Small-town sports ...

Here's a photo I took last fall, showing a slice of small-town Montana life. The scene was a football game between the Grass Range/Winnett Rangers and the Highwood Mountaineers. Though the Rangers played very hard, there were only eight of them, half of whom were freshmen ... and so Highwood won in a blowout.

Main Street Polson ...

Today's photo is an old postcard view of downtown Polson, taken maybe fifty or so years ago. Back then, they probably made postcards like that for pretty much every fair-sized town in the state ... the same head-on view of Main Street, the same script lettering, everything. It's an interesting image, but it's also too bad in way ... there are lots of things that make Polson engaging and unique, but this mass-produced postcard doesn't really show any of them.

Stack talk ...

Here's an evocative reminiscence of life at an old railroad "beanery" in northwestern Montana. It was written by a man named Robert W. Downing, who later rose through the ranks to become president of the Burlington Northern Railroad. Rexford is on the old Great Northern line between Whitefish and Libby via Eureka ... part of which is now under the waters of lake Koocanusa.

After I became district roadmaster, my assignment was west from Whitefish to Troy… I regularly stayed at Rexford, Montana, which was about the midpoint of the district. There was a railroad “beanery” right on the station platform next to the depot. The lunch room was on the ground floor, and upstairs, there were six or seven rooms for the enginemen on the helper crews that worked up Rexford Hill to Stryker. Also until the Fernie branch into Canada was taken up in 1938, the branch crews sometimes stayed at the “hotel.” In any event, the sleeping rooms on the ground floor were just across a narrow station platform – about 12 feet from the main line, and just about at the level of the stack of a locomotive. When an eastbound freight train stopped there, the through locomotive would be taking water while the helper coupled on behind the caboose. When ready to go there would be a loud exchange of whistle signals, the lead engine would slowly get underway with much it's stack noise. The grade was not too heavy for a short distance east of the depot, so the train would get going very quickly – so that by the time the helper came by your room it would be working wide open and making 20 or 25 mph. The very earth would tremble, and the old beanery would shake so much that the bed would seem to jump up and down. Anybody who could sleep through it was not of this world. Those were the days of real action.

Sun-faded prairie ...

Speaking of prairie ghost towns, here's a photo of one of my favorites -- the little hamlet of Ingomar, on the long-abandoned Milwaukee Road mainline across the state. This evocative photo was taken back in the early 1990s by a man named Dave Matthews, who lived in Bozeman back then. It's been many years since I heard from Dave ... he moved back east ages ago, to photograph things that could only be less worthwhile.

Lonesome ghosts ...

There are certainly lots of ghost towns here in Montana ... old mining camps up in the mountains, and homestead villages out in the prairies. I'm a particular fan of the prairie ghosts, partly because they don't get as much attention, and partly because their settings can be exceptionally evocative. And for me, the old towns don't even need buildings in order to be interesting.

Here's a photo I took when I visited the site of Coburg, Montana a couple of years ago. All that's really left is a few feet of concrete sidewalk, marking the long-vanished site of a building that once housed the general store and post office. And up on the hill, a little ways away, there's an old building foundation ... maybe it was where the schoolhouse used to stand. And that's it.

Springtime rain ...

There's no doubt about it: Montana's weather definitely feels like it's been getting weirder lately. This spring, the story has been all about moisture ... lots of snow, and lots of rain. It's a year for flooding.

The situation is unsettling enough that it's got people thinking about similar times in Montana's past -- particularly the great flood of June 1964, which hit north-central Montana and the Glacier Park country with amazing force. Here's a classic photo from the 1964 flood: the Middle Fork bridge leading to the west entrance of Glacier Park, its trusses broken by the raging water.

This photo is one of many flood images captured my Mel Ruder, the legendary owner/editor of the Hungry Horse News. Ruder's reportage of the 1964 floods earned him the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a Montana journalist.

Monarchs of the Past ...

Here's another great old postcard photo: "Monarchs of the Past," by T. J. Hileman. The image probably dates from the 1920s, when Hileman was an official photographer for the Great Northern Railway, capturing views of the Glacier Park country for use in the GN's promotional efforts. The shot is highly reflective of the GN's traditional use of Blackfeet imagery in its advertising materials ... and in a broader sense, it typifies the period's popular romantic nostalgia for the rapidly-vanishing traditions of Native American life.

Largest lumber mill ...

This is an old postcard view from about 1960 or so, with the caption, "the largest pine lumber mill in the world." The photo shows a part of the old J. Neils Lumber Company complex just outside of Libby, by then owned by St. Regis Paper. Neils Lumber was the economic lifeblood of Libby for decades, harvesting timber with a sustainable-use philosophy that both kept the company strong and sustained local forests. After the company was sold, though, absentee owners increased production to the point where the forests could no longer keep up ... and before long the whole thing collapsed. The mill closed in 2002, devastating the local economy, and a spectacular fire last year destroyed much of what was left of the place.