Missoula history

The local Missoula news of October 30, 1889 gives us an interesting snapshot into the commerce and society of our small, but growing town (growing, thanks to the arrival of the railroad a couple of years earlier). Let’s take a glimpse at the local and area doings.

It was the day before Halloween, October 30, 1908, and Major Sylvester of the Washington D.C. Police was fed up! He ordered his officers to “repress hilarious gaiety!”

Say what? I think I’ll award the Nobel Prize for Confusing Remarks to H.C. Hollenbeck of Helena for his classic case of creating more questions than answers.

In the fall of 1889, the society columns of western Montana newspapers were filled with predictions of “an exceptionally gay winter season” ahead.

My grandma was fascinated by a new invention in the 1920s called radio. It is she who I can thank for my interest, and later career, in radio and television. I recently came across a small booklet of hers which accompanied the 1929 radio receiver my grandparents purchased from the Nott-Atwater Company of Spokane, Wash., in which she kept track of radio stations she could pick up from her home in Libby.

I see there’s a chance of rain in the forecast, so that calls for a big shout out to Mary Anderson, inventor (albeit uncredited) of the windshield wiper.

Booze was a big part of Western lore and Montana's history. After all, a town wasn't really a town until it had a livery and a saloon. Montana's first newspaper encouraged readers to "go and see the boys" at the Head-Quarters saloon and "strengthen (your) inner man."

Today, I’m wrapping up a two-part series on K. Ross Toole. If you didn’t read last week’s column, it might be helpful to review it before enjoying part two, today. Ross Toole was deeply concerned about corporate greed vs. “the will of the people to protect the land they love.”

I never met Kenneth Ross Toole, but I wish I had. He was, to me, Montana’s foremost historian. Students who took his classes at the University of Montana would most likely agree.

I see the Missoula City Council has approved selling the so-called “Riverfront Triangle” property to the development group, Averill Hospitality. It would be nice to finally see something happen at the old Fox Theater site - vacant since the 1980s.