Missoula history

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.

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.

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.”

Missoula is known as the Garden City of Montana. How that came to be was explained in the Sunday edition of the Missoulian newspaper on May 30, 1909. “To its miles of residence streets is to be traced the origin of the title, which, after all, is the proudest that Missoula bears. Wide and clean are Missoula’s streets, a rule that holds good especially in its residence districts.”

It is a medicine which has been used for centuries, and is still available at drugstores today. Know what it is? Let’s take a look at its history.

It was a lovely spring afternoon, April 28, 1925. The temperature was expected to reach 65 degrees. Downtown, at the Missoula Masonic Temple, a former nun by the name of Sister Lucretia was scheduled to speak. More than 200 women turned out for the event, “some in sympathy with her message and some opposed,” according to local press reports.

My good friend Jack Puckett turned 98 years old last month. He is such a great storyteller.

In 1911, Montana Governor Norris issued a proclamation, “the first of its kind ever issued by a Montana governor, designating next Sunday (May 14th) as Mothers’ Day.”