases of typhoid fever. The extreme heat...
8+ YEARS AGO - July, Part II: Another hot July was ending, and people hoped the fighting in Cuba and the Philippines would also end. Something like Yellow Fever was making our soldiers sick. Americans were freed in a prisoner exchange with Spain. The Hawaiian Islands made the front page on the July 15, 1898 Zephyr in a report on the population – 110,000 people, of which 31,000 were Hawaiians, 9,000 part Hawaiian, 24,000 Japanese, 22,000 Chinese, 15,000 Portuguese, 5,500 Americans and the r...
8+ Years Ago - July, Part I: The front pages of the newspapers in July 1898 were filled with war stories. Young men from Montana who had signed up for military duty were writing letters home from camp. A train wreck in Mississippi killed four members of Col. Torrey's regiment of rough riders. Men were making good money mining in Southwest Montana, and some were losing their lives in mine accidents. A passenger ship near Sable Island in the North Atlantic was struck by an iron sailing ship and...
The Whitehall Rotary Club is sponsoring free admission to the Whitehall Community Pool on Saturday, July 20, 2024, during regular pool hours for the first 100 people who do not already hold a season pass for the facility. The club would like to encourage local residents and families to come and enjoy a little time at the pool. This is the first time the Whitehall Rotary Club has sponsored a free pool day, and if it is well received, we will look at sponsoring others in the future. The Whitehall Rotary Club meets on the first and second Tuesday...
OUR TOWN 100+ YEARS AGO - June, Part II: While life in the Jefferson Valley was fairly ordinary, life beyond contained a lot of turmoil. Butte and Anaconda were dealing with different kinds of tragedies. On the front page of the June 17, 1898 Jefferson Valley Zephyr headlines featured "Little Ethel Gill of Butte Outraged, Murdered and Her Body Hidden in an Old Vault;" Bastian Colus died at the concentrator building at the Anaconda upper works when he was caught in machinery; and in Helena, Miss...
OUR TOWN 100+ YEARS AGO - June Part 1: June 1898, school is out for the summer, crops are growing, and headlines in the Jefferson Valley Zephyr highlight some national news. U.S. troops, by the thousands, have landed in Cuba to fight the Spanish invasion. Montana recruits for this war were among the healthiest in the nation, with only 6% rejected for physical disability. In Omaha, a young Salvationist, Miss Dorothy Mauer, used an ax to chop up artwork and sculptures she considered indecent....
Members of the Whitehall Rotary Club and several family members worked on May 31st to prepare the pond for the arrival of the summer trout on June 4th. Dirt, leaves, and other debris were removed, and the tarp was installed on top. Adult trout supplied by the federal fish hatchery near Ennis will grace the pond this summer. Unlike previous years, fish food will not be sold at the pond. One of the Rotary members will feed the fish to protect their health and keep the pond cleaner. The fish will remain in the pond until sometime in...
8+ YEARS AGO - May, Part II: Late May 1898 had headlines about the Naval warfare near Cuba, dozens dead after a tornado swept through Clinton and Jackson counties in Iowa and parts of western Illinois, and five masked men made off with $25,000 of valuables when they held up a passenger train near Cuba, Alabama. Whitehall had many good things happening, some of which people were unhappy about. The following articles are taken as written from the May 20 and 27, 1898 editions of the Jefferson...
The Jefferson Valley Museum will open for its 29th season on Saturday, May 25th, and will be open for visitors on Monday, May 27th. Regular open hours are noon to 4 PM, Tuesday through Sunday. Displays are always being updated, so even if a visit was made within the past couple of years, there will be new items to see. Museum volunteers are often at the museum on Monday afternoons, and this is a good time to drop off artifacts or learn more about the museum. The last day of regular operation...
8+ YEARS AGO - May, Part I: Front page headlines in May 1898 Jefferson Valley Zephyr editions featured war stories, states rights vs. the attempt to nationalize the military forces, banks in Montana and Germany in trouble, death on Montana roads from people being thrown from wagons, riots in Italy over taxes on flour; and, Butte being "infested with the toughest gang of crooks and hoboes every seen within the confines of Silver Bow county..." Whitehall finally gained a local undertaker named...
On May 8, 2024, four members of the Whitehall Rotary Club visited the federal fish hatchery near Ennis, Montana, to learn more about the proper care of trout stocked in the Whitehall historic fishpond each summer. Rotarians Karen Burtch, Candace Ahlin, Libby McBride, and Arlene Weber spent an hour with hatchery staff learning about the hatchery's process and better ways to keep the fish healthy once they are in the pond here in town. The club is obtaining the proper permit to transport larger...
8 YEARS AGO - April, Part II: There is always good and bad news every month of every year. In the second half of April 1899, the good and bad made headlines. The Anaconda Company coal washer at Belt, Montana, was destroyed by fire and affected the livelihood of dozens of men. The two houses of Congress were fighting over a resolution about Spain's invasion of Cuba. Bertha Maxwell of Boulder sued prominent mining man John Holmes for breach of promise of marriage (there is much more to this...
The Jefferson Valley Museum’s annual program and meeting will be held on Thursday, April 4, 2024, at 6:45 PM at the Star Theatre at 25 Legion Avenue. The concession stand will be open for refreshments. There is no admission charge. A short museum update will occur at 6:45 PM, and two museum board member positions will be elected. The program will begin at 7 PM. This year’s program will feature families who settled in the South Boulder area, including Sacry, Powell, Shaw, Armstrong, and Carmody. Photos on the big screen will help highlight the...
The Jefferson Valley Museum's annual program and meeting will be held on Thursday, April 4, 2024, at 6:45 PM at the Star Theatre on Legion Avenue. The concession stand will be open for refreshments. There is no admission charge. A short museum update will occur at 6:45 PM, and two museum board member positions will be elected. The program will begin at 7 PM. This year's program will feature families who settled in the South Boulder area, including Sacry, Powell, Shaw, Armstrong, and Carmody. Photos on the big screen will help highlight the...
8 YEARS AGO - MARCH, PART II: Spring began in March 1898. While local farmers were preparing for a new planting of their crops, things were a little more tumultuous in other parts of the state and country. In Missoula, Mr. F.W. Morris, who was in the new medical profession of osteopathist, was arrested for practicing medicine without a certificate from the Montana medical board. California Governor Budd asked Montana Governor Smith to help his state celebrate its 50th anniversary of being admi...
