The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 148
Often on my travels up Stemple to get firewood or to just go for a drive, I pass by the little red cabin where I first lived when I first moved to Lincoln in the early 90's. It's that first little place on the left after you cross the bridge over the Blackfoot River. Each time I drive by I have a different memory of it. Back when I lived there it was owned by Jackie Schmutzler. When I had first moved in, I did not have a pet until I think his name was Don Bergum - my memory...
William "Bill" E. Reiling of Lincoln, passed away March 20, 2020, at 84 years old. Bill was married to Lea Goode for 30 years and they both retired to Lincoln in 1994. Bill was born in Newell, S.D. on May 18, 1935, to Phillip Reiling and Emma Litz and was raised in Salem, Ore. Bill enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1955. He served throughout the United States, as well as in Germany, Vietnam and other countries during his career. He retired from Malmstrom Air Force Bas...
Parker Medical Center PureView Health Centers is coordinating with the Lewis and Clark County Public Health Department and Centers for Disease Control in their efforts to protect their patients and the community against the spread of COVID -19. PureView Chief Executive OfficerJill Steeley said patients at Parker Medical shouldn't see too much in the way of change, but they are taking precautionary measures. "We'll still be seeing people there. We'll just be calling them first...
Grand presumption (not permission) supports the family of Richard Geary in composing for public consumption the following notes on his life. Born April 2, 1947 to William Geary and Lois Evans Geary, R.N., Dick grew up on the family ranch in Helmville. There, through seventh grade, he attended a one-room, coal-heated school with his siblings and cousins. Living the academic year in Deer Lodge, he graduated high school in 1965. Much later in life he would graduate from the Unive...
The Lincoln School's Wildlife class, taught by Nancy Schwalm, has been using game cameras to capture images of wildlife species inhabiting the Lincoln area in hopes of learning more about their patterns, movements, behaviors and survival skills. Students began putting cameras out at the beginning of the year and have been monitoring them at least once a week. They currently have four cameras out in the Lincoln area and each week students change out the memory cards and...
A 2015 discovery about the ownership of the original Mike Horse Creek Road has added a new wrinkle to the ongoing restoration of the Upper Blackfoot Mining Complex. Steve Opp, the U.S. Forest Service coordinator for the UBMC cleanup project, attended the Jan. 21 meeting of the Upper Blackfoot Valley Community Council to begin a discussion with the community on the future of the road. Opp explained that until 2015, the Forest Service was certain the road was part of the...
Co-Chairs Renee and Ernie Lundberg and the volunteer committee of the Blackfoot River Ducks Unlimited Chapter began planning for the upcoming 21st Annual Banquet, slated for Saturday, April 18, 2020 at the historic Lincoln Community Hall. The committee would like to invite the community to enjoy an evening of dining and fun while supporting wetland conservation and hunting opportunities. The banquet will feature a catered dinner, no-host bar, silent and live auctions, raffles...
Envision Lincoln, the community revitalization effort begun in 2017, has been flying below the radar for the past several months, but organizers are working to invigorate the movement with an open house at the Lincoln Community Hall Tuesday, Feb. 18 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. "It will be an introduction to getting Envision Lincoln going again," lead organizer Karyn Good said at a Jan. 10 meeting of several of the core members of the Envision Lincoln group. "We had a break, but we...
The Upper Blackfoot Valley Community Council has been meeting in Lincoln for well over a decade. Composed of seven elected members, the Council serves in an advisory capacity to the County Commissioners, giving Lincoln residents an opportunity to bring their concerns and opinions to the county. Lincoln has had a community council since the early 1990s. The current council replaced the original Lincoln Community Council in 2007, which was suspended in 2006 following the resignation of most the board. It was reborn as the...
Editor's Note: In 1949, Robert Fisk of Lincoln produced a small pamphlet with a deep green cover, a greeting from the Blackfoot Valley for the holidays. Seventy years later, to bid farewell to 2019 and welcome 2020, we've reproduced it here in coordination with the Upper Blackfoot Valley Historical Society. To recount the story of the Big Blackfoot, the chronicler would have to dig into many ponderous tomes in order to cull out the data both before and after the taking over...
An important portion of The Corps of Discovery's journey occurred in southwest Montana. On July 19, 1805, Lewis and his men were struggling up the Missouri between present-day Upper and Lower Holter lakes. "from the singular appearance of this place I called it the gates of the rocky mountains." The next day, searching for "the three forks of the Missouri," they entered the first of southwest Montana's big valleys – Helena's Prickly Pear Valley. Arriving at the meeting of t...
The best of men That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer, A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first true gentleman that ever breathed. Thomas Dekker Growing up in a hunting household gave me a scale to judge how I was doing on my chronological path to adulthood. The scale was composed of regional animals, and the older I got, the bigger the animals I could hunt. I started with magpies when they were pests, then the next year I could hunt gophers on my...
Klara Varga, Lincoln Ranger District biological technician and a botanist, led the group, comprised of three women and a good dog, on a Native Plant Walk Oct. 26 that included a variety of terrain. From the riparian ecosystem of the Blackfoot river to the hillsides at Alice Creek, she explained how to identify native plants in their winter environment. "If there's some interest in another plant walk in early summer. I'm willing! Perhaps we will have another in May or June"...
