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 Whitehall Class of 2020 will graduate in six separate ceremonies scheduled for this Sunday in Varsity Gym. With such an upheaval in everyone's lives this spring, we are thankful we are able to provide senior graduates and their families a unique and personal ceremony. On May 31st, graduates will be able to receive their diplomas during small ceremonies scheduled throughout the day. Each ceremony will include the graduation video, which includes speeches from the guest speaker Holly Harper,...
Caverns tours have started for the season at the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. According to park officials, this year there will be new tour protocols to limit the spread of COVID-19 while keeping park staff and visitors safe. The park will offer guided tours of the cave Fridays through Monday. Classic Cave tours will not be offered at the current time and cave tours will consist of the Paradise and Grand Finale Rooms. The modified tour entails a one-half mile, level walk to the cave....
The Headwaters Country Jam has been rescheduled. The popular annual event originally scheduled June 18 to 20 at the "Bridge" near Cardwell will now take place August 20 to 22. The most recent lineup listed on the Country Jam website includes Dustin Lynch, Clay Walker, Midland, Ashley McBride, Mitchell Tenpenny, Blanco Brown, the Cadillac Three and Tim Montana. TICKET INFORMATION Beginning May 21, all customers who purchased 2020 festival tickets through the Headwaters Country Jam ticketing page...
Dalmatian toadflax (Linaria dalmatica) and yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) are two closely related state designated noxious weeds that were inadvertently brought over from Eurasia. Both damage farming, range lands and wildlands. They have yellow flowers that look like garden snapdragon flowers which they are also closely related to. We deal with one insect that eats Dalmatian toadflax. The insect is the Dalmatian toadflax stem mining weevil Mecinus janthiniformis. We will be collecting these...
Montana will lift its 14-day quarantine for out-of-state travelers as the state transitions to phase two of the Reopening the Big Sky plan on June 1, Gov. Steve Bullock announced Tuesday. Lifting the quarantine will coincide with a likely June 1 opening of Montana's gates to Yellowstone National Park in West Yellowstone, Gardiner and Cooke City, Bullock said. Yellowstone's Wyoming gates opened to travelers on Monday, May 18. The lifting of the quarantine was not initially considered part of...
The Whitehall Town Council discussed last week a possible mill levy increase on the general fund. The Council unanimously approved a motion that will set up two hearings for public comments on a possible Public Safety Mill Levy to generate funding for law enforcement and the Whitehall Volunteer Fire Department. Members of the governing body are asking county officials to see what the increase would cost local residents. This would be the first general fund mill levy increase in Whitehall since...
It is with a heavy heart that I write to inform the community that due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the American Legion Post #24 and the Ralph Sullender Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #4603 are cancelling the annual Memorial Day celebration. On average, this beloved celebration draws more than 60 individuals to the Whitehall Cemetery to place flags on the graves of veterans, sell small red artificial poppies to raise funds for disabled veterans and to place the American flag at half-staff...
Editor's Note: The following release was issued Tuesday by Golden Sunlight Mine officials. Nevada Gold Mine's (NGM) processing operations cover the full gambit of processing routes using heap leach, oxide milling with CIL, pressure oxidation of single refractory ores, and roasting and pressure oxidation of double refractory ores. As such, NGM is a leader in refractory ore processing globally. In the refractory processes, high temperatures are required to ensure sulfide oxidation for optimal...
The Town of Whitehall Swimming Pool will not open in 2020. At Monday's City Council meeting, Mayor Mary Janacaro Hensleigh announced the news to the governing body. Hensleigh said pool operators will be unable to take a pool certification class, lifeguards will not be able to get training, and with the window of the middle of June to open it just can't happen. She added they are unaware when Phase 2 of reopening in Montana will kick in, but even when it does the guidelines for social distancing...
Monday's daily Governor's Coronavirus Task Force report showed the third confirmed case of COVID-19 in Jefferson County. While the report did show the local case, Karen Wandel (BSN-RN) with the Jefferson County Health Department stated the adult male in his 50's was diagnosed out of state, is not in Montana at this time, and also contracted the virus out of state. Jefferson County had not had a reported case since March 27. According to County Officials, 73 residents have been tested for...
The Whitehall Biological Weed Control Project is up and running this season, modified a bit of course for COVID safety. Our first order of business is looking for 8-10 Canada thistle fungus release sites. This will entail two visits to each site. One now (May/early June) to set up a long-term sampling transect. The second visit will be in September/October to infect the plants with the fungus. Many Montana sites are showing fairly severe damage to the Canada thistle patches the season after the...
Weather patterns during the first two weeks of April, while cooler than average, didn't yield much precipitation across the state of Montana. However, the below average temperatures during this period did help to delay snowmelt at many low- and mid-elevation mountain locations during the first half of the month according to data collected by SNOTEL sites maintained by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). "Both east and west of the Divide, snowmelt was delayed by a week or two...
