Whitehall Montana - Recently Updated Pages

Jewelry

CrazyLibraryLady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:09:40 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Barter opportunities

CrazyLibraryLady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:08:14 CDT

Would you like to barter your skills for something you need? List your skills or your needs here!

Art lessons	Dog grooming	Jewelry	Sculpting lessons
Babysitting	Dog walking	Knitting
Baking	Dog watching
Bookwork			Tutoring
	Errand running	Office work	Typing
	Gardening
Computer training	Graphic design
Cooking	House repair
Craft classes	House work		Web page design
Crochet			Window washing

Computer training

CrazyLibraryLady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:07:01 CDT

Name	Skills	Contact info
Donna Worth.	Basic computer skills, word processing, email, photo editing, computer troubleshooting	worthart@tssmt.net

Art Lessons

CrazyLibraryLady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:28:11 CDT

Donna Worth, sculpting and jewelry

Home

CrazyLibraryLady — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:59:56 CDT

Welcome toWhitehall Montana,
The city wiki about Whitehall Montana that
anyone may contribute to.

Agriculture	Landmarks
Arts	Obituaries
Barter oppertunities
Business	Organizations
Churches	Parks
Culture	People
Entertainment	Pictures
Events	Recreation
Government	Schools
History

The articles below are to help you learn to use the Whitehallpedia.

Using Whitehallpedia

Organizations

hllyhrpr — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:00:37 CDT

Whitehall is a busy, caring community with at least 50 community organizations, some designed to enhance the community, some for social gatherings, some for intillectual stimulation, some for a combination of all three!

The Whitehall Horizons Project is trying to create a comprehensive community blog that reflects what's happening in Whitehall. The link is http://whitehall.communityblogs.us/

Come and see what's happening in Whitehall!

Schools

hllyhrpr — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:54:36 CDT

Whitehall Public Schools are a great place to teach and learn. The school disctrict has an active, regularly updated and enormous webpage at http://whitehall.schoolwires.com

Click on the link, and go see what Whitehall Schools has to offer!

Landmarks

CrazyLibraryLady — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 01:20:30 CDT

Old kiln on the Jefferson River near Whitehall Montana.

Building

ritadwayne — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:15:14 CDT

Plumbers

DB Plumbing & Excavating LLC
Dwayne Brown, Owner
287-9291

Bone Basin Part II

CrazyLibraryLady — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:03:51 CDT

by Roy Millegan

Many of the homesteaders also had cattle, finding ready market for calves raised. As mentioned before, drought, grasshoppers and crickets would cut into the production of grains and hay crops, and then there the terrible winters.

In 1919, the Bisch family purchased some cattle only to lose all of them because of the bad winter that occurred. They then went into sheep, having a small farm flock. Here it wasn't the winter, it was the prices. They wre paid $32 for their lambs in 1928, getting $1.00 per head in 1929, the start of the great depression. Meat from their own beef, sheep, and hogs, along with the chickens raised and gardens produced helped sustain them always during the bad times. However, sometimes when you left the farm and went back to it you found that someone helped themselves to your food supply. The Bisch family had acquired 1,000 chickens one year to help them through the depression years. Upon returning from their usual jaunt to church in Whitehall they found that someone else couldn't pass up the nice young fryers and had appropriated them for their own use. This was a big blow to the family for fryers were always in demand.

The Bone Basin School sat on the lower side of a hill, just above a nice grove of trees. Just when it started no one could recall but it must have served the area for about 40 years. This log structure, at first with a dirt roof, schooled anywhere from 3 to 15 students per year, all eight grades available, for the nine month period. The teachers most of the time stayed with some of the families in the area, although one did sleep in the entry way one time on a cot provided, cooking her meals on the stove in the school. One recalled that the stove was a long one while another stated it was the pot-bellied variety, so changes were probably made during the years. Wood was always collected before the season started and stacked neatly along the wall of the building, then brought in by students as needed. Later a shed was added to the school in order to always have dry wood. The school had one window on the east side and two on the west side, the only light provided was by these windows. Water for the school was hauled from a nearby spring, another student chore. The entrance was on the South side of the school, at first open, then an entryway was added to help keep out the cold and allow for a cloakroom to handle boots and clothes. the outdoor privy stood to the north of the building. winters were cold and so dressing warm was always a requirement, although sometimes even then you could freeze your hands while walking to or from school. With abundant snow, one could slide down the hill at recess. Teachers, always trying to get the students to correct their English, would put the names of those on the blackboard for saying " ain't " or " got ". While sliding down the hill on their sleds, the students would note the teacher standing nearby watching so the would yell, " ain't we got fun,." Needing the space on the blackboard for the teaching subjects, the names soon came off. Other recess games were fox and geese in the winter, steal -a-stick, kick the can and the usual hide and seek.

