Gus Thompson’s Nearly Forgotten Legacy

In 1953, baseball fans celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first World Series. All the living players were invited back as guests of honor—all except one player who history seems to have forgotten. John Gustav “Gus” Thompson was a young pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1903 when he pitched for the Pirates in the first World Series against the Boston Americans (renamed the Red Sox in 1907). Thompson went on to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals and pitched his last major league game in 1906. He then pitched for Western and Pacific Coast leagues. In 1910 at the end of his professional career, he was playing in Seattle. Around 1911, Thompson and his family moved to Kalispell, Montana, where his wife, the former Edna Knapp, whom he met in college in Iowa, was a former graduate of Flathead County High School. Thompson managed the Kalispell Baseball Club and was the longtime proprietor of the Thompson and Cahill cigar store on Main Street.

This photo was taken at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston before game three of the first World Series in 1903.
Photo courtesy of National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y.

The invitation to the fiftieth World Series reunion was not the only time Gus Thompson has been forgotten. Thompson Field on Tenth Avenue in Kalispell was named for him, and was once one of the town’s most popular sandlots. But the field long sat unused, overgrown, and forgotten until some neighborhood residents—newcomers to the area—banded together a few years ago, cleaned it up, had tennis and basketball courts resurfaced, and renamed it Eastside Park. They had no idea why it was named Thompson Field.  
Fortunately not everyone had forgotten Gus Thompson. An article in the Daily Inter Lake on October 5, 1913, reminded the community of Thompson’s career and his contributions to the sport. He was the first Montanan (although a later transplant) to play not only in a World Series, but the FIRST World Series.  He died in 1958 and is buried in the Conrad Memorial Cemetery.

P.S. Remember this baseball team?

Lew Switzer’s Christmas Message

“If the Hoosier was for men,” read Lew Swtizer’s 1918 Christmas ad, “every modern business…would have [one].” In Kalispell, Montana, and elsewhere across the nation, the Hoosier was a much-desired Christmas gift. Switzer, a Kalispell furniture dealer, bluntly claimed that if this poplar kitchen cabinet could make man’s work easier, no man would be without one. But “men carelessly leave thoughts of efficiency behind when business hours are over.” The ad theorized that most of the nation’s work really took place in the American kitchen where millions of women spent long hours walking needless miles from one corner of the room to the other, and back again.  Organization could prevent all that walking. Switzer’s ad went on the point out that the Hoosier “restores charm to home keeping, prevents waste, and conserves strength.”

Kalispell Daily Inter Lake, December 6, 1918

The Hoosier, often found today in antique and second-hand stores, was the most popular type of kitchen cabinet from the late 1890s into the 1920s. The Hoosier Manufacturing Company adapted a baker’s cabinet to make the first model, on the market in 1899. Hoosiers were either wooden or enameled metal.The usually included drawers, cupboards, shelves, tea and coffee canisters, sugar and flour bins, spice racks with special glass containers, and work space. Until the 1920s, kitchens did not usually have built-in cabinetry, and so the Hoosier and other similar pieces of kitchen furniture were essential to a well-run kitchen. The Hoosier “released the bonds of drudgery” and made a woman’s kitchen practical and serviceable. The 1918 Hoosier had space for storing four hundred items, all at arm’s reach. Switzer encouraged his customers to “make one heart glad” at Christmastime and give the gift of convenience. Playing upon patriotism as the nation celebrated the recent end of World War I, Switzer admonished men declaring, “It is your patriotic duty to buy useful gifts and to buy early. So select your Hoosier at once.”

P.S. Remember these holiday advertisements?