Restoration work at the Upper Blackfoot Mining Complex wrapped up for the year due to weather and the Forest Service re-opened Meadow Creek Road to the public Oct. 31. "That area is now officially back open," Lincoln District Ranger Michael Stansberry said at the Lincoln Government Day meeting Nov. 1. "At this point it's a month earlier than we normally open." National Forest land in the area has been closed to the public since the end of May, as work to clean up mine waste in...
In the coming weeks, the Montana Department of Transportation will begin soliciting design consultants for work on a new Dalton Mountain Road Bridge, Roger Balz, Lewis and Clark County Chief Administrative Officer, reported at the Lincoln Government Day meeting Nov. 1. County Engineer Dan Karlin told the BVD earlier last week that MDT accepted the bridge replacement project into their off-system bridge program in July, when they began requesting the county send them...
Helmville - Donald Joseph Pocha, 80, of Helmville passed away on October 10, 2019 at home, surrounded by his loved ones. He was born on Nov. 20, 1938 to Joseph and Florence Pocha of Gilman, Mont. In 1946 the family moved to their new ranch in Montana City. He attended one room school houses in Gilman and Montana City and Jefferson High School in Boulder. In 1956 he married Hap(Sharon) Ross. His early work was at the smelter in East Helena. He wanted a job at the cement plant...
The Montana Department of Environmental Quality hosted a tour of the Upper Blackfoot Mining Complex Saturday, Oct. 5 in coordination with the Blackfoot Challenge. The tour gave guests a chance to earn the story of the UBMC and to get a first hand look at the clean up and restoration that is nearing completion. One month earlier, on Sept. 5, Missouri River Contracting removed the final load of contaminated material from the project area....
OVANDO – For 15 years, the Blackfoot Challenge and its partners have released fledgling trumpeter swans into the Blackfoot Watershed in a program aimed at restoring the swans to their native habitat. Next year could be the last year that happens. The goal was to get seven pairs of released trumpeter swans to return to the area, create a nest, produce eggs, raise their young and repeat the cycle for two consecutive years. According to Montana State Coordinator at US Fish and W...
I spent a large part of my youth fishing: the Blackfoot River, Nevada Creek, Brown's Lake, the small creeks near Helmville, plus the pond behind our house. We fished for a large variety: natives, browns, rainbows, brooks, and bull trout, depending on which water we were on. A small creek about three miles from us produced buckets of small natives, so hungry even the smaller kids could catch them. The fish that we hooked lightly were put in water and hauled to our pond to be...
Lincoln’s aging sewer system is getting a much-needed upgrade with the help of two loans for the State Revolving Fund approved last month. Governor Steve Bullock officially announced the approval of $538,900 in loans in an Aug. 26 press release. The Lincoln Sewer District received one 30-year SRF loan for $430,000 with a 2.5 percent interest rate, a second $108,900 SRF loan that may be forgiven if the district meets certain conditions and a $125,000 Renewable Resource Grant from DNRC for the project. According to the press r...
From downtown Lincoln you can now head for miles in any direction and still say you're within the Crown of the Continent, thanks to the work done by University of Montana Geography Professor Rick Graetz and his former graduate student Katie Shank. Last Friday, Graetz and Shank unveiled a new southern boundary for the Crown, which highlights the region around Lincoln and adds about 275,000 acres and 87 miles of the Continental Divide to the 13-million-acre ecosystem. Over the...
The past month has been fantastic. I did not win the lottery. I did see the results of many months of preparation as we had our annual five-day Bible camp. It is a great but stressful time. Stressful because there is a lot of preparation. I should not stress about camp because God always blesses my feeble efforts and camp always turns out to be a great time. I did not stress out too much this year. Maybe after 19 years of being involved with camp I finally “get it”! There are...
Most descriptions of Stuart Ian Frost's work sound like a narrative of the very idea upon which Blackfoot Pathway's: Sculpture in the Wild itself was founded: site specific sculptures related to a specific environment that are rooted in the history and culture of the area. Frost, is one of two artists slated to create new artwork at Sculpture in the Wild in September. He visited Lincoln at the end of June to get acquainted with Lincoln, the sculpture park, the area and its flo...
The 4th of July Festivities are over, the crowds have slightly thinned, the weather has been wet and cool, but the fishing remains hot! With all the rain over the last couple of weeks, Mother Nature is keeping the rivers flowing. The levels are lower than normal and are a bit concerning. For instance, as of the day of this writing, the Blackfoot at Bonner was almost half of what is considered the ten year average; despite a cool beginning to summer and a decent snow pack this...
Two and a half months after local fisherman James Savstrom, 70, was found dead on the Blackfoot River west of Lincoln, the state crime has lab released its findings in his cause of death. Information provided by Lewis and Clark County Sheriff/Coroner Leo Dutton listed Savstrom's primary cause of death was Atherlosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease, also known as hardening of the arteries. Hypothermia was listed as the secondary cause of death. According to Dutton, Savstrom's...
