Character studies

Gary Montgomery of Trego was a natural to write “Tobacco Valley,” with help from the board of history archives, for Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series.

“I had 18 years of information,” said Montgomery, the publisher of “The Trail,” a historical journal of the area.

Even more important, he loves the valley, its people and past. A pictorial history, the book reflects his passion and subtle sense of humor with 127 pages of photos, each with a paragraph or two that retell the past through its people.

“I suppose my favorite historical characters are the legendary Sheriff Frank Baney and a man I call the quintessential small town doctor, Fred Bogardus,” Montgomery said.

Serving the valley from 1907 to 1919, Bogardus treated every imaginable trauma including sawmill and logging accidents, knifings, gunshots, explosions, buggy and car wrecks and horse-inflicted injuries.

“I came across him in old newspapers,” Montgomery said. “He was in practically every week.”

Based on research from the Eureka Journal, he wrote that it was no overstatement to say that the doc “saw it all in his 12-year tenure.”

“He amputated limbs, removed an eye, relieved a depressed skull fracture, and gave a number of transfusions. He was in charge when nearly 50 people died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. He once removed a pin from the esophagus of a young seamstress.”

Montgomery uncovered one of Dr. Bogardus’ more memorable exploits that involved hitching a ride on a helper engine to reach a medical emergency in Rexford as quickly as possible.

“Two miles from town, he was forced to make a spectacular leap into the snow when the helper engine met an eastbound freight train.”

The doctor survived the leap but succumbed to a rare skin disease before reaching the age of 50.

The author’s other favorite character, Sheriff Baney, was the law of the land and a legend for 40 years. For a brief period, he became the bane of bootleggers when prohibition began in Montana in 1919.

Montgomery writes that local law enforcement took the lead in sniffing out moonshiners in the early days before federal officials got up to speed. A temperate man, Baney took his job seriously as proven by the photo of the sheriff on page 100 posing with about 15 confiscated stills.

He was taken out of the fight in 1926 when Montana repealed its prohibition law seven years before the federal government followed suit. Ironically, alcohol almost did Baney in even though it never touched his lips.

“In 1921, Sheriff Baney nearly died when he took a .45 slug in his chest from a drunken itinerant,” Montgomery wrote.

Through 10 chapters, the author leads readers on a pictorial tour of the Tobacco Valley’s significant eras, beginning with the original inhabitants, the Kutenai Indians, encountered by explorer David Thompson in 1808.

As far as the author could determine, Thompson was the first to use the word “tobacco” to refer to the area on maps after observing the Kutenai using the wild variety for ceremonial purposes. Montgomery writes that the tribe held sway over the land until the late 1880s when cattlemen discovered the Tobacco Plains.

A few conflicts took place. Montgomery relates the time in 1889 when a contingent of buffalo soldiers arrived from Fort Missoula in a show of force.

“By and large, the Kutenais stepped peacefully aside and took up land immediately north of the border that the Canadian government allotted them as a reservation.”

Eureka, first named Dewey, was founded when the Great Northern Railroad came through in 1904, providing a link to far-flung markets for what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of lumber. Just two years later, the Eureka Lumber Mill was operating.

Once boasted as the largest mill in Montana, the Eureka Lumber Company’s mill ran day and night until a disastrous fire burned it to the ground in 1914. A new mammoth mill was up and running by spring of 1915.

Montgomery writes that the town prospered as the mill payrolls ushered in paved streets and sidewalks in Eureka by 1918, as cars replaced buggies. He included a picture of a Model T parked in the middle of Dewey Avenue.

According to the author, that vehicle never completely disappeared from the area. He and his wife Penny own a 1919 Model T Ford pickup.

“I bought it here in Eureka,” he said. “We go out and ride around the back roads. Quite a few people have Model Ts here — about a dozen.”

In spite of the efforts of Sheriff Baney, the early 1920s added another growth industry in the Tobacco Valley. Montgomery said the Canadians still manufactured and sold alcohol during Prohibition, enticing locals to make a buck with bootlegging.

He writes that it came across the border on coal trains, under the seats of family sedans, in custom rum-runner cars and even on rafts disguised as brush floating down the Kootenai River. Others cooked up their own, according to Montgomery.

“The Pinkham Creek area, having been settled by several Appalachian families who knew how to distill moonshine, developed a reputation for making good whiskey.”

Boom days slowed in the Tobacco Valley as the easy-to-reach timber diminished.

For a few years, the town pinned high hopes on a chemical plant. It was built by a group of Baltimore investors to extract mucic acid from the butts of tamarack trees to make baking soda.

Montgomery found predictions that the business would eventually generate 1,500 jobs.

“By March 1922, the plant came on line with two shifts of 40 men. At the end of the month, the company shipped its first carload of mucic acid.”

A little over a year later, a fire at the planer mill of the Eureka Lumber Company cut off the plant’s source of electricity and the operation closed. Power was restored in 1924 but the chemical plant never became a paying proposition.

After the mill folded in 1924, Montgomery said Eureka entered a dormant period as people without jobs left.

“Those who remained quietly plugged away in the woods, making railroad ties and especially two-by-fours for a burgeoning construction market following World War II.”

A large Christmas tree industry flourished from the ’40s through the ’60s as seedlings popped up in areas logged off earlier. Eureka was even dubbed the “Christmas Tree Capital of the World,” the title of chapter six of Montgomery’s book.

“By 1948, there were 300 freight cars loaded with 1.8 million trees leaving the valley. Collier’s magazine published an article in December 1948 lending credence to that seemingly outlandish claim.”

Plantations and artificial trees eventually crushed the Christmas tree bonanza. But lumber resurged in the Tobacco Valley as loggers used tractor crawlers to reach less accessible forests.

Montgomery ends his pictorial history with the Libby Dam project approved by Congress in 1950, with construction starting in the late 1960s.

“Tobacco and Kootenai Valley history changed forever when Congress funded the building of Libby Dam, which eventually backed up water in Lake Koocanusa for 90 miles in the United States and Canada, inundating all the small towns that were situated along the banks of the Kootenai River.”

A new era was ushered in, but readers must wait for a sequel to learn about it from Montgomery, who moved to the area as the dam neared completion. Since 1973, he has worked as a logger, sawmill hand, substitute teacher, fire crewman, ranch manager, real estate agent, Christmas tree cutter, freelance writer and owner of a printing/ photo processing business in Eureka.

While running the printing business, Montgomery said he came to know pioneers, their children and members of the Kutenai Indian band. He heard their stories and saw their amazing historical photos.

“Somehow or other I got the idea to launch a small historical journal which I now call ‘The Trail,’” he said.

Montgomery, drawing photos mainly from the history board archives, began working about a year ago with Arcadia Publishing to produce “Tobacco Valley,” the latest volume of the publisher’s Images of America series. It sells for $21.99 from arcadiapublishing.com and through stores in Eureka, Amazon.com and through the author’s Web site, www.thetrailmag.com

Montgomery, who has three children and eight grandchildren, continues to live in Trego with his wife, Penny. He has never wavered in his passion for the Tobacco Valley even as historic booms and busts continue.

“It’s all good times to me living here,” he said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.