Harmon’s Histories: Bitterroot Valley agriculture produces delicious tale

By Jim Harmon

“In no other section of Montana can there be found happier, healthier, more helpful or lovelier girls than in Ravalli County. Like all other products of the Bitter Root Valley, they are beyond compare!”

The editor of the Ravalli Republican newspaper in Stevensville was on a roll, praising everything in sight, as the Western Montana Fruit Growers Association opened its first annual fall exhibit of fruits and vegetables.

Saturday, October 3, 1894 “was a perfect day, and all morning the carriages and wagons were rolling into the pretty county seat of Ravalli County, bearing visitors from other valley towns, and prosperous farmers with their good wives, sturdy sons and handsome daughters.”

In addition, the morning train from Missoula delivered 150 folks from Helena, Butte, and other parts of Montana to view the exhibits.

“The large delegation of ladies and gentlemen were met at the depot by teams to convey them to town, and were soon enjoying the hospitalities of the garden spot of the treasure state.”

Buck Hall, the scene of the exhibition, was “tastefully draped with evergreens, and all over the hall were hung ropes of many-tinted leaves, ferns, grasses and cereals, from which depended clusters of apples, crab apples, pears, plums, grapes, etc.”

A pyramid table, running the full length of the center of the hall, contained “a profusion of fruit that was bewildering in the extreme.”

Even the locals were impressed with the amount and variety of fruits and vegetables produced in their valley.

Some apples measured 13 and 16 inches in circumference. Plums were said to be as large as pears. Potatoes were “a foot long and as large around.”

It was asserted that that it would take two grown men to lift some of the squash and cabbages.

Judge Knowles said, "The world’s fair did not surpass, and in some instances did not equal, this display. And Prof. Emery, head of the state agricultural college, at Bozeman said: "I stake my reputation that never at any county fair in the United States has this display been equalled."

There were so many visitors from outside the valley that there was a shortage of carriages to shuttle them to the depot, and the train’s departure back to Missoula was delayed considerably.

But this was just the first display of the Bitter Root’s produce.

Professor Dean Stone of the Missoula bureau of the Anaconda Standard newspaper took roughly two-thirds of the display to Butte and Anaconda for shows there.

“Messrs. Lindsay and Steele, the produce dealers of Helena, took the other third to that city.”

Those additional exhibitions will “be of incalculable value to the fruit growers of the Bitter Root valley.”

A follow-up report in the Butte Miner newspaper related, “the store of the Silver Bow Meat company on East Park street has been crowded all day with a throng of visitors attracted by the display of the Bitter Root fruit and vegetables.”

“The display was arranged for inspection last night and all day sightseers have been passing in and out. The chief attractions have been the big Alexander apples and the immense potatoes, the latter from the Wagner ranch near Florence.”

“The expressions of surprise have been numerous, and a real estate dealer could do a land office business in Bitter Root farms if he had a supply on hand, so numerous have been the inquiries regarding the land of the valley.”

Even today, I count myself among the lucky to have lived in the Bitterroot Valley for 40 years and counting. Despite all the growth, and impatient commuters, it’s still a delightful place.