Missoula County

It’s amazing how much you can discover about a community from a single page of a local newspaper. For example, I offer up the “local” page of the July 3rd Missoulian from 1896.

The loss of life and property, and the damage to natural resources caused by the Big Burn did help save the U.S. Forest Service. Until that time, many detractors in Washington D.C. had called for cancellation of the "experiment." The debate over how best to prevent these summertime natural disasters, however, has continued for more than 100 years, and counting

The majority of the requested increase will fund cost-of-living, employee wages and medical insurance costs.

What was it like, living in western Montana in its earliest days? That’s been the essence of my stories over the last decade. Sure, I do make occasional references to the kind of history you would find in a textbook, but mostly I’m interested in the people and their way of life, the good and the bad. So, let’s jump on the way-back train.

A number of parks and trails tucked away in subdivisions across the Missoula region are slated for improvements this year, including sport courts and tree planting.

For more than 100 years, the Rocky Mountain Labs have conducted lifesaving research into deadly diseases, including COVID-19, SARS-1, MERS, Lyme disease and Ebola. As I wrote in 2020, the Bio-safety Level 4 Labs have a colorful and controversial history, dating back more than a century to the initial reason for their existence: Black Measles, known today as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

The issue of declining church attendance takes us back to June 25, 1890 when a letter to the editor of the Missoula Weekly Gazette, submitted by someone identifying himself as “An Old Deacon,” offered up his opinion on the subject.

Missoula City Band Conductor Gary Gillette is readying his group for another season of summer concerts in the park (7:30 p.m. every Wednesday at Bonner Park). The opening gig on June 18 will salute the Big Band era. Check out the band’s full season offerings at missoulacityband.org.

As the dry season deepens, Missoula County is ramping up its wildfire mitigation program in hopes of protecting more homes from catching fire.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal featured the creation Civilian Conservation Corps (the CCC) to give unemployed “single men between the ages of 18 and 25 to enlist in work programs to improve America’s public lands, forests, and parks.”