Sculpture Gardens

During the nineteenth century, there was a national movement to plan park-like cemeteries with curving driveways and landscaped grounds outside urban areas. The idea took hold in Montana. Our major cities have beautiful park-like cemeteries where turn-of-the-century residents went not only to visit graves but also to picnic and enjoy nature. Missoula’s City Cemetery, Kalispell’s Conrad Cemetery, and Billings's Mountview  are a few examples. Cemeteries were usually located out of town for aesthetic reasons, but planning cemeteries out of town in Butte was a necessity because of health and sanitation. Urban mining everywhere created ground disturbance, and early burials in city churchyards or on private property did not always remain underground. Bodies turned up in odd locations, and exposed burials, especially during epidemics, were a serious health hazard. Keenly aware of this grisly problem, fraternal organizations established Mount Moriah Cemetery in 1877. Rather than curving driveways, it was laid out in simple blocks since there was no landscape to accommodate curving driveways. As much as the community wanted a beautiful cemetery, in nineteenth-century Butte this was impossible. Open hearth smelting polluted the area and prevented anything from growing. The cemetery was bleak and ugly. Butte’s citizens, however, made up for the lack of landscaping by placing fanciful and lovely tombstones on their loved ones’ graves. Butte has the most unique and attractive cemetery art of any in Montana. The desire to create “a spot of beauty” was at first far-fetched. But by 1905, as smelting centralized in Anaconda, trees and shrubs did begin to grow. Today Mount Moriah and Butte’s other sculpture garden cemeteries rival any in Montana.

Mount Moriah has many beautiful sculpture tombstones like this tree stump, which symbolizes a life cut short.
Photo from Buried in Butte by Zena Beth McGlashan

A Halloween to Remember

Alicia “Lettie” Conrad never let adversity get the better of her. Kalispell’s beautiful Conrad Mansion is now a museum, but back in October 1910, Lettie nearly lost her home to a disastrous fire. The entire town turned out to fight the blaze. Despite scorched walls and water damage, the house and its contents survived. Lettie devised a way to thank those who helped fight the fire. She planned a spectacular Halloween party and invited the entire town. Soggy fallen plaster, piled furniture, and a gaping hole in roof became the setting for Dante’s Inferno. Five hundred guests made their way to “hell” in the basement by way of a circular stairway built in the elevator shaft. Clammy wet canvas hung over the doorways, strings hung down along the dark path like cobwebs. On the first floor, Spanish moss dripped over the balcony and on the chandeliers. Dozens of lifelike cardboard and silk bats hung on invisible silken thread; fans kept the bats flying. The second story was purgatory, where a mass of wet, slick plaster covered the floors and mounds of it shaped like volcanoes covered the soggy beds. Special lighting simulating flames shot out of the craters. The third floor was paradise. Piled-up furniture covered in fresh flowers served as pathways; their sweet scent covered the acrid smell of smoke. After the tour, the guests gathered in the great hall. Just before the orchestra tuned up for the dancing, Lettie thanked all those who helped save her home. The dancing commenced and there was food and music until dawn. There will never be another Halloween party like it.

C. E. Conrad Memorial Cemetery

One fine fall day in 1902, Kalispell founder Charles E. Conrad and his wife Alicia took a last horseback ride to a favorite  area and rested on the narrow overlook where the valley spread below. Charles told his wife there could be no lovelier place for his final rest. Charles died weeks later, but not before he sketched the mausoleum he wanted Alicia to build in the place he had chosen.

She carried out her husband’s wishes and had more than one hundred stone steps set into the steep cliff below, allowing private access to her husband’s gravesite. Alicia Conrad worked tirelessly to establish a community cemetery serving all people and all faiths as a memorial to her husband. She traveled extensively to find the right design. At her invitation, A. W. Hobert, superintendent of the famed Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, visited the site and agreed there was none more beautiful. He designed the cemetery in 1903 as a classic Rural Garden Landscape. This concept in urban cemetery planning, first employed in Paris, France, and later in Boston, Massachusetts, offered a park-like setting for the enjoyment of nature as well as burial of loved ones.

