Northern Pacific Railroad's influence on the Upper Swan Valley

Editor's Note: Part I, run in the March 10 issue, highlighted the start of the Northern Pacific Railroad's influence on the Upper Swan Valley through the early 1900's.

Although the upper Swan Valley was primarily settled by homesteaders staking claims on United States Forest Service (USFS) lands, some settlers purchased Northern Pacific (NP) lands for as low as $1.25 an acre, usually in 80- or 160-acre parcels. The Haasch family who homesteaded a USFS parcel later bought an additional 160 acres of NP land for $1.25 an acre. The Swan Valley Museum stands on a small portion of what was once part of the Hassch land purchase from NP. Other early-day settlers who purchased NP lands included Babe Clothier, Archie Clothier, Roy Fox, John Hulett, Glen Huston, Charlie Lundberg, Carl Anderson, Ed Beck and Cap Laird.

In a 1999 interview with Suzanne Vernon, long-time Swan Valley resident, Vic Wise told of homesteader Carl Anderson who sold his homestead in the Salmon Prairie area and bought land near Condon Creek from NP.

"In those days you could buy all the land you wanted from NP for $2 to $3 an acre. People don't know that now," Wise said.

In 1929 Ed Beck also purchased 160 acres of NP land along Condon Creek for $6 an acre. He paid for the land by trapping beaver. At that time, an 80-inch beaver pelt sold for $1 an inch.

Many early-day settlers in the upper Swan Valley were employed by NP. One of the early homesteaders Bill Deegan worked for the NP as a locomotive engineer. He wanted a less stressful lifestyle so he filed to homestead in the upper Swan Valley in 1912. Deegan was also willing to locate potential homestead properties for a fee of $50. Several friends and acquaintances used his services to locate parcels when filing their homestead claims.

According to Alice Brunson Lawrence, Deegan got her father Wiley Brunson interested in homesteading in the Swan Valley west of Elk Creek in 1917. Brunson worked for NP for 40 years. He became an engineer in 1901 pulling freight trains on NP's Rocky Mountain Division between Helena and Missoula.

Through the years, other NP employees settled in the upper Swan Valley including homesteaders Charlie Anderson, Frank Anderson, Wiley Brunson, Everett Christy, George Clinkingbeard, Frank Drury, Frank Fox, Harry Hall, Bill Hoogbruin, Clarence Maloney and Robert Sheehan. Other early-day residents who worked for NP were Joseph Waldbillig, Carl Nelson, Al Melton, Charlie Lundberg, Warner Lundberg, Vern Guyer and Jim Papke. Still others, like Dennis Jette, contracted with NP.

In 1922, Northern Pacific sponsored an exploratory trip into the Mission Mountains to scout the area for future tourism promotion. USFS employees Theodore Shoemaker and Jack Clack led a group of photographers and writers including photographer Asahel Curtis. Many natural features were named on the trip including Turquoise Lake, Sunrise Glacier and Lake of the Clouds.

In 1931, the USFS classified some 67,000 acres on the east slopes of the Missions as the Mission Mountains Primitive Area. At the time, NP owned approximately 20,000 acres within the primitive area. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, NP traded most of its land holdings at higher elevations inside the primitive area for USFS lands elsewhere in the Swan Valley. By the early 1970s, all of the NP lands in the Missions had been exchanged before it was designated as wilderness in 1975. The Mission Mountains Wilderness now encompasses over 73,000 acres.

Additionally, in 1931 NP owned approximately 69,000 acres within the newly designated 584,000-acre South Fork Primitive Area, which became part of the Bob Marshall Wilderness in 1940. Later, the Forest Service acquired the NP lands within the primitive area.

In the 1940s, NP began a new policy of forestry management that included tree planting, thinning and more active forest management of their remaining lands. NP employed quite a few Swan Valley residents both directly and indirectly in the management of their properties. Several Swan Valley residents worked on NP logging sales and subsequent Burlington Northern and Plum Creek sales including logger Neil Meyer, employees at the Wineglass Mill operations and A&S logging, among others.

By the mid-1960s road improvements and higher prices increased the demand for timber in the Swan Valley. Intense management of corporate timberlands brought changes to the area.

Ownership of corporate timberlands in Swan Valley changed hands several times between 1970 and 2010. The Northern Pacific Railway, Great Northern Railway, Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railways merged into Burlington Northern Incorporated in 1970. Nineteen years later, the newly established Plum Creek Timber Company purchased the timberlands and mills from Burlington Resources (previously known as Burlington Northern) in 1989.

A mere 10 years later in 1999, Plum Creek Timber Company was converted to a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). In 2002, after intensive logging of their timberlands, Plum Creek announced plans to sell 20,000 acres of their land in Swan Valley. While some residents were in favor of Plum Creek selling their lands to private interests, others were alarmed. They feared the rustic lifestyle and rural character of the area would be drastically changed.

Conservationists were concerned that wide swaths of land could be subdivided and developed. Workers in the timber industry were worried about the loss of land in the timber base. Others were dismayed that their access to their favorite hunting, firewood-gathering or huckleberry-picking spots would be cut off.

In 2010 after much negotiating and fundraising, The Nature Conservancy and the Trust For Public Land worked out the details for the sale of all Plum Creek's remaining holdings in the Swan Valley, roughly 66,000 acres. The majority of the lands were conveyed to the U.S. Forest Service and Montana State Lands. Known as the Montana Forest Legacy Project, the transfer of these corporate timberlands to national and state public lands kept the land available for timber harvest, wildlife uses and public access.

After over 150 years of corporate ownership, the remaining former NP timberlands reverted back to the public domain, erasing the earlier fractured pattern of land ownership in Swan Valley.