The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
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This year, with COVID-19 restrictions lifted across Montana, the Fourth of July events returned to communities across the state this weekend, but the competition didn’t seem to do much to dampen Lincoln’s busiest weekend. Although there is no confirmed count of the number of visitors who arrived in town for the annual Independence Day Parade, which coincides with the first day of the Lincoln Rodeo, downtown Lincoln was awash with visitors, who lined Main Street from First Ave...
Rayna Thompson opened Paws Inn Pet Boarding in Lincoln on June 7. "I used to babysit dogs around town here when I was in high school," said Thompson, who has worked in boarding kennels in Kalispell and Helena for over four years. When she returned to Lincoln, she decided to start her own. In addition to overnight boarding, Thompson offers bathing for dogs, including nail trims, as well as variety of day care services for different types of pets. The kennel includes a...
The Lincoln Telephone Company – now known as LincTel - welcomed community members to a public barbecue at Hooper Park Thursday Afternoon, July 22 to celebrate 100 years of telephone service to Lincoln. The laid-back celebration featured plenty of food and activities for the kids, and drew in guests throughout the afternoon. One hundred years ago, when many of the telephones in the state still used barbed wire fences to make calls, the Helena Commercial Club saw the value in r...
Lincoln saw a busy, loud weekend as the 2021 Lincoln Bike Rally Came to town. Hundreds of bikers spent the weekend here enjoying concerts, poker runs and Lincolns bars, restaurants and businesses. The Bike Rally, hosted by the Tenacious Dames Riding Club, raised money for Lincoln School's POUNCE after school program. "It's been beyond anything we had imagined," Laurie Ricahrds at the Wheel Inn said. "It's been great for the entire town and I think everybody is having a great...
A pair of rufous hummingbirds harass a female calliope hummingbird as they compete over a feeder near Lincoln last week. The hummingbirds represent two of the three species that spend their summers in Montana. Though there wasn't a black-chinned hummingbird to be seen, up to eight rufous and calliope hummingbirds frequented the feeder....
After COVID-19 prompted the community to call off their famously informal Fourth of July parade last year, Ovando was in full swing this year as the town square was filled with people who made the trip to the small Blackfoot Valley town for the event. "We come a thousand miles every year for this parade, " said Darren Dreessen of Moorhead, Minn., a relative of the Geary's from Helmville. He said they also have friends with family in Ovando who fly in from Coral Springs, Fla....
Why You Should Grind Your Own Coffee Fresh coffee.....What a concept! Can you imagine eating an apple that is months past the date when it was picked, and that traveled half-way across the world to get to you? Oh, wait, maybe you can. But, I digress. Coffee, locally roasted and then freshly ground right before you brew it, is an amazing revelation. Did you know that even ten minutes after grinding, coffee begins to lose its flavor? You see, grinding coffee beans reduces their...
As summer returns to Lincoln, so, too, do off-highway vehicles. Proper operation of OHVs, particularly in town, can help ensure the safety of kids, pedestrians and others sharing the highway. For residents and visitors alike, rules governing OHV use can be confusing, with the laws set out in the Montana Code Annotated. Additionally, depending on where the vehicle is being used and the age of the operator, the requirements to safely and legally drive an OHV can vary. OHVs are...
The Montana Newspaper Association announced the winners of the 2021 Better Newspaper Contest June 18, during their 136th Convention and the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch fared well in the results. The BVD, a Divsion 1 Newspaper (weekly, with a circulation of fewer than 1250) earned recognition in eight categories this year.. Writer Kate Radford earned a first place recognition for Best Education Coverage for her March 11, 2020 story on the Lincoln School Science fair. "Good...
Envision Lincoln and the Lincoln Valley Chamber of Commerce have been working with Lewis and Clark County and the Montana Business Assistance Connection to develop a comprehensive master plan for Lincoln. Earlier this month, Lewis and Clark County approved a request for proposals for development of a comprehensive master plan. The RFP will go out for bid to professional consultants who have experience in master planning for rural communities like Lincoln. But just what is a...
The Lincoln Fireman's Ball was the latest local event to make a comeback as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes and restrictions loosen up. Normally scheduled a weekend in March around St. Patrick's Day, the Ball had to be cancelled last year as the Lewis and Clark Public Health began implementing restrictions related to the spread of the novel coronavirus. Instead they hosted a successful auction via Facebook to help raise funds for the fire company. Despite the success of last...
“When you have a hammer, everything is a nail. When you have a blacksmith, everything is anything you want it to be” It seems today that the word “blacksmith,” most often calls to mind the image of the farrier shaping shoes for horses. While it is true that a farrier is a blacksmith, a blacksmith isn't necessarily a farrier. As the quote above shows, blacksmithing is much more. It is the art of forging metal using tools like a hammer, an anvil and a forge to make objects which range from tools to hooks to gates, hinges to scu...
