Ellen Baumler's Blog, page 18

A Territorial Period Landmark

Summer is county and state fair season and Montana’s fairs at Helena stretch back to 1867. Horse racing—both trotting and racing under saddle—was central to those celebrations. Helena’s official racetrack, completed in September 1870, accommodated six to eight totting horses and sulkies abreast, and it was the only regulation one-mile track in the territory. Early fairs attracted racers from across the West. Kentucky thoroughbreds, Montana-bred runners and trotters, and non-pedigreed horses a...

Friday Photo: Lumberjacks

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 949-126Today's photo shows the Baker brothers with 16,130 feet of lumber near Whitefish circa 1900. Sledges like this one were used to transport logs to a nearby landing where they could be loaded on railroad cars or floated by water to a mill.

The Great Falls

The entire two-month journey from the Mandan villages where the Corps of Discovery wintered was easy compared to the portage around the Great Falls of the Missouri. From fifteen miles away Captain Meriwether Lewis, traveling overland with a small advance party on June 13, 1805, saw telltale spray and soon heard “a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken.” Approaching the sound, Lewis saw “spray arise above the plain like a collumn of smoke.”

The Great Falls circa 1901. Stereograph by N. A. Fors...

Frank Linderman

Sixteen-year-old Frank Linderman left Chicago for the Flathead Valley wilderness in 1885. He became a friend to the Indians and viewed encroaching civilization firsthand. Linderman’s passionate desire was to preserve the old West, especially Montana, in printer’s ink. Linderman did it all. He was a trapper, trader, assayer, newspaperman, businessman, insurance agent, and state legislator. He was an advocate of Indian causes.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 943-498Through his ef...

Friday Photo: Pet Wolves

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87 NB035BEwen Cameron, husband of photographer Evelyn Cameron, posed with the couple's pet wolves, Weecharpee and Tussa, circa 1908.

P.S. Remember Netty Archdale's pet antelope?

Frozen Charlotte

Here’s a story that will give you chills even on the hottest summer day. The story of Frozen Charlotte is a Maine folktale. A short notice in the New York Observer on February 8, 1840, told about a girl who froze to death on her way to a New Year’s ball. This was the beginning of a folk tradition that eventually included poems, a ballad, a doll, and even a dessert. The original poem, attributed to well-known editor Seba Smith, recounts in verse how it was New Year’s Eve and Charlotte was to a...

Friday Photo: Road Trip

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 981-1348L. A. Huffman took this photo of a car traveling down a dirt road between 1915 and 1920. Note the American Red Cross sign on the back of the vehicle.

Homestead Teachers

The homestead boom brought thousands of immigrants and challenged teachers who had few resources in one-room schools. Charles Beardsley, at seventeen, had a college degree and a provisional certificate when he began teaching at Five-Mile School in eastern Montana. He boarded in a student’s home for thirty dollars a month. His board was the only money the family earned that entire year. Beardsley wrote: “Bedbugs infested the house. In my bedroom, which was nicely whitewashed, the bed stood in...

Sieben Ranch

The Sieben Ranch encompasses a vast 115,000 acres in Lewis and Clark County. It has a rich archaeological history that includes fragments of the roads that brought miners to Montana’s goldfields. Trader Malcolm Clarke was the first to settle on a knoll overlooking Prickly Pear Creek in 1864 where he ran a stage stop.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-761Clarke, embittered over his expulsion from West Point because of an altercation with a fellow student, had come west with th...

Friday Photo: Family Portrait

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 90-87.31-1Gusta Magnusen Braley and her children, Ida and Clare, sat for a portrait session with photographer Evelyn Cameron. Their choice to include the dog is somewhat unique, but he certainly looks dapper in profile.