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The Seeley Lake community is grappling with the effectiveness and longevity of its medical center, the only spot with primary and dental care in about a 50-mile radius. Partnership Health Center, the nonprofit organization that provides services to the Seeley-Swan Medical Center, experienced financial hardship during the covid-19 pandemic and Montana’s Medicaid redetermination process, both across its six locations in Missoula County and specifically at the Seeley clinic, according to hospital representatives. These financial stressors — and...
Candidate filing for special district elections, including school board and community councils, opened on Dec. 12. Particularly in unincorporated towns like Seeley Lake and Condon, being a part of various boards is a way community members can get involved in local issues and in some cases — in community councils particularly — can be the mouthpiece for the community to the Missoula County Board of Commissioners. In the Seeley-Swan area, there are two open positions on community boards: one with the Swan Valley Fire service area and one on the...
Public Services • Alcoholics Anonymous (AA): Mon, 7pm, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, www.aa-montana.org • Missoula County Treasurer: 2nd & 4th Thurs, 9:30am – 3:30pm, closed for lunch 11:30 – 12:30, Satellite Office, 3360 Highway 83N • Montana Veterans Affairs Division: 3rd Wed, 10am-2pm, Citizens Alliance Bank. 406-721-1288 for apt. • Potomac Food Bank: Second to last Sunday each month, 5-7pm, Potomac Greenough Comm. Center • Seeley Lake Caregiver Support Group: Third Tues, 1-2pm, via ZOOM. For log in info call Missoula Aging Service the Wednesd...
Local Government • Missoula County Commissioners Public Mtg, 2nd & 4th Thursdays, Courthouse Annex, Room 151, Missoula, 2pm. http://www.missoulacounty.us/government/administration/commissioners-office • Seeley Lake Community Council, 2nd Mon, 6pm, Seeley Lake Historical Museum & Visitors Center, 2920 Highway 83. For the agenda and virtual access visit the Facebook Page for Zoom link. http://www.missoulacounty.us/community/community-councils/seeley-lake-community-council • Swan Valley Community Council, 3rd Tues, 6pm, Swan Valley Commu...
On Dec. 7 downtown Seeley Lake was bustling with community members gathered for the Second Annual Seeley Lake Tree Lighting presented by the Lions Club. This year's Christmas tree included 1,000 lights that were paid for by the Lions Club and strung by Missoula Electric Cooperative. The theme of this year's lighting was Logger Santa. Logger Santa and Mrs. Claus were in attendance and posed for pictures after the tree was lit. The tree wasn't the only decoration on display. The fence in front of...
Through different forms of Christmas greenery making, Seeley Lake community members rang in the holiday season with evergreen boughs. On Dec. 1, Lu Perez, a Seeley Lake community member, gathered 14 women for what she's deciding is the first annual Christmas wreath making party. She got the idea after making a wreath herself, which she donated to an auction for Sparrow's Vine, a parenting resource center in Seeley Lake. People loved it, she said, and it gave her the idea of hosting a gathering w...
The Planning Committee of the Swan Valley Community Council and the Missoula County Planning Department are seeking ideas and input on the future of the Swan Valley. This input from community members will assist us in our effort to update the 1996 Neighborhood Plan and clearly communicate our vision and preferences to our county commissioners. Why are we doing this now? First, it is a requirement of Missoula County’s rural communities to update their neighborhood plan every five years, and secondly, we want to learn from the POWDR/Save H...
In response to an increase in the recreational use of national forests in the early 20th century, Congress passed the 1915 Term Occupancy Act, which allowed permits for private use and development of forest lands. The growing interest in outdoor recreation and conservation also triggered the popularity of dude ranching and guided pack trips in the western United States. By 1920, early-day settlers, Roria "Babe" and Eva Wilhelm, moved to Swan Valley after trading a house they owned in Butte for H...
A snowy night, a log building and a handful of hearty citizens are the recipe for democracy in the woods. There were pickup trucks in the parking lot rather than horses, but it seemed like a meeting that could have occurred a hundred years ago. Swan Valley Community Council Chairperson Grace Siloti called the meeting to order, which wasn’t tough given this was an orderly group. John Simon, member of the Swan Valley planning subcommittee, asked the group to encourage participation in a survey by the Swan Valley Elementary School regarding p...
At the Clearwater Montana Properties office here in Seeley Lake, two specific questions have been very popular over the past few months. The first is a question we get regardless of the season, year, or current events: “How’s the market?” The second question is about the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) settlement that took effect this summer and its impact on buyers and sellers. Let’s dive in and get some answers. HOW’S THE MARKET? The real estate market in the Seeley-Swan Valley is continuing to stabilize after rapid price increases...
Thirty five years ago... Thursday Nov. 23, 1989 Snowmobile routes under study The Seeley Lake Community Council Monday evening looked at ways to offer snowmobilers safe access routes from town to the mountains while at the same time considering ways to hold down potential accidents and nuisance problems. Representatives from the Driftrider Snowmobile Club and local law enforcement agencies were on hand for a discussion of problems. Law enforcement personnel urged citizens to "communicate" with...
Nearing the end of his 18-state book tour to introduce "Becoming Little Shell, A Landless Indian's Journey Home," Chris La Tray, Métis author and Montana Poet Laureate, presented his new book at the Alpine Artisans Open Book Club on Nov. 9 at the Swan Valley Community Center. La Tray read from his new book, shared poetry and answered questions from the crowd. The book tells the story of La Tray's growing up around Huson and discovery of being Chippewa, and the history therewithin. While growing...
