Friday Photo: Lumberjacks

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 949-126

Today's photo shows the Baker brothers with 16,130 feet of lumber near Whitefish circa 1900. Sledges like this one were used to transport logs to a nearby landing where they could be loaded on railroad cars or floated by water to a mill.

Frank Lloyd Wright in Montana

In 1991, the American Institute of Architects honored Frank Lloyd Wright as the Greatest American Architect of All Time. His theory of organic architecture held that structures should be in harmony with humanity and the human environment. When he died in 1959, he had designed over five hundred homes and structures in thirty-six states and Japan, Canada, and England. Some four hundred remain today. Montana claims several examples of his work, including one project from 1908 when Wright’s career was just beginning to take off and another dating to the very end of his long architectural practice. The Como Orchards Colony, also known as the University Heights subdivision, in the Bitterroot Valley near Darby was an experimental planned community. Wright came to Montana in 1908 to research the site and designed the Como Orchards as a summer refuge for university professors.

The Como Orchards Colony lodge. Courtesy Treadway/Toomey Galleries

 A lodge and thirteen cottages were completed. One small cottage, a one-room cabin, and a tree-lined drive are all that remain today of Wright’s experiment. It was an innovative idea and a very early use of the prairie style that made Wright famous.

A Como Orchards Colony cabin. Courtesy ArchiTech Gallery.

He also designed the Bitterroot Inn at Stevensville, but it burned to the ground in the 1920s. The Lockridge Medical Clinic in Whitefish, built in 1961 1959, was one of Wright’s last designs. Dr. T. L. Lockridge insisted on the building’s construction even though his partners did not think it suitable as a medical clinic. For one thing, its hallways were too narrow for wheelchair access. When Lockridge died in 1964 1963, his two partners moved elsewhere, and Mrs. Lockridge sold the building. Now a law office, it is a surprising landmark in the middle of downtown Whitefish.

The Lockridge Medical Clinic in Whitefish

Update: Thanks to Ann Lockridge Christman for correcting the dates in the last paragraph.

Friday Photo: Skiing at Big Mountain

Happy Friday!


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 97-62 B5 W2-D-735 2

The caption of this undated photo reads, "Annual ski meets are held at many Montana ski runs." Bill Browning snapped the photo for the Montana Chamber of Commerce, probably at Big Mountain near Whitefish. Have you ever skied there?

Flathead Monster

I’ll be telling spooky stories at the Belgrade Public Library tomorrow (Thursday, October 18)  at 6:30. The program is a Humanities Montana sponsored event and is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!

Captain James Kerr, piloting the U.S. Grant on Flathead Lake in 1889, made the first recorded sighting of a mysterious creature in Flathead Lake. He and his passengers saw a 20-foot object swimming in the steamboat’s path. Passengers panicked. One man fired at it and missed. The boat nearly capsized and the creature disappeared. Since then, there have been nearly 100 sightings.

Documented sightings of "something" in Flathead Lake
Compiled by Laney Hanzel, from Montana Outdoors

One of the most credible was that of retired army major George Cote and his son Neal in 1985. Trolling in Yellow Bay, they saw an object "…as long as a telephone pole and twice as large in diameter." As it slowly undulated, they counted four to six humps above the water. It then sped away, stopped, looked back, and disappeared underwater. They knew that no one would believe them and kept quiet. Then in 1987, Major Cote again saw the creature as he drove along old Highway 93 near Lakeside. This time the entire head, body and tail were visible. Cote wrote of his encounters to Fish Wildlife and Parks in 1990. As a veteran fisherman, he knew what he saw. He had no doubt that it was a huge creature. FWP biologist Laney Hanzel has never seen the monster but has observed huge holes in nets officials have pulled from the lake. Even renowned Whitefish author Dorothy Johnson believed there was something in the lake. In a letter to the editor of the Flathead Courier, Johnson wrote: "I don't think the monster should be done with tongue in cheek. You have eyewitness accounts by people who were scared and didn't think it was funny. I remember hearing about something in Flathead Lake more than forty years ago, so don't give the Polson Chamber of Commerce credit for dreaming it up…."  And back in the dim past, the Kootenai Indians had a name for the lake they passed down through generations. They called it “Monster Lake.”