Ledger Looking Back 25 Years: 7/23/1997

July 23, 1997

Whitehall’s biggest weekend of the year, the tandem events of Frontier Days and the Whitehall All-Class Reunion was planned for July 25-27. Close to 600 WHS alumni and hundreds more rodeo fans, parade lovers, craft shoppers, and interested residents and tourists were anticipated to make it one of the most memorable in Whitehall history.

Lightning touched off two small fires west of Whitehall Sunday evening. One lightning strike set a single tree afire on land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, near Whiskey Gulch, nine miles west of Whitehall and south of Interstate 90. The other fire was on private land, three miles east of the first blaze, and also involved a single tree. Fire danger in Southwest Montana remained in the moderate range.

Clays in Calico, owned by Ron and Linda Jung, was located at the Cardwell exit just south of I-90 and featured pottery of unique colors and shapes. The three colors, ivory, red, and brown, gave the Clays in Calico pottery a distinctive look. The colors came from a type of shale formed during the pre-Cambrian period of the earth’s formation and in modern times was typically discovered to have one of three colors: brown, ivory, or red. North of Cardwell, in Cottonwood Canyon, was the source of the pottery material and may have been the only spot on earth where the three colors of shale were found together.

The Whitehall All-Class Reunion Organizing Committee, after nearly a year of planning and preparation, was honored as Volunteers of the Week.