Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
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The Jefferson Valley Museum is offering a free program on Wednesday evening, February 19th, at 7 PM at the museum barn. Take a "walk" through the Whitehall cemetery while comfortably seated in a warm room. The program will cover history given at the October cemetery walk with some additional information included. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about more than 30 past residents of the town and valley, some well-known and others few have heard about; all played a part in our...
1 YEARS AGO - FEBRUARY 1925, Part II: February 1925 was busy around the world. Headlines in the Jefferson Valley News that month included Income Tax Returns Must Be Filed By March 15; President Pays Sincere Tribute To Newspapers; Walsh To Pay Supreme Penalty This Saturday (he was sentenced to death in the murder of Al Johnson in Renova); and 3 Killed in Auto Plunge at Jefferson Island; and, for the first time in U. S. history, the Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies To Be Broadcasted. Other...
The Jefferson Valley Museum is offering a free program on Wednesday evening, February 19th, at 7 PM at the museum barn. Take a "walk" through the Whitehall cemetery while comfortably seated in a warm room. The program will cover the history given at the October cemetery walk with some additional information included. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about more than 30 past residents of the town and valley, some well-known and others few have heard about; all played a part in our...
Our Town 100+ Years Ago - February, Part I: This week the focus will be just on news from the February editions of the Jefferson Valley Zephyr. All are taken as written with some edited for length only. The photo is an ad that appeared in several February editions. News from around the state varied from murder to severe weather and a multitude of topics in between. Some of the headlines were: A HAMMER DID IT, Murder of Henry Dahlman at Boulder by a Man Known as Frank or "Cap" Carson; SEVENTEEN B...
For many years the Whitehall Rotary Club has been collecting aluminum cans at the local dump site and at Jefferson Fresh Foods, with the money received from recycling funding local service projects. Club members have decided to drop this program and develop a new fundraising/service project option, which will be announced soon. The Rotary Club greatly appreciates the several tons of aluminum cans collected and donated by Whitehall residents and businesses over the years. If any other...
Our Town 100+ Years Ago - January, Part II: Where to start with the headlines from the second half of January 1899? There was a lot going on. Daily voting was taking place to determine our next U. S. Senator and each day, Mr. Clark would gain a few more votes until he finally had enough to claim the seat. Gold and copper were the talk of Highland mining news. Shelby, Montana, made headlines for the murders of multiple sheepmen. From the 1889 flu epidemic in London came a report that effective...
Our Town 100+ Years Ago - January, Part I: The final year to start with 18 began in January 1899. Headlines from outside of Montana mentioned postage for a letter to Canada was two cents per ounce; former Idaho U. S. Senator Dubois married Edna Maxfield Whited from South Dakota; Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated as governor of New York; and the sovereignty of Cuba was passed from Spain to the United States. Front page news in Montana included the sixth biennial session of the Montana...
1+ Years Ago - December, Part II: In December 1898, winter was officially starting; Whitehall was growing, and Marie and Pierre Curie were discovering radium. The front page of the Zephyr was filled with the delinquent tax list, including names and property, which included multiple mining companies. The state reform school was housing 62 boys and 12 girls, with a cost estimated at $20,000 for the year. The Montana Board of Equalization gave the governor a report outlining a radical change to...
1+ Years Ago - December, Part I: While the children were counting down the days to Christmas back in December 1898, adults were busy with world affairs. The peace treaty of Paris was being finalized with the key details of Spain withdrawing from Cuba and the Philippines and giving up its sovereignty over Puerto Rico. The U.S. postal service was suffering growing pains with 73,000 post offices and 200,000 employees and a projected debt for the year 1900 of over $4,000,000. The 55th Congress was...
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....
