Missoula history

Mowing is still familiar to our youth today – but the scythe is no longer in our vocabulary. Until today, when Jim Harmon brings the scythe back just in time for summer!

Advertising from 100 years ago reveals a dapper, dry Missoula, prepping for summer's flies and hungry for ice cream. Enjoy!

Often when we look back in time, we find connections we hadn’t noticed before. Here are a few examples. A mansion is built on Missoula’s north side, overlooking the city. A Helena schoolgirl gets a chance to go to the University of Montana, graduating with a degree in English in 1938. A man born in St. Paul, Minn., moves to Missoula and becomes fascinated by a new invention called radio in 1922.

“They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. So today, right here in this column, I admit it. I am a junkie, an addict. I need help.”

I’m sharing the personal stories – not just my professional resume - with my daughter and her daughter...and, to a lesser degree, with you, in hopes it will spur all of you to your keyboards and document your lives.

I prefer the good old days. No Internet. Quieter and slower times. Just waiting for my latest Billboard Magazine in the mail, to find out who and what topped the chart this week, and hoping the corners of the magazine weren’t too damaged in the postal process.

The other day, I found myself reviewing old newspaper clippings in my files, when I came across the following item: “Ferocious Wampus Almost Visits Missoula.”

Today, very few bison remain. In a way, you could blame the fur traders who decimated the populations of mink, beaver and otter, causing a shift to buffalo pelts to make stylish clothing for the eastern population.

William Houston was Missoula County’s sheriff on two occasions, elected first in 1889 at age 36, and again in 1920 at age 67. He made a name for himself capturing outlaws, chasing train robbers and hanging murderers, including John Burns who shot and killed Maurice Higgins on a downtown street corner in Missoula.

Editor W.J. McCormick “made a trip up the Bitter Root Valley and spent nine days very pleasantly among the thrifty agriculturalists of that locality which embraces within its borders the most substantial and prosperous farmers in the territory.”