A. W. Hobert's original design.

Alicia initiated a legislative bill, passed in 1905, establishing cemetery management and perpetual care. This cemetery became the prototype for perpetual care cemeteries in Montana. Today, 104 acres include more than 18,000 burials among winding driveways, sweeping lawns, and formal plantings that blend into the spectacular natural setting. Alicia Conrad laid the foundation for thoughtful management and careful stewardship. This unique cemetery welcomes all to enjoy its special features.

Friday Photo: Painting the Bleachers

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 94-59 folder 12/21

The men of Kalispell's Local 975 painted the bleachers at the baseball park as a community service project on April 26, 1958. Left to right brushing are Lee Barnes, Bob Casady, Ray Lincoln, and Perry Melton, while Bill Hagestad stands by.

P.S. Remember this baseball team?

The Circus Comes to Town

In 1964 Gertrude Hoover Wilcox recalled the summer day in 1917 when the circus came to Kalispell. She and her mother set out for the depot to watch the train unload. Her mother was impeccably dressed in a stylish white blouse with rows of tiny tucks, high topped black shoes, a long black skirt that was extremely tight at the bottom, and a black straw sailor hat with a huge cluster of bright red artificial cherries. A black ruffled parasol completed the outfit. Gertrude’s mother had to walk very slowly as the tight skirt impeded her progress along the board sidewalk. They followed the railroad tracks to the depot, and what a thrilling scene met them! The elephants were pushing the circus wagons down the ramp. Horses waited to pull the wagons that held a tiger, a chimpanzee, and a lion. The boxcars held camels and beautiful performing white horses.

Barnum and Bailey printed this poster in 1917, the same year that Gertrude and her mother saw the circus.

Suddenly someone yelled, “Lookout, there’s an ostrich loose!” The big bird headed straight for Gertrude’s mother. They tried to outrun the bird, but the tight skirt slowed them up, and in a flash the ostrich was right behind them, its neck fully extended, its big beak snapping at those red cherries on her mother’s hat. Gertrude’s mother knew she could never outrun the ostrich with that skirt, so every time the ostrich snapped his beak at the cherries, her mother popped him one with the parasol. The men were laughing so hard it took a few minutes for them to surround the ostrich. Gertrude’s mother was so indignant she had nothing to say but “hmph! hmph!” all the way home.

The Fairy Steps

There is a very special place known to generations of Kalispell’s children as the Fairy Steps. This enchanting stairway leads up a very steep cliff from the heavily wooded banks of the Stillwater River. At the top, there is small grassy promontory overlooking the Flathead Valley. This promontory is part of the Charles Conrad Memorial Cemetery. It was on this scenic overlook in the early twentieth century that Alicia Conrad had her husband’s remains placed in the family mausoleum. The mausoleum today sits by itself on this dramatic outcrop, surrounded by dense forest and very steep terrain. Long ago there was a road that ran along the river bank at the base of the cliff.  It was the most easily accessible route for her to visit the remains of her dearly departed husband.

She had the cliff face buttressed with a stone retaining wall and sections of concrete to prevent erosion. The tiny stone steps switchback up the steep incline, and several stone benches along the way allow necessary resting places. Mrs. Conrad would have her coachman drive the carriage to the steps at the base of the cliff so that she could visit the gravesite. Local children have scampered up and down that treacherous stairway for the last hundred years, but adults find the climb challenging. Local legend has it that if you count the steps on the way down and again on the up, you will always come out with different numbers. It’s little wonder. Once you are midway down, you have already lost count. And on the way back up, you are so winded that keeping track of numbers—at least for me—was impossible.

Update: The cemetery has just been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Here's an article about it.

