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“The weather was perfect for an outdoor meeting,” wrote an Anaconda Standard newspaper reporter. “The platform next to the court house was elaborately decorated with flags, and electric lights were hung among the trees, making the scene an attractive one. The demonstration tonight was a splendid one and was one of the grandest in Missoula's political history.”

Growing up in Libby, the Riddle kids were older than I was, by a decade or more, so I never really knew them. But the world would soon come to know Dick Riddle through record albums by his folk group Three Young Men, later renamed, Three Young Men From Montana. In the early 1960s, the group recorded albums for “Columbia Records, appeared on the Johnny Carson Show nine times and became a regular act on the musical variety television show Hootenanny,” according to press releases at the time.

Jim Harmon writes, "I suspect you may not be familiar with the name Morris Reece Chew Smith. I certainly wasn’t."

The wedding was marvelous; the bride and groom were so happy – absolutely gleeful! I survived without CPR, despite no air-conditioning.

By now, the whole world has seen a video of the “Great Escape of Viola,” the circus elephant, in Butte. But it’s not the first time a performing pachyderm has bolted for freedom in southwest Montana.

Dear Savannah Guthrie, I’m sorry I fired you. It’s actually true. Your humble history columnist actually did fire (well, “laid off”) the one and only Savannah Guthrie, in what became known as “Black Friday” in Butte: October 30, 1993.

By Jim Harmon I see in the paper that Miss Daisy Dawson hosted the Calamity Whist club at her home in Butte last Tuesday evening and Mrs. George F. Lyman of Anaconda visited Butte friends yesterday. But such social-calendar reporting was rather mundane and unremarkable compared to what I found on page eight of the Butte Daily Inter-Mountain newspaper of February 4, 1899...

Spring allegedly is “just around the corner.” So I’ve been very busy lately going through a treasure trove of old family photos, many of which I don’t remember having ever seen.

Jim Harmon writes, "One photo, which might be of my mother at age one or two (there was nothing to identify it) is absolutely fascinating. It’s what is called a 'tin-type.'"

Jim Harmon writes, "My hope in sharing this story is to encourage all of you to document your family’s stories before those stories are lost to time."