montana

Montana weather can change fast. Explore the coldest Julys since 1895 and discover why summer in Montana never comes with guarantees.

I find it impossible to fathom, but I am quickly approaching my 80th birthday! Strange how those sorts of things sneak up on you. I have loved the 10 years I've spent writing about the news of yesteryear for the Missoula Current.

“No Booze for Bugs,” read the headline in newspapers across the country, including the local Daily Missoulian. Read the sad tale of Major League Baseball pitcher Bugs Raymond in this morning's edition of Harmon's Histories.

Well, I wouldn’t call them festive, and they ain’t creeping up my picnic pants – but I am disporting myself with “antics queer” these days. That’s right, we have a mini ant invasion. But why?

The original Superior Hotel was constructed by Charlie Jameson in 1891, and finished by A.P. Johnston a year later. A writer for the Missoula Weekly Gazette recommended Jameson’s place as having “as good accommodation as any place between Missoula and Wallace. The expectation of trying his cuisine lightened the inconveniences of the slow and uncomfortable Missoula cut-off.”

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!

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.

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.”