Dec. 7, 1863
Anton Holter arrives at Ramshorn Gulch, 18 miles west of Virginia City. It's the jumping-off point for a new enterprise n the timber industry n in what will become Montana less than six months later.
Holter and partner Alex Evinson have traveled with a train of wagons from Utah via the Beaverhead Valley. They've had a rough crossing of the Ruby River in the aftermath of a fierce snowstorm. Some wagons contain parts of an old sawmill, the ingredients for Montana's first such commercial mill.
A few days later, Holter will venture up Alder Gulch into Virginia City, where he'll unsuccessfully try to sell a couple of yoke of oxen. On his way back to camp, Holter will be robbed of a few greenbacks by the notorious George Ives and a fellow road agent. Ives will turn his pistol on Holter, shooting him through the hat and powdermarking him for life.
People are also reading…
Holter will jump into an old beaver dam, but Ives won't be dissuaded in his intent to kill his victim until a teamster with a load of poles appears on the road.
Holter, a native of Norway, will go on to establish lumber yards in Alder Gulch, Great Falls, Sun River, Fort Benton and Helena and will become known as the father of the lumber business in Montana. He'll be one of Montana's prominent early day businessmen and statesmen. A dam and reservoir on the Missouri River are named in his honor.
Dec. 11, 1889
Barely a month after Montana gained statehood, John Stevens "discovers" Marias Pass in northern Montana.
Principal engineer for Jim Hill's Great Northern Railroad, Stevens is accompanied by a Blackfeet guide named Coonsah, though he travels the last few miles to the summit alone. He plows through deep snow and braves temperatures of 40 below zero. Stevens continues west until he finds a west-flowing stream, then returns to the summit, where he spends the night tramping back and forth in the snow to keep warm.
His finding of a pass long used by the Blackfeet and west-slope tribes and establishes the location of the lowest and most gentle crossing of the Continental Divide in the Northern Rockies. That's good news for Hill, who'll now route his railroad all the way across the Montana Hi-Line.
Marias has long been an elusive and mysterious pass to white men in the area. The warlike Blackfeet closed it off to most travel. In the 21st century an obelisk and statue of Stevens stand on the 5,214-foot summit. Stevens will gain more fame in succeeding decades as chief engineer of the Panama Canal.
Dec. 10, 1956
A bitterly cold Arctic air mass behind hurricane-force winds strikes central Montana and the temperature plunges in Great Falls from 51 degrees to 20 in less than an hour.
Winds lift the roof off a Billings television station and rip off a section of a new hospital in Livingston. The National Weather Service station in Great Falls registers winds of 82 miles per hour, which remains a Montana record as the fastest mile of wind. However, there are reports of gusts of 99 mph in Livingston and a whopping 140 mph in Valier on the same day. But those points have no official U.S. weather station.
Neither do the towns in north-central Montana that will be met with similar blasts more than three decades later. On Jan. 30, 1989, a similar cold mass will generate gusts of 100 mph at Shelby, where 12 empty railroad cars are blown over. Wind speed will reach 117 at Browning and 124 at Choteau.
Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