Bone Basin Part I

CrazyLibraryLady — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:26:22 CDT

by Roy Millegan

Westphal Creek, Westphal Basin, Dry Lake Mountains, Gooseberry Springs, Splan Springs, Dixon Gulch and Bone Basin Creek all lay south of Whitehall, Montana, in the hills generally referred to as the Bone Basin area. It is bounded on the east by the Mayflower, Perry Canyon to the south, Gold Hill on the west and the Parrot Bench on the north. This area, now owned mainly by two ranchers, once was filled with children's voices, music to dance by, a farmer hollering " giddy-up " to his horses, the smell of good home cooked meals and the screech of chalk on a school blackboard.

Indians frequented the area before the white man settled here. Buffalo skulls, arrowheads, spearheads and teepee rings found by the early settlers attested to this. The first white man was probably a miner searching for his fortune or some hunter looking for either furs or meat. Good springs with some of the best water found in the area soon attracted the homesteaders, just who was first, I was unable to find out. A James Dixon from the Bone Basin area died in 1916 thus one can assume that Dixon Gulch was either named after him or his family, the obituary stating very little was known about the man. In one part of the basin was a tree used by the deer to rub their horns on, shedding them nearby, leaving one person to speculate that was how the name came about. However, the 1899 Jefferson Valley Zephyr noted that every year cattle seemed to die from an unidentified poisonous weed, thus their bleached bones soon drew people with wagons to the area who hauled them out to those desiring to sell them to certain processors. When asked where they were going they always replied " up to the bone basin." It appears the poisonous weeds were larkspur and death camas.

It wasn't long before homesteading of the area started in earnest. Voices echoing throughout the basin came from the Cowdrey, Brijkovec, Morrow, Christian, Ralph Shaw, Buckholtz, Carter, Torrence, Westphal, Sackopoulus, Bisch, Edwards, and a few other families. Today the foundations of their dreams are hard to find except by those few that really know the area. If the Parrot Smelter had become a working reality perhaps the area today would have been a fair sized city.

Information for this story has been gathered through interviews with Theodore Bisch, Vera ( Carter ) Fitzhugh, Charles Metully, and Mary ( Shaw ) Lowden along with information taken from some of the old newspapers. I am indeed indebted to them and they are happy to share some of their experience so that all might know a little more abut this area.

The homesteaders plowed the land planting small grains, dryland winter wheat yielding 55 to 60 bushels in a good year, but there weren't many of these. The small amount of water that was available from the springs and streams was put on the gardens that were a must, usually bigger that what they actually had water for. Excess garden produce found a ready market in the bustling city of Butte. One person asked the Bisch family for 100 pounds of squash so they put four of their finest in a sack and sent him on his way. Every fair time this area was well represented in the garden and produce competition. One year the Carter family had help at harvest time it seems a cloudburst washed all of their Irish Cobbler potatoes out of the ground so all they had to do was pick the clean tubers and store them. Many kept geese on their farmsteads just to keep weeds out of the gardens as well as have them eat the many grasshoppers and crickets, they providing meat for the family and an income.

The grain was cut with either the horse binder or header then threshed when the threshing machine made its rounds. The threshing bees were always a community effort, families traveling from farm to farm to assist each other, farm wives cooking their best meal for the crews. Ralph Shaw was one of those that had a grain separator and traveled from farm to farm. Hay was also put up, this being mostly the native range grass but a few did try alfalfa, especially those that milked cows. Sometimes they ventured into a new crop, flax being tried one time. The area was not always lush. They not only had their droughts, but also were continually battling the grasshoppers and Mormon crickets. During the tough years some left in the winter to take jobs in Whitehall or elsewhere. When the Parrot smelter was being built, many worked on it. The depression and dry years of the 1930's saw many of them leave this area for good. Some evacuated the area in 1904 when a forest fire, fierce in nature, appeared to the southeast of the area. The fire however decided to take a different route so very little destruction was noted.

