Our Town 100 Years Ago: July 12

The following is taken as written in early July editions of the Whitehall Zephy, 1895. The accompanying ads appeared in the July 12, 1895 edition, and yes, the one ad was printed upside down.

We were pleased to meet Mr. John H. Weingard, of Silver Star, in the Zephyr office Thursday. Mr. Weingard will go to Warm Springs soon, to see the unfortunate young man Eberhardt (from an earlier article, he was on the roof of a local church ringing the bell and shouting for people to gather). Mr. W. L. Wilkins of Butte, Mrs. C. J. Eckstorm’s father, is making a brief visit with his daughter, and later will go up to Perry canyon as engineer at the saw mill there being constructed. Elmer McCall was at Virginia City this week, and to him we are indebted for information concerning the murder of Mrs. Parker.

Mesdames Fergus and J. H. Kennedy accompanied their better halves to Boulder this week. The sheriff would not allow them to accompany their husbands to witness the hanging of Pugh, the murderer of Conductor West.

John Dunlevy met with a serious accident a few nights since—a result of too many doors in a house. In John’s home there are two doors alongside each other—one leading to his bedroom and the other to the cellar; in the dark the other night John walked through the cellar door by mistake, took a header on to some barrels, thence to the ground, breaking two ribs, and otherwise deranging his internal improvements. Dr. Davis fixed John up so that he got out to see the sports on the 4th.

Harry Baerman approached the religious editor this p. m. and threatened to break him up and down in business if this paper mentioned anything about his getting drunk on the 5th instead of the 4th. Harry is hereby informed that a first-class journal like the Zephyr never pays attention to a little thing like a man getting drunk, and he may rest assured that if he could get several times as drunk as he was this afternoon the Zephyr would say or know nothing of it. But Harry is such a josher that one never does know just how to take him.

The Fourth arrived in Whitehall on schedule, as per announcement in the Zephyr. Rev. Warman invoked Divine blessing in very appropriate words. The reading of the Declaration of Independence was accomplished by Shirley Houghton in a masterly manner under the most trying circumstances. At that time the most terrific sandstorm of years arose, and despite the fact that the bowery was thickly enveloped with pine boughs the dust at times was so thick that the reader was scarce-visible to the audience. The Hon. Harrison Jordan introduced the speaker of the day, M. D. Leehey of the well known legal firm, Carroll & Leehey. The races were productive of much squabbling, details of all which we are forced to omit. The first race, 600 yards, was won by Ivan Houghton’s Tom, “Jap” Jordan’s Dick 2d; the next race, 400 yards, resulted in a squabble, and it was settled by dividing the money between Pruett’s No Name and Jordan’s Tom.

You will not be in it nowadays unless you are the possessor of a bicycle. The Gaffney company can furnish you with any breed of the noiseless steed. The Gaffney Company have put in a fine watering trough at their corner, and the pump there situated enables the thirsty wayfarer to water himself or stock at the same time.

The following is rewritten from notes made by Roy Millegan, Sr. from July 1921 editions of the Jefferson Valley News.

In local business news, the John Wellcome Ranch is now under the ownership of Ira Sanders. Urick and Miller have been awarded the contract to build a wooden bridge across the slough near Willow Creek. They will likely stay in that area since it is too far of a drive to do every day.

Mr. Huber has regrettably regained ownership of the confectionary and theatre after E. W. Keeler just could not figure out how to make a go of it. This is the first business failure in Whitehall in the past 15 years. The city has decided to move the fire hall and jail to allow for expansion of the city park east of Legion Park. It looks like the new fire hall location will be behind the Huber and Lepp lots and beside Smiths Garage. There is also discussion of adding a community building. A committee has been set up to look into this further. A proposal was made to put the building somewhere in the new park expansion.

Our community band will be holding regular concerts this summer in Legion Park under the direction of Professor Yotter. The concert schedule is published in the July 14, 1921 edition. This should be a great attraction for our tourists. We estimate that there is a visitor driving through at least every 5 minutes. Compliments are received on a regular basis for our fine paved main street lined with trees.

About 250 of our local residents, including the band and the ball club, made the drive to Boulder for their big 4th of July celebration. Whitehall was celebrating a little extra after our ball team beat Boulder 5 to 4.