BENEFIT RAFFLE FOR FIRE DEPARTMENT Bill Shoup of the Swan Valley Volunteer Fire Department stands in front of the facility housing the department's equipment. A benefit raffle to raise operating funds for the department features a drawing for a $10,000 log home shell donated by Rustics of Lindbergh Lake. Tickets for the drawing which will be held Monday, Sept. 5, 1988 are available from Swan Valley businesses. You need not be present to win and tickets are $25 each or five for $100. Shoup said 1,000 tickets were made available with around half of those sold by this week. Shoup also drew attention to the new sign above the garage doors that was donated by Boyd and Virginia Kessler of the Condon Sign Shop.
Twenty Years Ago
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Weather is a blessing...high in the Mission Mountains Wilderness
By Gary Noland
An earlier invitation to take photos on the front line at the Crazy Horse Fire hadn't taken into consideration that rains late Friday and Saturday morning would make possible a break in fire activity and action.
So even though the only action was high in the Mission Mountains Wilderness west of Lindbergh Lake, we trekked as fas as our energy allowed and found some hand crews at work.
We didn't get the "flame jumping" photos we might have gotten a day or so earlier, but then we really didn't care. The weather Friday helped the fire team bring more containment to the Crazy Horse Fire after that and that is what we all wanted.
Thirty-five Years Ago
Thursday, Sept. 1, 1988
Spring boards used in logging
By Herb Townsend
Seeley Lake Writers Club
In the early logging days at Seeley Lake, from the early 1900s until the arrival of the logging trucks, the only way to get logs to market was to float them from the lakes down the Clearwater River to Bonner.
Anything that might hold up the rush of logs during the month-long drives was to be avoided. The big trees with heavy butts were called sinkers. The heavy butts of the big trees wouldn't float.
There were a lot of sinkers in both Seeley and Salmon lakes. A few of these logs were raised and taken to Pyramid Lumber to be made into boards. Roy Anderson, who was mill superintendent then, said they made very low grade boards. Dr. Vorhauer, who has the big lodge on Sourdough Island in Salmon Lake, had one of the sinkers raised. A chainsaw artist cut away the outside wood leaving carvings of bears climbing it. The log had been in the water for more than 70 years.
To avoid messing with the heavy butts of the bigger trees, loggers used spring boards when cutting the trees. Spring boards were inserted about four or five feet from the base of the tree and gave the sawyers a place to stand while they felled the trees. By using spring boards, the fallers would not have to make a second cut after the tree was down. The tall stumps seen in some places (notably in the Placid Lake area) were cut from spring boards.
The School Lunch program and how it grew
By Mildred Chaffin
Seeley Lake Writers Club
Along in the 1920s teachers in some frigid little country schools saw the need for a hot dish at noon and made soup, stew or maybe coca during the worst of the winter weather. Milk or vegetables might be solicited from the parents but if these were not forthcoming the teacher often would provide them from her own small salary.
I, for one, have not forgotten how wonderful it was sitting with half frozen feet propped up around the heating stove and have something hot to get our frozen bread and butter down with - bread and butter frozen in our lunch pails in the cloak room. Bless those teachers! Those good souls didn't know it but they were sowing the seed that developed into our modern school lunch program.
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