HELENA - An advisory council appointed to help Gov. Steve Bullock decide how to spend $1.25 billion in coronavirus relief money from the federal government submitted its formal recommendations Friday, laying out a framework focused on providing additional support to pandemic-disrupted businesses and nonprofits. "It's critical, certainly, that this funding reaches all corners of our state, considers really all the sectors of industry and the economy," Bullock said. Task force chair Larry Simkins...
From February to April, the Whitehall Volunteer Fire Department responded to 14 wildland fires. To deal with the dry conditions, Fire Chief Joe Granvold recently announced all burning within the Whitehall Fire Department is closed. Granvold said during those 14 calls they have had to call out the Twin Bridges Department seven times. He added on April 26 they were at a wildland fire on Franich Lane for around nine hours. "We were really lucky it didn't get any structures," he said. "It's getting...
The beef supply chain in the United States typically starts on a ranch like Marty Malone's, in Paradise Valley, with the birth of calves. After a summer of grazing, a cow reaches about 500 to 700 pounds. Then the cow is sold to a feedlot in the Midwest or Great Plains, where it eats feed like corn and barley to fatten up. At about 1,200 pounds and 18 months of age, it's slaughtered at a nearby packing plant. Then it's shipped to a wholesaler, who sells the meat to a restaurant or grocery store,...
The Whitehall School Board voted Friday afternoon to not reconvene onsite instruction for the last 20 days for the 2019- 2020 school year from May 7 to June 4. Prior to the vote, Superintendent Hannah Nieskens shared the results of a survey sent to parents asking for their input on if school should continue. Nieskens reported they had 211 responses with 64.5 percent saying they would not send their child back to school and 35.5 in favor of returning to school. In a release from the district,...
HELENA - Gov. Steve Bullock unveiled the state's official plan April 22 for gradually shifting Montana out of anti-coronavirus emergency mode, specifying dates for scaling back his stay-at-home directive and reopening some non-essential businesses that have been shuttered in an effort to slow the outbreak. In making the announcement, Bullock touted the state's anti-coronavirus efforts, saying aggressive government action, dogged public health work and individual Montanans' commitment to social...
A major event scheduled for June in Whitehall will not take place until next year. Tara Price of the Montana Longears Association announced last week the 36th annual Montana Mule Days event scheduled for June 12 to 14 would be postponed until June of 2021. The event has taken place the past three years in Whitehall with spectator numbers over a thousand as well as over 100 classes. "We have continued to monitor the COVID-19 situation, and it is out of great concern to the health of our Montana...
HELENA - Jim Murphy, Montana's chief epidemiologist, has heard the same stories most everyone in the state has heard about residents who've made unsuccessful attempts to get themselves tested for COVID-19. But even as national headlines worry over testing backlogs in some parts of the country, he says testing constraints haven't hampered Montana's coronavirus response. "I'm not aware of what I would consider valid access issues," Murphy said in an April 7 interview. "I think the providers in...
BOZEMAN – On April 1, many low- and mid-elevation mountain snowpack monitoring locations are typically approaching their seasonal peak snowpack for the year, giving hydrologists good insight into what snowpack will yield with regards to water supply during spring and summer. "The news is as good as we get closer to runoff season this year, aside from one small lower elevation range west of Flathead Lake, most mountain ranges in Montana have a snowpack that is near to above normal for this d...
Local residents will find out April 21 if Directives issued by Governor Steve Bullock will be extended past April 24. Bullock announced last week the directives issued to protect Montanans from COVID-19 by the slowing of the spread of the virus would be extended. The Directives were set to expire on April 10. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were a total of 399 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Montana, with 139 of those in Gallatin County. There have been two confirmed cases in Jefferson County...
Governor Steve Bullock yesterday extended through April 24 Directives he issued to protect Montanans from COVID-19 by slowing the spread of the virus in Montana. The Directives were set to expire on April 10. "We know that staying home will help to flatten the curve. For every person we take out of the chain of transmission of this virus, the more likely our health care facilities can handle the capacity to respond, and the more likely we can beat back this virus sooner rather than later,"...
Editor's Note: This story was originally published by Montana Free Press. For more information, please visit www.montanafreepress.org HELENA - Four days after President Donald Trump signed the largest emergency spending measure in U.S. history, the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, Montana-based stimulus watchers are waiting with bated breath for details about how the act will bring aid to bear on the state economy. While the CARES Act responds to the COVID-19...
The number of COVID-19 cases in Montana is now over 300. As of Wednesday at 8 a.m., the number of reported cases in the state is 319, with two Jefferson County and eight in Madison County. The total number of tests completed in the state is 6,985 with 27 hospitalizations, and six COVID-19 related deaths. The Jefferson and Madison County Commissioners and the Election Administrator, with input from the Jefferson and Madison County Director of Public Health have taken the option to run the...
Two candidates filed prior to the deadline for a seat on the Whitehall School Board. According to District Clerk Patti Drake, Chad Hoover was the lone candidate to file for the high school seat currently held by Paul Shaw, and Laura McDonald is the lone candidate in the elementary/high school seat held by Jeff Briggs. Because there are no additional candidates, the May 5 election will be canceled, and the two candidates will be elected by acclamation....
