Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
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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...
For many years, Whitehall Rotarians have been recycling aluminum cans as one of their fundraising and community service projects. People have generously dropped their cans off at the county dump and the bin next to Jefferson Fresh Foods. Every couple of months, club members spend one to two hours sorting the dozens of bags into large white bags donated by a local talc plant. The bags are then hauled to a recycling center in Butte. Part of the money received is donated to Liberty Place to help...
8 YEARS AGO - MARCH, PART I: March 1899 came in like a lion in weather and news. There were troubled relations between the U.S. and Spain over events in Cuba. On March 8, 1899, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously to make $50 million available for national defense. Jury tampering was suspected in Wilkesbarre, PA when they acquitted Sheriff Martin and his deputies for the killing of strikers. Russia was threatening to move troops into Manchuria. At Anaconda, Montana, three...
8 Years Ago - February, Part II: Depending on who you were, February 1898 was either a good or a terrible month. Things were getting tough for cotton mill owners and workers as the fourth week of a strike moved into the fifth. French Canadian workers from those mills were moving back to Canada causing a potential labor shortage. Heavy rains in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana caused many mudslides and negatively affected railroads, especially the Northern Pacific. Yale...
Members of the Whitehall Rotary Club volunteered their time during the District Basketball tournament held at the Manhattan Christian Event Center in Churchill on February 14th through the 17th. More than 65 combined volunteer hours were worked staffing the tournament admission desk, helping with attendance count, and selling tournament programs. Joan Jones, Libby McBride, Karen Burtch, Arlene Weber, Pod Moriarty, and Terry Ross worked in pairs during the tournament putting in at least six...
The Jefferson Valley Museum will host its second free winter program at the museum barn on Tuesday, February 20th at 7 PM. This will be an old-fashioned slide show of local historic photos. The slide show was assembled by Roy Millegan, Sr. sometime in the 1990s and will be presented in the same order as his original arrangement. Photos include many early mining operations, local people who worked the mines, and some of those who supported the miners. The museum's annual meeting is scheduled for...
8 Years Ago - February, Part I: February 1898 was not starting well for many people. 600 ironworkers in Newcastle, Delaware were out of work and their families were facing starvation, several store owners were nearing bankruptcy and at least 1800 people were able to, left Newcastle due to the lack of food and fuel. Fire ravaged a warehouse in Pittsburg causing a $2,000,000 loss of property and in Aiken, South Carolina, the popular Highland Park Hotel burned to the ground. In Butte, Thomas F. F...
Whitehall Rotarians have been staffing the admission table for Whitehall High School home games in basketball, wrestling, and sometimes volleyball, for many years. The club receives a donation from the school for club volunteer time. That money is then used by the Rotary club to help fund activities they support for students that have included dictionary/reference books for third graders, scholarships for graduating seniors, Rotary leadership camp, and Boys and Girls State. The club has...
The Jefferson Valley Museum will host its first of two free winter programs at the museum barn on Tuesday, January 23rd at 7 PM. This will be an old-fashioned slide show of local historic photos. The slide show was assembled by Roy Millegan, Sr. sometime in the 1990s and will be presented in the same order as his original arrangement. Photos include many early Whitehall buildings, railroad structures, and local people spanning from the 1890s to the 1950s....
8 Years Ago - January Part II: Mine tragedies in Butte, Anaconda, and near Georgetown continued in the second half of January. Three men died at the Gold Coin mine at Gold Coin near Georgetown when two of them "were nearly hurled into eternity." A man known as George May or George Fisher was arrested in Malta, Montana on a charge of bigamy. He had wives in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, Grand Forks and Devils Lake, North Dakota, and Glasgow, Montana. Thousands of cotton mill workers in New England...
8 YEARS AGO - JANUARY, PART I: A new year has just begun and a new century is just around the corner in January 1898. Unfortunately, miner deaths in Butte and Anaconda were all too commonplace. In London, Ontario, 30 people were killed when the floor in the city hall collapsed under the weight of several thousand who had gathered after election polls had closed. The U.S. Congress was heading back to work with a focus on the Hawaiian annexation question, a contested senate seat for Oregon, and...
8 YEARS AGO - December, Part II: Another year is closing and a new century is only a couple of years away. 1897 was, for many, thankfully coming to an end. In Seattle, 2.74 inches of rain in twelve hours left rivers swollen. In the Yukon, men have been leaving in droves due to a lack of food and impending winter weather. At Mammoth up the South Boulder, Ed Kennedy, a crippled man, had enough of William Barclay’s abuse and threw a pick at Barclay, striking him in the head. Mr. Barclay would s...
8 YEARS AGO - December, Part I: December 1897 was proving to have a typical Montana winter. More horrific deaths were reported in the Butte mines. At Dunham, Montana, on the Blackfoot reservation, a wreck on the Great Northern railway resulted in two deaths and two injuries with the eastbound passenger train engines a tangled mass after derailing from heavy snow. The University of Montana and the Bozeman Agricultural College (now MSU) played a Thanksgiving Day football game with U of M...