Trips to Whitehall were few and far between. The Bisch boys however knew that when the cream can was full this meant a trip to town, and they felt it was about time a trip was made. One day their folks left for Waterloo so out to the range they went, rounding up all the cows in sight, regardlesss of whose brand was on them, driving them to the Bisch corral. One by one they were run into the squeeze chute and milked, none of them liking this action at all. When a couple of pails were full they took the milk to the spring where the cans were kept for cooling, separated it, saw how much they had, and scampered back to get more, keeping one eye on the road to see if anybody was coming. Cows that are stirred up, not used to being milked and have calves wanting to be fed can make an awful mess so one can imagine how these two boys looked when the job was completed. Luckily enough the Bisch family had a small reservoir on the place, and it was full of water, so they waded to the deepest part, clothes and all, and started to wash the manure from themselves. When the folks arrived home nothing seemed out of place, the cattle were grazing contentedly on the range, the boys were clean, but the cream can was full. Lucky for them, no one ever found out about their undertaking. and they also thanked their lucky stars that the owners of the cattle just didn't happen by that day. Milking their own cows after that just didn't seem to be as much fun somehow.

Every place had horses, except the Carters. Here it was Larry and Sam, two mules, along with Ralph the horse, and some burros. The burros were used on carts for transportation, or ridden, if one could stay on them. Jim Carter found out that hips could be broken when falling off of the animal. the family could usually be seen traveling to town, " bucking contests, " dances, or wherever on their burros. All horses of course had names, sometimes not always the same one. The Shaw family bought a couple of horses from Frank Kountz and their names
automatically became Frank and Lottie, Lottie being Frank's wife.

Fabric

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:15:50 CDT

Cozy Mountain Quilts
1 E. Legion
Whitehall, MT 59759
406-287-9984

City of Whitehall

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:39:07 CDT

Whitehall Town Hall
2 N. Whitehall
Whitehall, MT 59759
406-287-3972

Emergency	911
Clerk 2 N Whitehall St	287-3972
Fire Department 208 1st W St	287-3322 (non-emergency)
Jail 2 N Whitehall St	287-5889
Library 110 1st St W	287-3763
Marshal 208 W 1st St	287-3555

St. James HealthCare Rehab Services

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:35:54 CDT

St. James Healthcare Rehab Services
309 E. Legion
Whitehall, MT 59759
406-287-3717

Healthcare

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:33:11 CDT

St. James Healthcare Rehab Services
Whitehall Chiropractice
Whitehall Country Comfort Massage Therapy
Whitehall Dental Care
Whitehall Medical Clinic

LJ's Barber & Styling

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:25:29 CDT

LJ's Barber & Styling
11 E. Legion
Whitehall, MT 59759
406-287-3037

Barber Shops

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:23:13 CDT

LJ's Barber & Styling

Business

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:16:57 CDT

Crzy Bear Pizza & Eattery

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:14:30 CDT

Crzy Bear Pizza & Eattery
13 W. Legion
Whitehall, MT 59759
406-287-9202

Bars

CrazyLibraryLady — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 12:13:10 CDT

Borden's Lounge
Chief Motel
Crzy Bear Pizza & Eattery
Lucky Lil's Casino
Mint Bar
Roper Lanes & Lounge
Two-Bit Saloon

Category: Assisted Living	Category: Non-profits
Category: Automotive	Category: Nursery's
Category: Banks	Category: Ranching
Category: Bars	Category: Real Estate
Category: Barber Shops
Category: Bowling	Category: Restaurants
Category: Building Construction	Category: Trailer Parks
Category: Cafes
Category: Convenience Stores
Category: Fabric
Category: Feed Stores
Category: Gas Stations
Category: Grocery
Category: Hair Salons
Category: Hardware
Category: Health care
Category: Hunting and Fishing
Category: Insurance
Category: Laundromats
Category: Massage
Category: Mining
Category: Motels