Some 15 months after Lewis and Clark vacate the country, St. Louis fur trader Manuel Lisa and his company of 50 men begin construction of a crude log building, the first such structure in what’s now Montana.
Lisa sets up shop at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Bighorn Rivers, perhaps on the advice of John Colter. Colter is one of four men from the Lewis and Clark expedition who have ascended the Missouri and Yellowstone with Lisa, the others being George Droulliard, John Potts and Peter Weiser. The men will spend the winter trapping beaver for the lucrative European market.
No trace of the post will remain in the 21st century, probably because the shifting channel of the Big Horn erased it long ago.
Nov. 18, 1887
The Montana Central railroad, being built southward from Great Falls, reaches its terminus in Helena.
Track layers stall just out of town when they have to cross the tracks of the rival Northern Pacific. NP employees have parked a locomotive at the crossing point to back up claims that the Montana Central has no right of way. But a telegram from NP headquarters in Minnesota orders the locomotive moved, and workers enter Last Chance Gulch late in the afternoon.
“President Hill and party will arrive Monday next, when a celebration will be held in honor of the completion of the road,” a dispatch from Minneapolis reads in the next day’s New York Times. “If the weather continues good, iron on the Rimini branch of the Montana Central will be laid this fall. Through trains from Helena to Minneapolis will commence running next fall.”
James Hill will be met by a two-mile parade of cheering revelers when his special four-car train rolls into the station three days later on a snowy, frigid afternoon. A banner strung across a Helena street trumpets Hill and local millionaire, C.A. Broadwater. “Hail to the chiefs!” it reads.
The Montana Central link to Hill’s Manitoba Railroad - later the Great Northern - at Great Falls means rails have been laid from Minot, N.D., to Montana’s territorial capital in just seven months.
Nov. 21, 1918
Less than two weeks after the armistice is signed ending World War I, John D. Ryan says it’s time to get back home to Butte.
Ryan resigns in Washington, D.C., as second assistant to the secretary of war and director of aircraft production. He’ll resume his multiple business roles as president of the Anaconda Copper Co. and Montana Power Co. He was also director of the Milwaukee Railroad, among other enterprises, when he assumed war-time duties with the Red Cross in 1917.
“With the signing of the armistice and the consequent reduction in the program of aircraft production, I believe my work here has become relatively unimportant,” Ryan writes in a resignation letter to Sec. Newton Baker. “I feel strongly that now the war is over my duty lies in the line of my for-mer work. Labor and industry of the country must be quickly adjusted from a war to a peace basis, and the copper production is one of the most vital to the country’s welfare.”
Baker accepts the resignation with reluctance, praising Ryan for his “sense of sureness and executive efficiency.”
Ryan took over Anaconda in 1908 and built it into the world’s copper giant. He and Con Kelley were the only leaders the company had from 1908 until 1955. Ryan will lose a fortune when the stock market crashes in 1929 and he’ll die, nearly broke, in 1933.
Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or by e-mail at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)