Sally Johnson carries bags of donated food as she walks up to the Seeley Swan Community Food Bank. It's a Wednesday, and even though the food bank is closed, that doesn't stop her from taking time out of her day to bring in donations. Johnson spends a lot of time at the food bank as both the volunteer coordinator and as a volunteer, and started volunteering at the food bank after she retired. Johnson appreciates that she has the opportunity to be so involved in the community, though...
Standing in a circle under an afternoon autumn blue sky, big fluffy clouds blocking the view here and there, the students of Swan Valley Elementary School were told to be a tree. More specifically, a model of a tree. Taylor Tewksbury, education program coordinator with Swan Valley Connections, explained that models are examples and scientists use them to understand something without, in a tree's case, needing to chop it down. Students made concentric circles of their classmates and were...
A grizzly bear was killed by a hunter on Saturday, Nov. 2 after an encounter south of Placid Lake in the Seeley-Swan Valley. The hunter reported the bear charging him at close distance, and he then shot and killed the bear. The hunter was not injured in the encounter. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wardens responded and confirmed the mortality of the adult male bear. No further management action by FWP is planned. This incident is still under investigation by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), who also assisted with the response. Be...
To commemorate the end of an era, the Pathfinder went back through the archives to find mentions of Pyramid Mountain Lumber all the way back to 1983 when the paper was published as The Valley Times. There aren't instances from each year since, mainly because we'd run out of space, and also because one gets the general gist from the compiled remarks. A main refrain after the announced closure of Pyramid Mountain Lumber on March 14 of this year was that it was the glue that held Seeley Lake...
Missoula, MT — Missoula Electric Cooperative (MEC) has secured a $6.6 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to improve wildfire protection and storm resilience in a portion of its service area. The grant is part of the Wildfire Assessment and Resilience for Networks (WARN) initiative, which will provide more than $145 million to enhance grid reliability in rural, high-risk regions across 16 central and western states. MEC’s project, Seeley-Swan Undergrounding for Wildfire and Storm Safety, will bury approximately 46...
On the coldest day of 2024, Montana's Poet Laureate Chris LaTray spoke in tandem with author Peter Stark at an Open Book Club event in Seeley Lake, lending an Indigenous perspective to Stark's latest book about the West. Those of us lucky enough to attend have been eagerly awaiting LaTray's return. Fresh from a nation-wide tour, Chris LaTray will be presenting his newest book, Becoming Little Shell, A Landless Indian's Journey Home at the Swan Valley Community Hall in Condon, Saturday, Nov. 9...
Maybe you opened your paper today thinking, I’m pretty sure the Pathfinder’s missing something. Don’t we have a new president? Statehouse representative? You’re probably right. Since our papers are printed on Mondays, it made for a very quiet Nov. 7 paper regarding election details. We sent the paper off to press before Election Day even began. I intend to publish a story online focusing on the statehouse races pertinent to the Seeley-Swan and Blackfoot Valleys on Wednesday or Thursday this week. But in the meantime, there are plenty of othe...
The Flathead National Forest has received an application from Eric Jacobsen and Thomas Knowles for a special use permit to operate Holland Lake Lodge with no proposed expansion. Private equity investors Jacobsen and Knowles held a meeting announcing their interest in purchasing the historic lodge in the Swan Valley in September and the Forest Service received notice of a purchase agreement between the two and the current holders of the lodge’s special use permit — longtime owner Christian Wohlfiel and POWDR, owner of ski resorts across the cou...
Thirty five years ago... Thursday Nov. 2, 1989 Citations issued in moose shootings; general doe season ended Sunday The general hunting season seems to be going along "pretty normal," according to FWP game warden Jay Haveman, except for a couple of moose that were shot. "It may have been mistaken identification," Haveman said, but he issued citations in both instances. "One involved a bull moose that was shot near Squeezer Creek, east of Goat Creek, in the upper Swan Valley," Haveman said. The...
On Tuesday, Oct. 22, 20 Missoula County officials participated in the “Swan Valley Community Conversation,” held at the Swan Valley Elementary School. The event, designed to foster communication between county government and the more outlying Swan Valley community, had a unique format and was met with positive reviews by attendees. Rather than a large open meeting, eight “stations” of citizens were seated at tables, and the officials rotated every 10 minutes, so that each group of three to five attendees had face-to-face interactions with re...
The northern lights have been visible in the Seeley-Swan Valley many times this year, including multiple times this month. Meteorologist Dave Noble, who works with the National Weather Service in Missoula, explained why the northern lights occur. "Occasionally we can have these explosions off the sun that are spewing plasma at a million miles an hour towards space, and sometimes they can be directed towards the earth," Noble said. "If it is carrying the right magnetic field with it, or the...
Folks who live in our Seeley-Swan Valley fall into several categories: old timers, newcomers, “medium timers” and people who returned after many years. One person who returned after many years was Mabel Stilwell. Born Mabel Lundberg in the Swan Valley in 1917, she may well have been the first baby of white settlers born in these parts. Let’s take a closer look at the Swan Valley during these years, and where Mabel’s life took her. During the years around Mabel’s birth, the Swan Valley had homesteaders moving in, drawn by the beauty and amaze...
The Forest Service received notification of a purchase agreement regarding Holland Lake Lodge between Eric Jacobsen, Great Falls native and current Utah resident, and longtime owner of the lodge and holder of its special use permit, Christian Wohlfeil, and POWDR on Oct. 11. POWDR, a company that owns and operates ski resorts across the country, owns about 20% of the assets of Holland Lake Lodge. A controversial plan to expand the lodge was rejected by the Forest Service last fall after being met with forceful local opposition. Ivy Gehling,...
