Letters from a Swan Valley homesteader

This is the second USVHS article about Henry Thomason, an early-day Upper Swan Valley settler who wrote a series of letters to his family in the Midwest documenting life as a homesteader in the early part of the 20th century. Henry's son Maurice W. Thomason homesteaded the adjoining 160-acre parcel north of Henry's land. Henry's daughter Lyda Thomason frequently stayed with her father for extended periods of time.

Henry Thomason retold a story he heard from Jalmer Wirkkala, a local trapper and seasonal Forest Service employee at the Big Prairie Ranger Station in the South Fork. Assistant super...