Japanese Balloons

Historian Jon Axline tells a story about Oscar Hill and his son, who in 1944 were cutting firewood seventeen miles southwest of Kalispell. They found a strange parachute-like object with Japanese writing and a rising sun symbol stenciled on it. Sheriff Duncan McCarthy took the object to a Kalispell garage. Rumors flew and soon five hundred people crowded into the garage to take a look. It turned out to be a Japanese balloon rigged to carry a bomb. It was the beginning of an aerial attack on the United States by Imperial Japan as World War II wound down. In November of 1944, the Japanese began launching hydrogen-filled paper balloons believing the jet stream would carry them to North America. The attached incendiary and anti-personnel bombs would start forest fires and kill civilians. The Japanese also intended the balloon bombs as psychological weapons, designed to cause confusion and spread panic. The Japanese called them Fu-Go, “Windship Weapons.” They were the first intercontinental weapons, a low tech predecessor to the ballistic missiles of the late twentieth century.

Army Intelligence Captain W. Boyce Stanard (left) watches as FBI special agent W. G. Banister examines the balloon that fell in Kalispell. Army Air Force Major J. E. Bolgiano is holding the balloon's pressure relief valve. Photo from Project 1947.

By April 1945, the Japanese launched over nine thousand balloons. Only 277 reached the United States and Canada. Only one caused injuries, killing five Oregon picnickers when they inadvertently detonated one of the bombs. The project was a failure. A voluntary news blackout in the United States kept the Japanese from discovering if the balloons landed. At least thirty-two balloon bombs reached Montana between 1944 and 1945. A hiker discovered the last one hanging from a tree southwest of Basin in 1947. Axline points out that balloon bombs in Montana proved that the state was not as isolated and free from world events as the public thought.

Update: Here's a better photo of FBI agents examining the bomb. This one is an illustration in my new book, More Montana Moments.

Donald D. Cook, photographer, Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 93-1

Emma Ingalls

The newspaper Emma Ingalls and her husband founded, the Kalispell Inter Lake, allowed her to editorialize for civic reform. A rival editor said she was a “clever and interesting writer who occasionally wielded a caustic pen.” Ingalls was also a pioneer homesteader, the first to irrigate in the Flathead Valley, and managed by herself when her husband’s health failed. One of the first two women elected to the Montana Legislature in 1917, Ingalls introduced the national suffrage amendment when it came before the Montana House for ratification.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Returning for a second term, Ingalls sponsored the bill establishing Mountain View Vocational School for Girls. Until that time, courts remanded both boys and girls to the state reform school at Miles City. Separation of boys and girls was an important step in the care of delinquent juveniles. Ingalls was the first woman to work with the Bureau of Child and Animal Protection, chairing the northwest district under Governor Joseph Dixon. Despite her accomplishments, Ingalls believed her life was unremarkable. “God put me on his anvil and hammered me into shape,” she once said. “The things that seemed so hard to bear at the time have proven to be the stepping stones to a larger, richer life.”

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

John W. White

Today's Montana moment celebrates Black History Month with a look back at the life of John W. White of Kalispell.

Kalispell’s historic Central School today is home to the Northwest Montana Historical Society and serves as a community center and museum. But from 1894 to 1991, Central served students. Back in 1932 during the Great Depression, students of social science and history were studying the Civil War. The school’s longtime janitor, John W. White, knew a thing or two firsthand about one of the main issues. White was born a slave in North Carolina. He was ten when the war ended and freedom changed his life. He came west where he and his wife, Helen, settled in Demersville. They moved to Kalispell with its founding in 1891. White worked at Central School for more than thirty-five years. He had no formal schooling, but he was a self-taught scholar, an avid reader, and believed in education. He began his long workday at four A.M., and at the end of every day when the halls were quiet, he would take up his place by the furnace with a book in his hand and do some serious reading.


Image from the Museum at Central School

White, beloved by generations of Central children, saved his money to send four of his own children to college. But this special day in May, 1932, as White neared the end of his long life, he set aside his mops and brooms to tell the children about his own personal experiences. White’s lectures on slavery that day had the children riveted to their seats. He passed away two years later in 1934, but he left Central students with a perspective they did not forget.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go