Lincoln Little League took on Helmville Wednesday, May 12. The Lincoln teams also hosted home games May 14, with the Bent Nail Construction 9U team racking up their first win, a 12 - 7 victory over Helena's Rivals Athletics. The Hi Country 11U team didn't fare as well, losing a 2-18 blowout against Miekush Mowing. The next home game is scheduled May 21, with Hi Country taking on Coca Cola and Bent Nail facing Rocky Mountain Computer Supply...
Girls on Shred, a Missoula based skate and snowboarding group, hosted a training day for about 15 of their volunteers at the Lincoln Skatepark Saturday, May 15. Girls on Shred was created in 2010 by the wife of the former owner of Board of Missoula, a skate and snowboard shop that's been in business since 1989. Originally centered on snowboarding, shop manager Samantha Veysey Gibbons expanded the group into skateboarding in 2015. "We provide free clinics and fun get togethers...
These two photographs bookend a journey. The first has been seen by possibly millions of Junior High and High School students over the years. An image from the National Archive, it has became an iconic image of post-civil war westward expansion and has appeared in several U.S. history textbooks. The second image is probably known only to the readers of Gold Pans and Singletrees. Together, they show both ends of the Tuck family's journey from Litchfield, Neb. to Lincoln, Mont....
Montana’s legislators completed work for the 67th Session on Thursday, April 29 (ten days ahead of schedule). Our primary Constitutional duty is to pass a balanced budget, which we did conservatively with the mandate of you, our voters. We passed legislation to promote the Governor’s Montana Comeback Plan, reforming taxes to promote job growth and wages. With this approach, income, property and business taxes are set to be simplified and reduced. More of our hard-earned dol...
Mobile home parks are one of the last strongholds of reliable affordable housing in Montana, helping people of a wide range of income levels become homeowners, even as prices for most other residence types in across the state continue to spike. But as investment firms snap up properties across the state, there are signs that even mobile homes may soon become out of reach for many Montanans. It's certainly a worry for Cindy Newman, who owns a mobile home in the Highwoods...
Editors Note: Rick Graetz with the University of Montana selected Lincoln to be the first town featured in a new series of community profiles in the 'This is Montana Community Vitality Program.' Graetz allowed the BVD to be the first publication to run the Lincoln article before it goes out for wider distribution. A limited human presence, single main street, towering ponderosa pine trees reaching up toward snow covered peaks, a lumberjack atmosphere, and a ranger station is...
Butte-Silver Bow County Health Officer Karen Sullivan was enjoying a drink in a Butte brewery after work when she said she got the call. For two months, she and her fellow county health officials across the state had been keeping tabs on reports of an outbreak of a strange new virus in Wuhan, China, but up until the evening of March 13, 2020, it had been business as usual for Sullivan and the county health department. Then a state official rang her at 6:30 p.m. "How's your...
Lincoln's newly formed Little League team began practicing just a few short weeks ago with nearly 30 players, and they'll play their first game April 19. Shane Smith, who had been driving his son to Helena to play for three years, said some parents and volunteers got together this spring to try to coordinate a Lincoln team. "It was just an idea we started throwing around to other people to see if we could get Little League started up here," said Smith, who is coaching the...
Every April, professional scientists and amateurs alike celebrate Citizen Science Month. Citizen science is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions" and encompasses thousands of projects and experiments. Crowd-sourcing data isn't a new idea. The Christmas Bird Count, which is sponsored by the National...
Although anyone who knows me knows that I'm a "certifiable" botany and native plants nerd, I love everything nature. In particular, I share a love of birds with one of my sisters. On a trip together one October, we went to a wild bird rescue facility (Vermont Institute of Natural Science) to attend one program, and ended up staying all day, much to our mutual delight. We often send each other articles, pictures, and messages about birds back and forth from our homes in...
Girls scouts with Cascade Troop 3051 Came to Lincoln Saturday, April 3, to sell girl scout cookies. Troop leader Crystal Lemanski said the girls came to Lincoln because they learned people here wanted cookies, but didn't have a local troop. She also explained the cookie market in Cascade is rather small and they reach market saturation pretty quickly....
Lincoln Volunteer Fire Rescue scattered a few thousand eggs around Hoope4 park as they brought their annual Easter Egg hunt back after COVID-19 forced its cancellation last year. Twelve firefighters spent two-and-a-half hours filling the plastic eggs with candy last Thursday. The hunt didn't bring out quite as many people as the firefighters expected, but everyone who showed up seemed glad to have it back, and there were more than enough candy-filled eggs for...
Most years, April 3 passes unnoticed, but it's a significant date in Lincoln's history that brings a renewed interest in the community every five or ten years. This year is no exception. Sunday marks 25 years since the FBI arrested Theodore J. Kaczynski at his cabin south of Lincoln for the Unabomber bombings that killed three people and injured 23 others. Kaczynski had been responsible for a dozen bombings between 1978 and 1987, killing one man in 1985. He went silent for...
