Feb. 14, 1865James Whitlatch recorded his claim to the famous Union Lode, which is said to have made him Montana's first genuine millionaire.
It was the first and richest of the quartz lodes discovered in present-day Lewis and Clark County. Whitlatch was one of the first to reach the diggings at Last Chance Gulch in 1864, but after staking a placer claim he became driven to find the origin of the rich veins.
Whitlatch sold the mine in 1867, but married and stayed in Helena until 1872. He built one of the Capital City's first big business blocks and supplied financing to start the town's first paper, the Herald.
Feb. 10, 1899
The First Montana Volunteer Regiment was in the vanguard of a successful charge on the city of Caloocan in the Philippines.
In an attempt to extend control outward from Manila, U.S. troops charged Filipino insurgents rebelling against the American takeover the year before. Several hours later, two men from Company M of Anaconda raised the American flag in Caloocan, just north of Manila. Three Montanans died in the assault.
It was the first action since the Philippines declared their independence from Spain the previous June. In December, the U.S. and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded the Pacific islands to the United States. More than 1,000 Montana volunteers had already been sent to the Philippines to help quell natives protesting the move.
The regiment eventually took part in eight engagements before leaving later in the year. The Spanish-American War dragged on for three years before it came to an official halt.
Feb. 10, 1915
"If I see any of the hired hands taking it too easy I can drop a bomb on 'em."
Montana rancher J. Stanley Smith was in Chicago on his way east to shop for a dirigible, which he intended to patrol his 75,000-acre spread near Martinsdale in central Montana.
Stopped at the Congress Hotel, he told a newspaperman he had tried an automobile to get around the ranch, and claimed he was the first in Montana to do so.
"People said I was crazy; but it took me more than a week to get all over the farm on horseback," he said. "There are six sheep herds to watch, to say nothing of the workers."
The car worked "all right, but the roads are bad and wear out tires and tempers," said Smith.
"There are no bad roads in the skies and a fellow can just skim over woods and mountain peaks and muddy roads and washed-out bridges and gullies and everything else - and do it in half a day."
Smith's experiment was a smashing success, as witnessed by the thousands of hot-air blimps that hover over the farms, ranches and ranchettes of the West today.
Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or by e-mail at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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